Mandela Stays Strong
The years at Robben Island never broke Nelson’s spirit. He never stopped believing that South Africa could change. He exercised each morning and read every evening. He studied law through the mail. He learned Afrikaner history and language. The darkest time for him in prison was when he was forbidden to study. This lasted for four years. But Nelson was determined, and he passed his intermediate law exams when he was forty-five years old.
There was one joyful thing about prison life: friendship. Prisoners were forbidden to talk, but they found ways. They whispered as they worked in the quarries and passed secret notes hidden in the dirty dishes. They even organized work slowdowns and went on hunger strikes. Mandela might be in prison, but he was still a tree shaker!
Mandela also wrote a five-hundred-page autobiography on smuggled paper. He buried the pages, wrapped in plastic and hidden in cocoa containers, all over the prison courtyard. He encouraged other prisoners to study and learn, too. And although Nelson was a leader, younger prisoners were amazed at his humility. Prison life was very difficult for Nelson. When illness prevented him from working in the quarry he was locked in a wet, cold, solitary cell apart from his friends. All he was given to eat was rice and water.
Meanwhile, one of Nelson’s friends was traveling around the world telling everyone able Mandela and the fight against apartheid. He met with civil rights groups and government leaders. He set up international chapters of the ANC. World leaders who recognized him as the face of the new South Africa began to call for Mandela’s release. Tambo (Nelson’s friend) also organized revolutionary fighters from training camps in nearby Tanzania and Zambia. He moved the fighters to Angola, on the border of a province controlled by South Africa. This sent a message to the white government of South Africa: The ANC was willing to go to war.
The pressure on the white South Africans was mounting. Nelson Mandela was a symbol of hope for a better South Africa. He was the best known of all the activists. In 1980 the Johannesburg Sunday Post, a black newspaper, printed a petition to release him. The headline read: FREE MANDELA.