To the world, South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy was a peaceful and miraculous process.
Two archival collections donated to the Nelson Mandela Foundation Centre of Memory detail the inaccuracy of this perception.
The year after Nelson Mandela’s release from prison on 11 Feburary 1990 the country was plunged into violence. Multi-party negotiations to end white minority rule which began in December 1991 had to repeatedly claw South Africa back from the precipice before finally reaching agreements on an internationally hailed constitution.
At a ceremony at the Nelson Mandela Foundation on 28 September Judge Richard Goldstone handed over his personal collection from the Goldstone Commission of Inquiry into violence in South Africa and Hassen Ebrahim gave his personal set of papers and some digital records from the negotiations for South Africa’s post-apartheid constitution.
Both men said that they believed there was no better home for the materials than the Nelson Mandela Foundation. They will be stored in the state-of-the-art archive alongside Nelson Mandela’s own personal papers. And, like his, the paper-based records will be deacidified to further preserve their lifespan, digitised and made available to the broader public for research purposes. They will also be used to enhance the dialogue and outreach work of the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
“We are thrilled to have these documents,” said Razia Saleh Senior Archivist for the Nelson Mandela Foundation. “They provide another rich layer to our archive and will be immensely useful for our research and that of others in the future.”
The Standing Commission of Inquiry Regarding the Prevention of Public Violence and Intimidation was formed in October 1991 by President FW de Klerk at the instance of Nelson Mandela. It became known as the Goldstone Commission after its Chairman Judge Goldstone. The five-person commission was given extraordinary search and seizure powers and conducted dozens of investigations.
It ultimately confirmed Mandela’s claims that the political violence sweeping South Africa was fomented by an apartheid regime sponsored ‘Third Force’. This had been strenuously denied by both the security forces and De Klerk.
Trustee of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, Irene Menell
Goldstone said he is often amazed at the reference to South Africa’s transition to democracy as having been ‘peaceful’ given the violence which claimed the lives of thousands of people in the process.
He fondly recalled the many meetings he had with Nelson Mandela in his home in Johannesburg and particularly one, in his bedroom, which Mandela chose because he thought the rest of the house was ‘bugged’.
The records of the Commission were later absorbed into the Human Rights Institute of South Africa (Hurisa) which was formed in 1994. It followed the Institute for the Study of Public Violence, the research arm of the Goldstone Commission.
Ebrahim, a lawyer and political activist returned to South Africa from exile after Mandela’s release from prison. He handed over his personal collection of papers from 1991 when he began serving as National Co-ordinator of the African National Congress’ Negotiations Commission and later as a member of the Transitional Executive Council. His collection includes the papers documenting the negotiations for an Interim and then Final Constitution for a post-apartheid South Africa.
Ebrahim named as the ‘highlight’ of his career his role as Executive Director of the Constitutional Assembly where he was ‘truly blessed’ with a high calibre team.
He kept the records because of the ‘rare privilege’ of being part of the process of helping to move South Africa from the bastion of racial oppression to a progressive non-racial democracy. And while the official records of the process had been given to South Africa’s National Archive he donated his to the Nelson Mandela Foundation as he believes it is, “the best possible home” for them.
“The quality of the records handed over today will bear testimony to that because you will find a meticulous account of all submissions, discussions and the ideas that went into our final constitution,” Ebrahim said.
He dedicated the collection to his three grandchildren Lily, Imaan and Mohammed because “they represent our future and the reason why we embarked upon our struggle to make this world a better place to live in”.
He also dedicated them to two soldiers from the ANC’s armed wing Umkhonto weSizwe, Prakash Napier and Yusuf Akhalwaya. It was important, Ebrahim said, to honour the two freedom fighters who were killed on 11 December 1989, two months before Mandela’s release and shortly before South Africa embarked on negotiations for a new dispensation. He did so “to remind ourselves of the price they paid then so that we today can enjoy the freedoms we have.”
The collections were accepted by Mrs Irene Menell, a Trustee of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, who was also the founding Executive Director of Hurisa. She reminded the gathering, in a quote from LP Hartley, that “the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”