Nicholas Haysom's inspiring journey: From apartheid activist to UN peace advocate
Image: United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) / Facebook
Nicholas 'Fink' Haysom, a young white activist, risked detention in South Africa to oppose the apartheid regime.
He later worked alongside Nelson Mandela and continues to pursue peace and human rights today as special representative of the Secretary-General for South Sudan and head of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS).
Haysom recently shared his story on Awake At Night, a United Nations (UN) podcast.
Melissa Fleming, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications, conducted the interview.
Haysom grew up in a white family in KwaZulu-Natal, and from an early age, he was conscious of apartheid.
'I think it would have been really surprising if I hadn't been able to kind of witness and acknowledge the cruelty of systematic racial discrimination,' Haysom said.
Having politically conscious parents and siblings who had been involved as activists made it easy for Haysom to become a critic of apartheid. He grew up in an environment in which opposing apartheid was a sign of your humanity rather than a source of fear.
He was detained or arrested five or six times.
Although deciding to pursue law at university, Haysom believed the law and legal route were not going to be a way in which South Africa would transform.
He said they never thought apartheid would end, but things changed when Mandela was released from prison in 1990.
The ANC asked him to join its legal and constitutional negotiations team, the Constitutional Commission, where he spent two or three years amid a group of intellectuals whose task was to negotiate and conceptualise the kind of South Africa they wanted to build and to negotiate with the National Party government on how they would get there.
'Getting there was also as complicated as trying to find the kind of formula for a perfect constitutional state that properly appreciated the need for equality among all its citizens,' Haysom said.
'It was both exciting in the conceptualisation part, but also the implementation. And I think that's what led to me being asked to be Mandela's legal advisor in the office of the Presidency while he was president.
'I think people… when they think of Mandela, they think simply of a gentle, kind old man, but he was steely, strong in the conviction he had that he was embarking on the right path. And he persevered, and as I say to my children, 'The lesson of Mandela is not just being a nice person, it's perseverance in your ideals that will change the world'.'
He said Mandela was adamant that his first government would set an example in respect for the rule of law.
Nicholas Haysom reflects on his journey from a young activist in South Africa to a key figure in global peace efforts.
Image: Isaac Billy/United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS)
Following the end of Mandela's presidency, Haysom collaborated with former Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere, who was actively seeking a resolution to the conflict in Burundi. Nyerere's team eventually facilitated a peace agreement in Burundi.
Haysom then spent several years in Kenya, mediating efforts to achieve peace in Sudan. These efforts ultimately led to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement for Sudan.
After the Sudan peace agreement, the UN made contact, asking if Haysom would work in leading a constitutional advisory team in the UN, before joining former UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon's team.
'There was a time when I was quite probably inappropriately proud of my engagement, particularly in Burundi and in Sudan and in South Africa, where the engagement and the approach we'd adopted had yielded fruit. But after a few years, I looked around and found that almost all of those peace agreements were in trouble. So, it's a recognition that peace agreements don't last forever, that peace itself doesn't last forever. Democracy is not something that can be taken for granted. These are all issues that require a kind of constant engagement by people of good intent,' Haysom said.
He mentioned that he is in a challenging situation in South Sudan, which struggles to find a formula and process for the community to coexist.
'There is a government formed, and we are in the process of trying to assist the South Sudanese, put in place preparations for elections.'
