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Courage Is Not the Absence of Fear
Most people would say that Nelson Mandela personifies courage. But Mandela himself defines courage in a curious way. He does not see it as innate, or as a kind of elixir we can drink, or learned in any conventional way. He sees it as the way we choose to be. None of us is born courageous, he would say; it is all in how we react to different situations.
There were many moments in Mandela’s life when he was tested. The ones people know about were large and public and dramatic. But courage, he would say, is an everyday activity, and we can display it in ways large and small. I had a glimpse into the nature of his courage in Natal in 1994. It was in the midst of the run-up to the first democratic South African election, when political violence was at epidemic levels. He chose to fly to Natal on a small propeller plane to give a speech to his Zulu supporters. He probably should not have gone at all. At the time, many of his Zulu supporters were being murdered by the rival Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party and the situation was far from safe. But he was resolute.
I had agreed to meet his flight at the airport. When the plane was twenty minutes from landing, an airport official came over to me to say that one of the engines in the tiny plane had given out, and that they were planning on having fire engines and ambulances on the tarmac in case anything went wrong. The official said that in such cases, the pilot was usually able to land the plane without incident.
Mandela was on the plane with a lone bodyguard—Mike was his name—and two pilots. Twenty minutes later, surrounded by fire engines and ambulances, the plane made a slightly rocky landing. A smiling Nelson Mandela entered the small lounge, where he was besieged by a busload of Japanese tourists. True to form, Mandela was intent on shaking hands with each of them and posed with a great, big smile for whoever wanted a picture.
While Mandela posed, I huddled with Mike, who told me that two-thirds of the way through the trip, Mandela had leaned over to him, pointed out the window, and calmly said that the propeller did not seem to be working. He asked Mike to inform the pilots. Mike went to the cabin. The pilots knew full well about it and told him that they had called the airport and emergency landing procedures had been started. Most likely everything would be okay, they said. Mike told this to Mandela, who silently nodded and went back to reading his newspaper. Mike, who was not an experienced flier, said he himself was trembling with fear and that the only thing that calmed him was staring at Mandela, who continued to read the paper as though he were a suburban commuter on the morning train headed in to the office. Mike said Mandela barely looked up from the newspaper when the plane was making its landing.
When Mandela finished shaking hands, we were hustled into the backseat of the bulletproof BMW that would take us to the rally. I asked him how the flight was and he leaned over, opened his eyes very wide, and in a dramatic voice said, “Man, I was terrified up there!”
Though it may surprise people who know him only as an icon, I cannot tell you how many times he told me during our interviews that he had been scared. He was scared during the Rivonia Trial that sentenced him to life in prison; he was scared when wardens on Robben Island threatened to beat him; he was scared when he was an underground fugitive known in the press as the “Black Pimpernel”; he was scared when he secretly began negotiations with the government; and he was scared during the turbulent period before the election that would make him president of South Africa. He was never afraid to say he had been afraid.
His sense of courage was formed early. From when he was a small boy, Mandela heard tales of the bravery of such legendary African leaders as Dingane and Bambata and Makana. After his father died when he was nine, he was taken to a royal village called Mqhekezweni to be raised by Jongintaba, the king of the Thembu people. Mandela’s father had been a local chief who was also a counselor to the king. The king wanted to groom young Nelson to be a counselor to his own son when he would become king. The king saw himself in a long line of African heroes and was devoted to following the traditional Xhosa rituals and ceremonies. One such ceremony haunted Mandela for the rest of his life.
In January 1934, when he was sixteen, he and twenty-five other boys of the same age were secluded in two grass huts on the banks of the Mbashe River. These were the elite boys of the village. Their bodies had been shaved clean, they were coated in white ocher, and wore only blankets over their shoulders. They looked like ghosts. Anxious and tense, they were getting ready for the Xhosa ritual of circumcision, what Mandela called the “essential step necessary in the life of every Xhosa male.” This was not a private ritual, but a public one, and the king, a number of chiefs, and a crowd of friends and relatives were sitting by the side of the river. It was not only a rite of passage but a public test of courage. Each boy in turn was circumcised by an ingcibi (a circumcision expert). Here is Mandela’s account of what happened, from his unpublished diary:
“Suddenly there was excitement and a thin elderly man shot past towards my left and squatted in front of the first boy. A few seconds thereafter I heard this boy say: ‘Ndiyindoda!’ (I am a man!) Then Justice [the king’s son and Mandela’s best friend] repeated the word, followed one after the other by the three boys between us. The old man was moving fast and before I knew what was happening he was right in front of me. I looked straight into his eyes. He was deadly pale and though the day was cold, his face was shining with perspiration. Without saying a word he seized and pulled the foreskin and brought down the assegai. It was a perfect cut, clean and round like a ring. Within a week the wound healed, but without anesthetic, the actual incision was as if molten lead was flowing through my veins. For seconds I forgot about the refrain and tried instead to absorb the shock of the assegai by digging my head and shoulders into a grass wall. I recovered and just managed to repeat the formula ‘Ndiyindoda!’ (I am a man!) The other boys seemed much stronger and repeated the chorus promptly and clearly when each one’s turn came round.”
When he recounted this story for me, nearly sixty years after the wintry afternoon when it happened, Mandela was rueful, almost pained. And not because he was recalling the physical sensation of the operation, but because he believed that he had not reacted well. The pain of the procedure had died away, but not the pain of having been fainthearted. “I faltered,” he said, looking down. “I did not yell it out in a firm voice.” He felt that the other boys had been braver, stronger. He says he discovered that he was not naturally brave—perhaps none of us are—and that he would have to learn how to be so. He was disappointed in himself all those many years later, but the ritual had had its intended effect: He had resolved that he would always look strong, that he would never appear to falter.
