Mandela
The Aristocrat and the Revolution
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Mandela
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Narrated by:
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By:
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Xolela Mangcu
Leading sociologist Xolela Mangcu draws on original interviews and archival research – as well as on his own unique understanding of the complexities of Black South African culture – to offer an important corrective account of Mandela’s identity, character, and political career. Mangcu not only sets the record straight about Mandela's Thembu, rather than Xhosa, heritage, but also uncovers a fundamental political pragmatism Mandela developed thanks to his family’s strategic alliances with colonialists and through his own Victorian-style education at leading British mission schools. What emerges is a Mandela whose life story belongs less to the realm of hagiography and more to the realm of real-world struggle, with all the contradictions it entails.
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Critic reviews
Xolela Mangcu has given us the first biography of Nelson Mandela written by an African, and its contents justify the wait. Mangcu challenges the prevailing paradigm of the shaping of Mandela’s character primarily as a product of tribal tradition. Relying on previously unused archival sources, impressive scholarship, and personal accounts, Mangcu argues that the roots of Mandela’s philosophy of pragmatic politics trace back to his Thembu royal family’s strategic alliances with colonialists against the Xhosa-led resistance in the 19th century. Mangcu deconstructs prevailing depictions of Mandela by interpreting him through the lens of the classic “tragic heroes” of Greek tragedy. This riveting book is a major contribution to our understandings of one of the pivotal figures in the history of contemporary Africa, and it is a game changer.
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