[email protected]
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
IOL News
17 hours ago
- IOL News
Gaza Conflict: History Will Judge Those Who Looked The Other Way
Protesters hold pictures denoucing the killing of an Al Jazeera news team in an overnight Israeli strike in Gaza City, during a vigil in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank on August 11, 2025. Condemnations poured in from the United Nations and media rights groups on August 11, after an Israeli strike killed Anas al-Sharif, Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal. Also killed were freelance cameraman Momen Aliwa and freelance journalist Mohammed al-Khalidi. Image: AFP Reneva Fourie Since 7 October 2023, Gaza has become an open-air graveyard. The staggering figures are echoes of tragedy etched into history. Israel has killed at least 61,430 Palestinians, wounded 153,213, and arbitrarily detained 30,000. Among the deceased are 242 journalists who have been deliberately targeted for revealing the truth, seven of whom were murdered this week. This is not war; it is genocide. The Palestinian struggle mirrors South Africa's fight against apartheid. Just as the apartheid regime branded Nelson Mandela a terrorist, Israel smears Palestinians and those who defend them as Hamas sympathisers or antisemites. The South African Jewish Board of Deputies parrots this propaganda, shamefully weaponising Jewish pain to shield a genocidal regime from accountability. The powerful and resourced continue defending a regime that operates with the same impunity as Nazi Germany and the same colonial sadism as apartheid South Africa. When Western powers sanctioned Russia overnight for its invasion of Ukraine, they exposed their hypocrisy. Israel's crimes – indiscriminate bombing, forced starvation, targeted executions of medics and reporters – are far worse, yet they face no accountability. Israel's military juggernaut, fuelled by United States and European weapons, has turned Gaza into a wasteland of mass graves and starving children. Over the past twenty-two months, the US has dispatched a minimum of 800 transport planes and 140 ships to deliver more than 90,000 tonnes of armaments and military equipment to Israel. The Trump administration approved nearly USD12 billion in major foreign military sales within the first two months of taking office this year. Germany supplies 30 per cent of Israel's arms. The United Kingdom provides surveillance flights, training, and arms. Coal from South African companies keeps flowing to Israel despite the ICJ genocide case. Qatar, home to Al Jazeera, whose journalists Israel has murdered, gifts Trump a luxury jet, and Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates welcome him lavishly while Palestinians dig their children out of rubble. The wealthy are brazenly profiting from Palestinian blood despite their effective complicity in war crimes. What is unfolding is not a tragedy of nature nor an unfortunate by-product of conflict. It is the deliberate dismantling of a people's existence, sustained and accelerated by the wealth, weaponry, and political cover of the world's most powerful nations. The notion that this is a symmetrical war between two sides is a fiction kept alive by media narratives designed to dull outrage and shift blame. The imbalance of power is absolute. One side possesses the most advanced military technology and enjoys unconditional political backing; the other is a captive population, penned into a strip of land without an army, navy, or air force. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Next Stay Close ✕ The argument of self-defence collapses under the weight of the evidence. Starvation is not self-defence. The bombing of hospitals and schools is not self-defence. The targeting of journalists, medics, and aid workers is not self-defence. The indiscriminate shelling of refugee camps is not self-defence. It is the language of annihilation dressed in the rhetoric of security. This is the blueprint of settler-colonial violence: dispossess, dehumanise, destroy. Imagine being a 15-year-old in Gaza, watching your siblings dismembered by drones, your school reduced to dust, your parents executed while pleading for food. Or a mother cradling your malnourished baby as Israel blocks aid trucks, deliberately enforcing starvation. This is Israel's final solution for Palestine: erase them, silence them, break them. Western and allied powers might shackle the United Nations, but the history of such regimes shows that they are not invincible. The West initially tried to appease Hitler before finally realising how evil he was, and eighty years ago, Nazism was crushed. The West initially backed apartheid, and thirty-five years ago, it was on the edge of defeat. Every oppressive order eventually meets its reckoning. The people of Palestine are not waiting for saviours; they are resisting in the most extraordinary conditions imaginable. Gaza's women and youth refuse to be broken. Like our youth of the 70s and 80s rose against apartheid, Palestinian teenagers document their annihilation on social media, and women find means to sustain life. Doctors continue to perform surgeries by the light of mobile phones. Their resistance is not terrorism; it is the most profound act of courage in our time. But resistance without global solidarity is condemned to isolation. Israel's regime of terror will fall, but only if we fight with an urgency that appreciates that Gaza has no tomorrow. The machinery of destruction is sustained by money, resources, and political cover, all of which can be disrupted by organised public will. Boycotts can erode economic stability. Divestment can sap the financial underpinnings of the occupation. Sanctions can strip away the veneer of legitimacy. The choice is stark and immediate: act or become an entry in the ledger of complicity. The moral clarity of this moment should be as unmistakable as it was in the fight against apartheid in South Africa or the resistance to fascism. No amount of propaganda can conceal the reality that unfolds daily in Gaza's streets and hospitals. The International Court of Justice has ruled that Israel's actions are plausibly genocidal. History will judge those who looked the other way. To stand with Gaza is not an act of charity but of justice. It is to affirm the principle that no people should be condemned to live and die under siege, that no child should grow up with drones as their lullaby, and that no journalist should pay with their life for telling the truth. The fate of Gaza will not be decided solely by those who drop the bombs or those who endure them, but by the millions who choose whether to look away or to rise. History has shown that the arc of justice does not bend on its own. It is pulled, often against fierce resistance, by those who refuse to accept that brutality and impunity are the natural order of things. The window to act is not endless, and each day of hesitation costs lives. * Dr Reneva Fourie is a policy analyst specialising in governance, development, and security. ** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL, Independent Media or The African.
