Interviews with Mamphela Ramphele

I think it was a journey, which if you look historically, 1976 really marked a complete different phase of the level of resistance. People whose minds were freed were not going to go back into the box. So after the Soweto uprisings we had mass, mass mobilization in the churches, on the factory floors, in the universities, in the streets with civic organizations and so on. So it was a mounting momentum, which made it very clear that there is not going to be sustainability of a government that represents a minority.

[Soweto, meaning Southwest Township, was a community near Johannesburg designated for black residents. Under apartheid, townships were residential areas designated for non-white groups. Non-whites were prohibited from living in areas reserved for whites. The Soweto Uprising was a series of protests led by South African high school students on June 16, 1976. Students from various Sowetan schools began demonstrating in the streets against Afrikaans as the primary language of educational instruction.]

It is also the case that I was fortunate in 1988 to be invited by Mr. [Nelson] Mandela to meet him at Pollsmoor Prison because of his tentative moves to start the negotiations. They had moved them from Robben Island to Pollsmoor Prison.

[Nelson Mandela (1918 – 2013) was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary and politician who served as the first post-apartheid President of South Africa from 1994-1999. Robben Island, now a museum, was the site of a maximum security prison where Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners were jailed. Pollsmoor is a maximum security prison near Cape Town. During the apartheid era, both common and political criminals were held there.]

He invited me to come and meet him. Now you can imagine, this man had just been a historic figure, I´d never met him. I had no idea what he looked like. The pictures that we had were completely different from the person now late in his years. He was in his seventies. But also I didn´t understand why he would want to talk to me. I wasn´t a member of the ANC [African National Congress], either underground or above ground.

And it was a meeting which really changed my life in the sense of really getting to know the underbelly of the processes that were nascent and as they strengthened, I was privy to the discussions through Mr. Mandela. And why did he want to see me? Because he had been exposed to activists of the Black Consciousness Movement, people like Saths Cooper and Mosiuoa Lekota and many others who ended up on Robben Island. Mosiuoa was not but there were other people who were in the Black Consciousness Movement who ended up there. Mosiuoa was one of those who had detained here on South African soil.

And so he got fascinated by the Black Consciousness Movement. He read about Steve Biko. He wanted to meet me because he wanted to understand the thinking of the time and the motivation, but I think he also was aware that when change comes South Africa is going to need all the talents to come together regardless of political affiliation to build the country that we want to be part of. And so that was the beginning of a friendship, a father-daughter relationship that lasted until his passing last year.

[The African National Congress (ANC) is a political party that served as the most prominent resistance movement against South Africa’s apartheid system, at times resorting to violence through its military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe. It was officially banned by the South African government from 1960 to 1990. As apartheid collapsed, the ANC’s leader, Nelson Mandela, was elected President of South Africa in 1994 and established a democratic government. Dr. Saths Cooper (1950 – ) is a South African of Indian dissent. He was an anti-apartheid activist and political prisoner. Mosiuoa Lekota (1948 – ) is a South African politician who served as the Minister of Defense from 1999 to 2008. He was an anti-apartheid activist and political prisoner. Stephen Bantu Biko (1946 – 1977) was an anti-apartheid activist and the leader of South Africa’s Black Consciousness Movement. He died in 1977, from injuries sustained while in police custody.

Mamphela Ramphele was born in South Africa’s Limpopo province. She has been an anti-apartheid activist, a medical doctor, a community development activist, a researcher, a university executive, and a global public servant.

As a medical student, Ramphele became one of the founders of the Black Consciousness Movement with activist Steve Biko. They began the movement as a way to empower black South Africans and protest against the apartheid regime.

Following the 1976 Soweto uprising, a series of protests begun by South African high school students, Ramphele was detained without trial. She was released after five months and soon afterwards was legally banned, an apartheid-era mandate where individuals were prohibited from communicating with more than one person at a time and from traveling domestically or internationally without permission.

