Nelson Mandela when he was released from prison, spoke in Oakland in 1990. I was living in San Francisco at the time and supporting UC Berkeley students and activists by sleeping out on the steps of Sproul Hall in protest demanding the UC Regents divest from South Africa.
Playing a direct part in the global pressure that broke apartheid was a milestone in my political activism consciousness.* When he spoke in Oakland in 1990, apartheid was technically still in place. The laws hadn’t all changed yet, but the global pressure we built had already broken their power. We had forced them to release him.* It taught me that an enemy’s system can look completely intact on the outside even right as it is beginning to fracture from the inside.
I remember anxiously waiting for Mandela to step on stage. When he finally did, my mouth dropped open. Here was a man who had been wrongfully imprisoned for 27 years, yet his life condition was so high that he was just glowing. He could have walked to the podium and spoken about how he was wrongfully persecuted but he didn’t. He took the high road and spoke about a vision for the “imminent birth of a new South Africa in which all shall be equal, irrespective of race, color, gender or creed.” He continued, “the path ahead is daunting, but our resolve is strong… We are at a crucial historical juncture. We cannot turn back. We shall not turn back.”
I learned back then what it takes to face a formidable opponent. And 20-something years later, as I face this current harm, I am calling on that exact same consciousness to regroup and stand my ground today. If private military and security contractors working in tandem with local proxies take my life, it won’t be because I gave up and gave it to them.
I will not yield an inch.
Clarification:
* Student protests and divestment campaigns contributed to broader economic, political, and moral pressure on the apartheid regime.
* That pressure was one among many factors including internal resistance, mass organizing inside South Africa, international sanctions, diplomatic negotiations, and shifting global opinion that helped create the conditions in which Mandela’s release became possible.
* I am not claiming that student protests secured his release on their own, but that they were one thread in a larger fabric of struggle.
* When I say “we broke apartheid,” I’m speaking from the experience of participating in the divestment movement and the wider global struggle against apartheid. I am not claiming that our protests alone defeated the regime; they were one strand in a much larger, decades-long fight led primarily by South Africans themselves, supported by international solidarity, sanctions, and organizing worldwide.
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