Daily Maverick
a day ago
- Daily Maverick
Mandela's unwillingness to bend and absolute dedication to the Struggle for freedom (Part 2)
If we unpack stubbornness as steadfastness, unwillingness to yield in the quest for freedom, we can understand better what Mandela did in order to prepare himself to advance the Struggle while confined in prison. Part 2 of a five-part series on Nelson Mandela's leadership. Nelson Mandela was notoriously stubborn or obstinate — both words that are generally used to connote negative qualities — and unwilling to recognise new conditions that ought to influence proposed actions. But the dictionaries suggest that the word 'stubborn' may indicate not only 'pig-headedness' or 'mulishness' or unwillingness to be open to reasoning and persuasion, but also steadfastness, holding to a course of action as a matter of principle. In that sense the same words — 'stubborn' or 'obstinate' — may point to both the strengths and weaknesses of Mandela. Once Mandela decided on a course of action it was very difficult to persuade him to change direction. At the same time Mandela's stubbornness coexisted with flexibility and willingness to change once change became necessary, or he became convinced in his own mind or through persuasion that it was necessary to change, or through change being thrust upon him, by conditions imposed on him, like imprisonment or the policies of the ANC with which he had to abide (though his initiative to advance negotiations was outside of organisational discipline). Mandela's evolution This change is seen in Mandela's evolution from aggressively advancing a narrow version of Africanism towards becoming a proponent of the non-racial and multi-racial vision of the Freedom Charter. It happened when Mandela, who placed a lot of weight on being a trained lawyer, answered the ANC's call to break specific laws as Volunteer-in-Chief in the Defiance Campaign of 1952, and then almost permanently leading a double life, part of it underground, partly as an apparently law-abiding member of society. Then ultimately, having to go underground completely, leading the life of 'an outlaw', not seeing his family or being able to be himself as a conventional lawyer. In becoming the first commander of Umkhonto weSizwe (MK), he had to channel some of the skills and discipline that can be found in the boxing that he loved (a sport that is said to require a 'monastic-type discipline') into military preparation. In prison, he faced a range of other challenges. Before prison, Mandela was sometimes impetuous and was rebuked by the leadership. Prison, he says, 'matured' him. He read a lot and thought a lot and listened a great deal to the ideas and problems of other people. The sometimes impetuous Mandela was content to bide his time, waiting and observing and trying to work out what was the best way forward. This willingness to wait was manifested in the way he played chess in prison when he would sometimes drive his opponents into a fury — leading them to make a premature move, which would lose them the match — while he spent hours or days making a single move. In prison, one of the most significant transformations occurred when Mandela, who entered as a 'man of war', initiated talks (at the same time as the leadership in exile, without his knowledge, was also sending out feelers to the regime). Mandela saw the possibility of breaking the logjam and securing peace and freedom. The problem was that he had no mandate to initiate such talks, and indeed, he admitted, wanted to present the organisation with a fait accompli. Breach of collective leadership? Was this a serious breach of collective leadership? How do we assess this? Was this the type of individualism that must be condemned, insofar as it did not flow from an organisational decision? Or was this a way in which a leader needs to act when seeing an opening that needs to be exploited? Insofar as Mandela acted alone, he was also not alone in the sense that, when they learnt what he had done, none of his closest comrades doubted what motivated him or that he acted from a strategic sense of what needed to be done at that particular moment. They also realised that the conditions under which he acted had required him to act on his own. Otherwise it would not have succeeded. What is clear is that as soon as Mandela had the opportunity to communicate with the leadership, he did so, and they agreed on a course of action, part of which had been facilitated by his own, unmandated course of action. From then on, Mandela took a number of steps, in and out of prison, in order to ensure that the peace did work, that there was a sustainable peace — or as sustainable as could be — while he was leader. To understand Mandela acting on his own we need to ask how leadership relates to democracy and to collective decisions and mandates. What happens when there is no mandate to do something, but an opportunity arises to act in a manner that could change the entire balance of forces or conditions of the Struggle against apartheid? Being a leader is not simply carrying out the decisions of an organisation, acting in terms of a mandate and being accountable. It is also being able to interpret the signs in order to move beyond where one is in order to advance the goals of freedom, to go into terrain that has not yet been seen or envisaged by the members and the leadership collective. Being able to lead beyond where one is may mean changing the conditions under which the Struggle is waged, and it may also mean that the leader as an individual has to do more than act out what the organisation has instructed/mandated. The