The Failure Pledge

Law and politics

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Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela in 1994.
April 1994, weeks before the inauguration.Paul Weinberg. CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

What failed

He was thrown out of university, then left law school without qualifying. His first campaign brought a conviction and a banning order that made him a spectator at the adoption of his own movement's charter. The strike he organised was called off. The armed struggle was broken within eighteen months.

What happened next

He served twenty-seven years and negotiated from inside, having first refused release on the state's terms. He finished the law degree he abandoned in 1952 while still a prisoner.

The point

Refusing a bad deal is a decision you can make from a prison cell, and it is sometimes the only one available. The whole settlement depended on his declining the offer of 1985.

The sequence

4 documented failures, shown with the successes in between. Every entry carries its own source — the wins are part of the record, and leaving them out is how these stories get distorted.

  1. 1940

    Expelled from Fort Hare for joining a student protest.

    failureBiography of Nelson Mandela (Nelson Mandela Foundation)

  2. 1952

    Leaves law school without graduating.

    failureBiography of Nelson Mandela (Nelson Mandela Foundation)

  3. 1952

    Convicted under the Suppression of Communism Act.

    failureTrials and prison chronology (Nelson Mandela Foundation)

  4. 1952

    Banned for the first time. As a restricted person he can only watch in secret when the Freedom Charter is adopted at Kliptown on 26 June 1955.

    noteBiography of Nelson Mandela (Nelson Mandela Foundation)

  5. 1961

    Acquitted after four and a half years on trial for his life, and goes underground.

    noteTrials and prison chronology (Nelson Mandela Foundation)

  6. 1964

    Sentenced to life imprisonment after the Rivonia raid.

    failureTrials and prison chronology (Nelson Mandela Foundation)

  7. 1985

    Refuses release on condition of renouncing violence.

    noteTrials and prison chronology (Nelson Mandela Foundation)

  8. 1990

    Released from Victor Verster Prison after twenty-seven years.

    noteTrials and prison chronology (Nelson Mandela Foundation)

  9. 1994

    Inaugurated as South Africa's first democratically elected president.

    successBiography of Nelson Mandela (Nelson Mandela Foundation)

Sources

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