BOOK REVIEW

LONG WALK TO FREEDOM

The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela
Title Long Walk To Freedom

Author
Nelson Mandela
Publisher Little, Brown
No of pages 630 Pages

Price ₹ 243 (Kindle)

Book Review By

Lt Abdul Museb

53232-F

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 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

1. Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was a South African anti-

apartheid revolutionary and political leader who served as the first president of
South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the country's first black head of state
and first elected in a fully representative democratic election. His
government focused on dismantling the legacy of apartheid by tackling
institutionalised racism and fostering racial reconciliation. Ideologically an African
nationalist and socialist, he served as the president of the African National
Congress (ANC) party from 1991 to 1997.

2. Mandela was born into the Thembu royal family in Mvezo, Union of South
Africa. He studied law at the University of Fort Hare and the University of
Witwatersrand before working as a lawyer in Johannesburg. There he became
involved in anti-colonial and African nationalist politics, joining the ANC in 1943
and co-founding its Youth League in 1944. After the National Party's white-only
government established apartheid, a system of racial segregation that
privileged whites, Mandela and the ANC committed themselves to its overthrow.
He was appointed president of the ANC's Transvaal branch, rising to prominence
for his involvement in the 1952 Defiance Campaign and the 1955 Congress of
the People. He was repeatedly arrested for seditious activities and was
unsuccessfully prosecuted in the 1956 Treason Trial. Influenced by Marxism, he
secretly joined the banned South African Communist Party (SACP). Although
initially committed to non-violent protest, in association with the SACP he co-
founded the militant uMkhonto we Sizwe in 1961 and led a sabotage campaign
against the government. He was arrested and imprisoned in 1962, and, following
the Rivonia Trial, was sentenced to life imprisonment for conspiring to overthrow
the state.

3. Mandela served 27 years in prison, split between Robben

Island, Pollsmoor Prison and Victor Verster Prison. Amid growing domestic and
international pressure and fears of racial civil war, President F. W. de
Klerk released him in 1990. Mandela and de Klerk led efforts to negotiate an end
to apartheid, which resulted in the 1994 multiracial general election in which
Mandela led the ANC to victory and became president. Leading a broad coalition
government which promulgated a new constitution, Mandela emphasised
reconciliation between the country's racial groups and created the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission to investigate past human rights abuses.
Economically, his administration retained its predecessor's liberal
framework despite his own socialist beliefs, also introducing measures to
encourage land reform, combat poverty and expand healthcare services.
Internationally, Mandela acted as mediator in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing
trial and served as secretary-general of the Non-Aligned Movement from 1998 to
1999. He declined a second presidential term and was succeeded by his
deputy, Thabo Mbeki. Mandela became an elder statesman and focused on

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combating poverty and HIV/AIDS through the charitable Nelson Mandela
Foundation.

4. Globally regarded as an icon of democracy and social justice, he

received more than 250 honours, including the Nobel Peace Prize. He is held in
deep respect within South Africa, where he is often referred to by his Thembu
clan name, Madiba, and described as the "Father of the Nation".

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 ABOUT THE BOOK

1. Introduction. The book describes the South African antiapartheid

struggle from the perspective of one of its most important participants. In the
book, Mandela describes his childhood, his development into a freedom fighter,
his twenty-seven years in prison, and his remarkable role in the construction of a
new, democratic South Africa. Long Walk to Freedom was published in 1995, the
year after South Africa’s first democratic elections made Mandela the first black
president of South Africa. The book is divided into two parts, in the first part of
the autobiography, Mandela describes his upbringing as a child and adolescent
in South Africa and being connected to the royal Thembu dynasty. In the second
part of the book, Mandela introduces political and social aspects of apartheid in
South Africa, his prison time on Robben Island and Pollsmoor Prison.

2. Content. Mandela begins his book with a description of his genealogy,

which is intended to silence rumors that he has a hereditary claim to kingship of
the Xhosa people, one of South Africa’s largest cultural groups. Mandela goes on
to describe his early childhood, which was spent herding cattle and practicing
traditional Xhosa fighting. When Mandela was old enough, his father sent him to
school, which was a relatively rare privilege for a child in his village. Mandela
excelled at school and an uncle paid for him to continue his education at a series
of elite boarding schools.

