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Two Generations of Anti-Apartheid Activists Share A Prison Cell Block and Become A President
Two Generations of Anti-Apartheid Activists Share A Prison Cell Block and Become A President
Two Generations of Anti-Apartheid Activists Share A Prison Cell Block and Become A President
appointment ahead two months later, to make the time go with meaning and have something to look
forward to."
"Also, it was his way to say you will have two months to think about it and maybe your responses will
shift."
There was much to think about and discuss, given their differing political stances. As a young
founder of the Black People's Convention, Saths had opposed the "multi-racial" policies of Mandela's
Africa National Congress.
While just a teenager, Saths had helped young student activist Steve Biko (memorialized in the
movie Cry Freedom) create the Black Consciousness Movement which rekindled opposition to
apartheid when the African National Congress and Pan Africanist Congress liberation movements
were banned in April 1960, after the infamous Sharpeville massacre and after Nelson Mandela went
underground and eventually was imprisoned.
Ultimately both came to embrace non-racialism, as enshrined in the South African constitution.
Striking similarities between the two generations of men who changed the face of their country. and
impact the world, help in understanding courage and leadership in the struggle for human rights
and social justice. They both:
Value education. Mandela attended the University College of Fort Hare -- equivalent to Harvard or
Oxford -- and studied law at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Cooper also studied at
the University of Witwatersrand, after his prison release, and completed his Ph.D. at Boston
University in the U.S. while on a Fulbright scholarship. Studied law. Mandela set up the first black
legal practice in South Africa. Cooper studied law but discontinued in that field after he saw what
the apartheid law meant, as an accused and convicted person. Instead, psychology promised a key to
freedom, revealing "how the tools of oppression can be a tool for liberation by understanding divides
and creating bridges." Interestingly, Saths' two sons now are in the law field; his daughter studies
psychology and women's issues.Sought to understand the nature of conflict. Through boxing as a
youth, Mandela learned about the "science" and strategy of a fight. Cooper was similarly drawn to a
confrontation, his favorite musical being West Side Story, similarly not for the violence but for the
"spectacle." Appreciated theatrics. Mandela dressed in disguises (as a chauffeur, gardener and chef)
to evade authorities, and also notoriously created a spectacle when the then-president of South
Africa sported a Springboks shirt when presenting the trophy to his country's team at the 1995
Rugby World Cup. Saths was involved in theatre from the late 1960s and early 1970s, as co-founder
of the Natal Drama Foundation and the South African Black Theatre Union, and later as chair of the
Soweto Dance Theatre Company from the early 1990s.Learned to listen. Mandela learned about
listening as the son of a tribal councilor who was "groomed to counsel rulers of the tribe," as he
recounts in his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom. In Cooper's path as a psychologist, listening is
an essential tool to effective counseling, leadership and peaceful resolution.Have similar American
heroes. Mandela praised George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Frederick
Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr., for their work for liberty, justice and civil rights. Cooper also
admires Lincoln and King in addition to other advocates of non-violent protest like Mahatma Gandhi.
Have long-term ties to Reverend Desmond Tutu. Saths first met Tutu (credited with coining the term
"Rainbow Nation") in 1983 when the outspoken archbishop was Secretary General of the South
African Council of Churches and Cooper was creating a national forum of anti-apartheid
organizations in which Tutu was involved. Saths later became Director and Chair of the Archbishop
Tutu Scholarship Fund in the U.S. "From Desmond I get a sense of serenity and peace," Cooper told
me.Made personal sacrifices in their early activism. Both men divorced their first wives, though in
later years established long-term unions with powerful women, Mandela with his third wife, Graa
Machel -- the widow of a former president of Mozambique -- and Cooper with a noted South African
psychologist who has a major leadership role in the psychology organization he now heads. Started
out as student activists. Mandela's early protest against authorities and resentment of absolute
power was sparked while as a Student Representative at the University of Fort Hare, when a protest
over the food at the student canteen led to a boycott of elections. Cooper was similarly swept into
campus politics, becoming a founding member of the South African Students Organization that later
evolved into the Black Consciousness Movement in 1969, advocating for a Black identity as opposed
to multiracialism. He later took part in labor movement strikes of 1973 which resulted in an arrest
for assaulting a policeman, and another arrest in 1976 for co-organizing rallies supporting
Mozambique's liberation from Portugal -- for which he was sentenced to 10 years in prison under the
Terrorism Act. He was arrested again in 1984 for belonging to a banned organization. Evolved from
angry rebels into peaceful unifiers. Mandela, who has described himself as a "hothead," founded the
armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC) yet later became the celebrated voice against
violence. Cooper, who always "pushed boundaries," joined student activist Steve Biko to lead the
BCM to unify Black, Indian and Colored students in Black pride and empowerment, and staged
marches, uprisings and protests that erupted into violence, arrests and ultimately, Biko's death.
Later in life, Cooper would embrace more peaceful unity.As evidence that both men simultaneously
became symbols of peace, three months before Mandela became the country's first democratically
elected president in 1994, Cooper was instrumental in forming the Psychological Society of South
Africa, the country's first psychological organization that accepted members regardless of race or
gender and promoted non-participation in oppressive activities or regimes. Just as Mandela unified
South Africans on a national and global stage, Cooper is unifying psychologists both internationally
in his role as IUPsyS President, and by boosting national prominence through his current initiative
to form the Pan African Psychology Union. In 1998, Cooper was the beneficiary of Mandela's South
Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, when he was declared a "victim of gross human rights
violations." Cooper carries on both his own and Mandela's mission for human rights, advocating
about poverty among youth, against violence and rape, and for solutions to homelessness and AIDS
(a passion of Mandela's after his son's death from the disease). No longer bucking authority, Saths
has worked within the system, chairing the South African Government Task Team to Curb Child
Pornography and the Ministerial Committee on Health Research Ethics, contributing to changes in
legislation such as the Criminal Procedure Act, and advising the military, the police and Combined
Committees on Child Abuse and the National Prosecution Authority.
Last year, Saths Cooper received his profession's equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize when the
International Union of Psychological Science's 'Achievement Against the Odds Award' recognized his
contributions to psychology by overcoming extreme personal hardship in an ongoing pursuit of
social justice and human rights for all. The British Psychological Society will confer an Honorary
Fellowship upon him at its next conference in May, and the American Psychological Association will
honor him at its convention this August for Distinguished Contributions to the International
Advancement of Psychology.
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