very stubborn commitment to achieving freedom — as in steadfastness rather than unwillingness to change — sometimes led Mandela to act without consent of the leadership collective. But considered retrospectively, he had nothing to gain through taking these initiatives — as a person or as a leader. He may have attempted to present the leadership with a self-initiated fait accompli, but that was not done in order to earn fame or fortune. It was very risky and controversial, and in fact earned and continues to evoke controversy and criticism of his role. At the same time, he was trusted by his closest comrades, who knew what motivated him and respected his judgement. What Mandela's concept of leadership reveals is that while he was at times stubborn and needed to be persuaded to follow or cease a course of action, he was equally a leader who continually looked for ways of breaking logjams and changing the conditions of struggle in ways that would be advantageous to those struggling for freedom. But the apartheid regime, Walter Sisulu suggests, may have underestimated his stubbornness and also misread his willingness to talk. Negotiations The positive side of his stubbornness is illustrated by Sisulu in relation to prison and in relation to negotiations. Sisulu recalls how warders on Robben Island would shout at them to hurry: 'Now Nelson is a very stubborn chap. He responded to this by walking very, very slowly, and of course we all walked slowly too. The warders had to beg him to cooperate and walk faster.' After that, the segregation prisoners walked to the lime quarry at their own pace. On negotiations, Sisulu remarked: 'When [the government] saw a reasonable tone, they misjudged the person. It's easy to underestimate Madiba when he's nice — without knowing his stubbornness in approach… They look at the softness of the soft line: he is not aggressive, he is not wild. Then the possibilities are imagined to be there: to get Mandela. The National Party were prepared to discuss because [they thought] the leadership would come from them, not from the ANC.' The same stubbornness that made Mandela stick to a sense of dignity and through his actions empower other prisoners to resist arbitrary commands, was also manifested in the period of negotiations. Despite granting FW de Klerk credit for breaking some of the logjams, when De Klerk betrayed his trust, the same anger of the rebellious Mandela re-emerged, berating De Klerk, saying — at Codesa — that even from a leader of an illegitimate regime one expected some sense of integrity. But this same stubborn determination sometimes required remedial action, even in the 1990s. Anyone who knew the late Walter Sisulu would understand that he was one individual who could be relied on to make Mandela 'see sense' where it was felt that the 'old man' was being 'totally and unreasonably obstinate'. The story is told of how Mandela's security advised him that it was not safe to go into KwaZulu-Natal during the period of IFP/ANC violence prior to the 1994 elections. Mandela insisted that he would go, irrespective of what intelligence they may have gathered. The security officials were making no progress and decided to secretly phone Sisulu. Sisulu had a word with him and firmly indicated that he should not proceed. Mandela cancelled the visit and laughingly scolded them for 'reporting' him. If we unpack stubbornness as steadfastness, unwillingness to yield in the quest for freedom, we can understand better what Mandela did in order to prepare himself to advance the Struggle while confined in prison. There are some who, once imprisoned, throw themselves on the mercy of their jailers or spend their prison time purely consumed by their personal suffering. Now everyone suffered in prison, and there cannot be a minimising of the extent of suffering experienced by someone who was a life prisoner, who served 27 of those years, sometimes under very harsh conditions, experiencing or warding off assaults and arbitrary actions aimed at worsening their situation and breaking their spirit. Preoccupied with achieving freedom Part of the Mandela obstinacy was that he remained clear about his objectives, he remained preoccupied with achieving freedom, even in the darkest times. This is seen in some of his writings in prison, where it is clear that, as most political prisoners prided themselves, there was no way he could be 'rehabilitated' and made to accept one of the various offers to release him in return for conditions that amounted to renunciation of the Struggle. (The writing was not legally permitted and would be confiscated when found, as did happen when material was periodically discovered.) But Mandela's same stubbornness as unconditional dedication led him to change course when it was required, most dramatically when he initiated talks that led — together with the efforts of the exiled leadership — to the opening of negotiations and ultimately made political freedom possible. On being released he was very clear that he had to work in a manner that made the peace and made it last, even if it required compromises and symbolic gestures to supporters of apartheid, as in wearing the Springbok jersey (as a way of nation building) or visiting Betsie Verwoerd. Mandela was prepared to engage in a range of symbolic gestures or make concessions where these contributed towards the achievement of peace and freedom. DM Raymond Suttner served 11 years in prison and under house arrest. He was in the UDF, ANC and SACP leadership until the Jacob Zuma era. Suttner worked closely with Nelson Mandela in the 1990s. He is currently an emeritus professor at Unisa.