3. The book further proceeds by Mandela describing his young adulthood

and his gradual transformation into a leader of South Africa’s freedom
movement. As a young man, Mandela moved to Johannesburg and became
active in the African National Congress (ANC), an organization that fought for the
rights of black South Africans. Early on, Mandela adopted a leadership role in the
ANC’s Youth League, a subgroup that advocated more radical ideals than did the
main organization.

4. South Africa had long been ruled by unjust racial laws, but the situation
changed for the worse in 1948, when an all-white vote brought the conservative
National Party into power. From that time onward, the National Party codified and
expanded South Africa’s racist laws, creating the system of apartheid, which
means separateness. Apartheid laws were not only designed to keep the
members of South Africa’s many racial groups separate, they were also
specifically crafted to keep the country’s white minority in a position of power and
privilege. Apartheid laws prevented black South Africans from leaving tiny
reservations called homelands unless they carried a pass document that proved
they held employment in a white area. African, mixed-race, and Indian South
Africans could not legally ride all-white buses, enter all-white recreation areas, or
even sit down to eat dinner with white friends. Interracial relationships were
outlawed, and separate educational systems were created for each race. By far
the lowest educational standards were introduced for black South Africans, and
elite schools like the ones Mandela had attended were closed.

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5. Mandela joined the African National Congress in 1950 and describes his
organisation of guerrilla tactics and underground organisations to battle against
apartheid, how the ANC and partner organizations mobilized against apartheid,
instituting the Defiance Campaign in 1951. During this nonviolent campaign,
Mandela and other volunteers peacefully broke apartheid laws—boarding all-
white trains or entering neighborhoods designated for people of another race and
went to prison. These actions gained the protesters attention and sympathy from
liberal white South Africans as well as from the rest of the world.

6. Although the Defiance Campaign did not succeed in its goal of eliminating
apartheid laws, Mandela claims it was successful in increasing communication
between and determination within South Africa’s many freedom organizations. In
1955, Mandela helped lead the Congress of the People, a summit of all the
groups in South Africa that advocated freedom and equality. The main event at
the Congress of the People was the reading of a document called the Freedom
Charter, which demanded equality and democratic representation for everyone.
The Congress of the People ended in a police raid, with many of its leaders
carried away in handcuffs. Apartheid leaders declared the Freedom Charter an
illegal communist document. Mandela was not immediately arrested for his
participation in the Congress of the People. Apartheid leaders spent several
months gathering evidence and creating a legal case against the leaders of the
freedom movement.

7. In 1961, Mandela was convicted for inciting people to strike and leaving
the country without a passport and sentenced to five years' imprisonment.
However, Mandela was shortly thereafter sentenced to life imprisonment
for sabotage. His 28-year tenure in prison time on Robben Island and Pollsmoor
Prison was marked by the cruelty of Afrikaner guards, backbreaking labour, and
sleeping in minuscule cells which were nearly uninhabitable. Later on in his
sentence, Mandela met South African president, Frederik Willem de Klerk, and
was released from prison in 1990.

8. Conclusion. This autobiography chronicles Mandela's life, first as the son

of a tribal chief, then as an educated Black man under Apartheid, a dangerous
thing to be, and then the journey, both outward and inward, from attorney to the
leader of a revolution. His time on Riecher's Island, the notorious prison, and the
various experiences he had in the courtroom and in captivity are interesting to
read. He tells of the cunning ways those who were jailed for political reasons
created to communicate and to an extent, continue to lead from inside prison.
And he breaks up the horror with an occasional vignette of a surprisingly kindly
jailor or other authority figure who does small, decent things when no one is
looking. The book is a must read to understand the plight of Africans. I found
particularly valuable were the insights into how deeply apartheid ingrained racism
not just on to the white minority, but on to the attitudes and assumptions
throughout the whole of South African society. Black Africans were told they are
inferior. The Afrikaners were fed the same lies and believed that blacks were

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inferior before witnessing for themselves that that wasn't. The book restores the
faith in mankind. It was fascinating to read about the humanity that arose in the
unlikeliest people. Mandela refused to be broken, he refused to become bitter
and he kept his wit and his sense of humour. He was honest about what he
learned, about his own prejudices and mistakes. The brave man is not the one
who does not feel afraid, but he is the one who conquers that fear. Mandela said
that every man has his duties towards his country and community too.