After the fall of apartheid, Ramphele was appointed Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Town becoming the first black woman to hold such a position at a South African university.

From 2000 – 2004, Ramphele served as a Managing Director of the World Bank. She was the first South African to hold the position. Ramphele is a trustee of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, and has served as the director of the Institute for a Democratic Alternative for South Africa.

Ramphele is the author of several books and publications on socio-economic issues in South Africa. She has received numerous national and international awards acknowledging her scholarship and leading role in spearheading projects for disadvantaged people in South Africa.

South Africa is a nation of almost 53 million on the southern tip of Africa. The nation has a unique multicultural character and is approximately 80 percent African and 10 percent European, with the remaining 10 percent being of mixed race or Asian heritage. These broad racial categories include a multitude of ethnic and linguistic groups.

Although it has the largest economy on the continent, much of the nation remains in poverty and there is great economic disparity. Historically, the mining industry has played a key role in South Africa’s economy and it continues to remain an important industry today, alongside manufacturing, tourism, and financial services.

South Africa was first settled by non-natives in 1652, when the Dutch established an outpost in what would later become Cape Town. Soon after, British, French, and German settlers came to the area. The descendants of the original Dutch settlers became known as Afrikaners. Conflicts over land and power arose between the settling groups as well as between the settlers and the native people of the region. In 1910, Britain formally created the Union of South Africa as a self-governing dominion within the British Empire.

Throughout South Africa’s history, non-whites were subjected to widespread discrimination. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the government passed a series of laws institutionalizing discrimination and segregation. In the 1948 elections, the National Party, which served as a platform for Afrikaner nationalism, gained power. The National Party program was centered on the system of racial segregation known as apartheid. Supporters of apartheid argued that South Africa was made up of four distinct racial groups: white, black, “Coloured” or mixed-race, and Indian.

The white minority oppressed the African majority and other non-white groups. Black Africans were particularly disadvantaged in terms of education, housing, income, and health. Blacks were denied citizenship and not permitted to use the services and facilities accessible by the white minority. Many blacks were forced to relocate when their neighborhoods were declared “white.” A series of laws enacted in the 1950s further codified and expanded racial segregation. In part, the National Party justified its policies by branding its opponents as communists.

The African National Congress (ANC) was founded in 1912 to advocate for the rights of black South Africans. As apartheid expanded, the ANC and other groups used both nonviolent and violent actions to combat the government. The ANC and other groups were oppressed by the government, and many of their senior leaders were banned or imprisoned. Nelson Mandela, a prominent ANC leader, was imprisoned from 1962 to 1990.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the anti-apartheid movement gained strength. Foreign governments and the international community isolated South Africa. International sanctions damaged the economy and helped erode domestic support for apartheid. Meanwhile, the end of the Cold War weakened the government’s claim that yielding power would lead to a communist takeover.

In 1990, the government of South Africa took its first steps toward ending apartheid when it ended a ban on certain political organizations including the ANC. Nelson Mandela and other opposition leaders were released from prison and apartheid legislation was repealed. F.W. de Klerk, President from 1989-1994, helped to broker this transition of South Africa from the apartheid-era to a multi-racial democracy. In 1993, de Klerk and Mandela received the Nobel Peace Prize for their work.

In 1994, South Africa held its first election that allowed all adults to vote, regardless of race. The ANC gained power and Nelson Mandela was elected president. South Africa enacted a liberal, democratic constitution, backed by a strong and independent judiciary. While the ANC has remained the strongest party, elections are vigorously contested and democratic safeguards are respected. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigated abuses and crimes committed during the apartheid era.

Freedom House’s 2013 Freedom in the World report categorized South Africa as “free” with an overall freedom rating of two, with one being the most free and seven being the least. The country also received ratings of two in political rights and civil liberties. However, in the 2013 Freedom of the Press report, the nation was categorized as “party free” due to government restrictions on the press and the prevalence of civil cases brought against journalists for libel.