IOL News
2 days ago
- IOL News
Nicholas Haysom's inspiring journey: From apartheid activist to UN peace advocate
Working alongside Nelson Mandela, Nicholas Haysom played a pivotal role in shaping South Africa's democratic future. Image: United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) / Facebook Nicholas 'Fink' Haysom, a young white activist, risked detention in South Africa to oppose the apartheid regime. He later worked alongside Nelson Mandela and continues to pursue peace and human rights today as special representative of the Secretary-General for South Sudan and head of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS). Haysom recently shared his story on Awake At Night, a United Nations (UN) podcast. Melissa Fleming, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications, conducted the interview. Haysom grew up in a white family in KwaZulu-Natal, and from an early age, he was conscious of apartheid. 'I think it would have been really surprising if I hadn't been able to kind of witness and acknowledge the cruelty of systematic racial discrimination,' Haysom said. Having politically conscious parents and siblings who had been involved as activists made it easy for Haysom to become a critic of apartheid. He grew up in an environment in which opposing apartheid was a sign of your humanity rather than a source of fear. He was detained or arrested five or six times. Although deciding to pursue law at university, Haysom believed the law and legal route were not going to be a way in which South Africa would transform. He said they never thought apartheid would end, but things changed when Mandela was released from prison in 1990. The ANC asked him to join its legal and constitutional negotiations team, the Constitutional Commission, where he spent two or three years amid a group of intellectuals whose task was to negotiate and conceptualise the kind of South Africa they wanted to build and to negotiate with the National Party government on how they would get there. 'Getting there was also as complicated as trying to find the kind of formula for a perfect constitutional state that properly appreciated the need for equality among all its citizens,' Haysom said. 'It was both exciting in the conceptualisation part, but also the implementation. And I think that's what led to me being asked to be Mandela's legal advisor in the office of the Presidency while he was president. 'I think people… when they think of Mandela, they think simply of a gentle, kind old man, but he was steely, strong in the conviction he had that he was embarking on the right path. And he persevered, and as I say to my children, 'The lesson of Mandela is not just being a nice person, it's perseverance in your ideals that will change the world'.' He said Mandela was adamant that his first government would set an example in respect for the rule of law. Nicholas Haysom reflects on his journey from a young activist in South Africa to a key figure in global peace efforts. Image: Isaac Billy/United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) Following the end of Mandela's presidency, Haysom collaborated with former Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere, who was actively seeking a resolution to the conflict in Burundi. Nyerere's team eventually facilitated a peace agreement in Burundi. Haysom then spent several years in Kenya, mediating efforts to achieve peace in Sudan. These efforts ultimately led to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement for Sudan. After the Sudan peace agreement, the UN made contact, asking if Haysom would work in leading a constitutional advisory team in the UN, before joining former UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon's team. 'There was a time when I was quite probably inappropriately proud of my engagement, particularly in Burundi and in Sudan and in South Africa, where the engagement and the approach we'd adopted had yielded fruit. But after a few years, I looked around and found that almost all of those peace agreements were in trouble. So, it's a recognition that peace agreements don't last forever, that peace itself doesn't last forever. Democracy is not something that can be taken for granted. These are all issues that require a kind of constant engagement by people of good intent,' Haysom said. He mentioned that he is in a challenging situation in South Sudan, which struggles to find a formula and process for the community to coexist. 'There is a government formed, and we are in the process of trying to assist the South Sudanese, put in place preparations for elections.' [email protected]
