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1. Early life, family and education
2. ANC resistance to apartheid 1940's and 50's
3. Rivonia trial
4. Robben Island
5. Liberation struggle
6. Release
7. First democratic election
8. The Presidency and beyond

The Rivonia Trial, named after the suburb of Johannesburg where sixteen leaders of the African National Congress had been arrested in July 1963, began on 26 November 1963.

• (Click here to read Nelson Mandela's Defence Speech - "I am prepared to die" - at the trial)
• (Click here to listen to an extract from a recording of the court proceedings)

Mandela and his fellow defendants were charged with 221 acts of sabotage designed to "ferment violent revolution".

The ANC had been operating underground since being outlawed in April 1960, one month after the Sharpeville Massacre of 67 protestors by police. The police had collected hundreds of documents from the ANC hideout at Rivonia about Operation Mayibuye (Operation Comeback).

Under the new General Law Amendment (Sabotage) Act of 1962 and the Suppression of Communism Act, the defendants faced the threat of the death penalty.

Mandela had a growing international reputation and the ANC sought to use the trial to win worldwide support and attention, hence Mandela's speech from the dock on April 20th which was delivered from his handwritten script.

For example, the speech was extracted in The Observer on Sunday April 26th, under the headline "Why I am prepared to die".

Mandela was described as "the black pimpernel of South Africa, on trial in Pretoria with eight others on charges of attempting a revolution by violence".

The newspaper told its readers that "the alleged offences are punishable by death. Last week he appeared in the witness-box for four-and-a-half hours to explain his stand. He admitted that he had organised sabotage. He explained why he had turned to violence, and what kind of South Africa he was prepared to die for" to introduce "the historic speech which could be his last".

On June 11 1964, at the conclusion of the trial, Mandela and the seven other defendants - Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki (father of current South African President Thabo Mbeki), Raymond Mhlaba, Elias Motsoaledi, Ahmed Kathrada and Denis Goldberg - were convicted. Mandela was found guilty on four charges of sabotage. All eight were imprisoned to life imprisonment.

The United Nations Security Council condemned the trial and began moves towards international sanctions against the apartheid regime. But it was 27 years before Mandela was released from prison on February 11th 1990, becoming President of South Africa following the first democratic multi-racial elections in 1994.

http://www.observer.co.uk/mandela/story/0,8224,436395,00.html


Press statement by Chief Albert Lutuli issued by the ANC, 12 June 1964, following the Rivonia verdict and released by the ANC office in London.

Sentences of life imprisonment have been pronounced on Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Ahmed Kathrada, Govan Mbeki, Denis Goldberg, Raymond Mhlaba, Elias Motsoaledi and Andrew Mlangeni in the 'Rivonia trial' in Pretoria.

Over the long years these leaders advocated a policy of racial co-operation, of goodwill, and of peaceful struggle that made the South African liberation movement one of the most ethical and responsible of our time. In the face of the most bitter racial persecution, they resolutely set themselves against racialism; in the face of continued provocation, they consistently chose the path of reason.


The African National Congress, with allied organisations representing all racial sections, sought every possible means of redress for intolerable conditions, and held consistently to a policy of using militant, non-violent means of struggle. Their common aim was to create a South Africa in which all South Africans would live and work together as fellow-citizens, enjoying equal rights without discrimination on grounds of race, colour or creed.

To this end, they used every accepted method: propaganda, public meetings and rallies, petitions, stay-at-home strikes, appeals, boycotts. So carefully did they educate the people that in the four-year-long Treason Trial, one police witness after another voluntarily testified to this emphasis on non-violent methods of struggle in all aspects of their activities.


But finally all avenues of resistance were closed; the African National Congress and other organisations were made illegal; their leaders jailed, exiled or forced underground. The government sharpened its oppression of the peoples of South Africa, using its all-white parliament as the vehicle for making repression legal, and utilising every weapon of this highly industrialised and modern state to enforce that 'legality'. The stage was even reached where a white spokesman for the disenfranchised Africans was regarded by the government as a traitor. In addition, sporadic acts of uncontrolled violence were increasing throughout the country. At first in one place, then in another, there were spontaneous eruptions against intolerable conditions; many of these acts increasingly assumed a racial character.


The African National Congress never abandoned its method of a militant, nonviolent struggle, and of creating in the process a spirit of militancy in the people. However, in the face of the uncompromising white refusal to abandon a policy which denies the African and other oppressed South Africans their rightful heritage - freedom - no one can blame brave and just men for seeking justice by the use of violent methods; nor could they be blamed if they tried to create an organised force in order to ultimately establish peace and racial harmony.


For this, they are sentenced to be shut away for long years in the brutal and degrading prisons of South Africa. With them will be interred this country's hopes for racial co-operation. They will leave a vacuum in leadership that may only be filled by bitter hate and racial strife.

They represent the highest in morality and ethics in the South African political struggle; this morality and ethics has been sentenced to an imprisonment it may never survive. Their policies are in accordance with the deepest international principles of brotherhood and humanity; without their leadership, brotherhood and humanity may be blasted out of existence in South Africa for long decades to come. They believe profoundly in justice and reason; when they are locked away, justice and reason will have departed from the South African scene.


This is an appeal to save these men, not merely as individuals, but for what they stand for. In the name of justice, of hope, of truth and of peace, I appeal to South Africa's strongest allies, Britain and America. In the name of what we have come to believe Britain and America stand for, I appeal to those two powerful countries to take decisive action for full-scale action for sanctions that would precipitate the end of the hateful system of apartheid.78


I appeal to all governments throughout the world, to people everywhere, to organisations and institutions in every land and at every level, to act now to impose such sanctions on South Africa that will bring about the vital necessary change and avert what can become the greatest African tragedy of our times.

Caption taken from Apartheid and The History of The Struggle for Freedom in South Africa, All rights reserved.

Page compiled by Portia Rakoma, Department of Library and Information Studies, M.L. Sultan Technikon. September, 2001.