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Nelson Mandela: Courage and Conviction—The Making of a Leader

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Abstract

This chapter asks how we can discover and interpret the part played by Mandela’s long imprisonment in his own personal and political development and in shaping his contribution to the struggle of the African National Congress (ANC) and the townships to overthrow the constraints of apartheid. How did the long campaign to ‘free Nelson Mandela’ and Mandela’s own development within the context of his arduous imprisonment combine to build his influence and shape his approach as the ANC’s leader and the nation’s president after his release? The objective of this chapter is not to arrive at some irrefutable ‘answer’ to the problems posed here but to identify the agenda of issues that his case presents and to suggest some of the ways in which those issues might be tackled. The chapter returns to questions originally explored in his book Civilized Rebels. An Inside Story of the West’s Retreat from Global Power (Routledge 2018).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Supporting evidence may be found at: ‘Exclusive: Inside the hellish prison where Mandela was held’, at https://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/25/africa/south-africa-jail-mandela/index.html; see also ‘Mandela moved to house at prison farm’, New York Times, 8 December 1988, at https://www.nytimes.com/1988/12/08/world/mandela-moved-to-house-at-prison-farm.html; on Ahmed Kathrada, ‘Mandela’s right hand man and prison mate, his elder brother and mentor’, New Statesman, 6 December 2013, at https://www.newstatesman.com/samira-shackle/2013/12/mandelas-right–hand-man-and-prison-mate-his-elder-brother-and-mentor; and the following files: http://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/nelsonmandelaswarders.pdf; https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/prison-timelinehttps://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/trials-and-prison-chronology; all accessed 17 October 2018.

  2. 2.

    Beinart and Bundy (1987), Brown (2012), Bundy (2012, 2015), Carlin (2013), Carlson (1977), Filatova and Davidson (2013), Darwin (2011: 217–754), Gevisser (2009), Giliomee (2012), Gumede (2007), Hancock (1962, 1968), Johnson (2015a, b), Koorts (2014), Madikizela-Mandela (2013), Madonsela (2016), Maharaj (2008), Mamdani (2015), Mandela (2002, 2003a, b), Marsh (1994), Mbeki (1964, 1991, 1992), Meredith (1997, 2008), Murray (2016), Nimocks (1968), O’Brien (1979), Packenham (1992), Plaut and Holden (2012), Pogrund (2000), Ross (2008), Rotberg (1988), Russell (2009), Sampson (2000), Schreiner and Cronwright-Schreiner (1896), Schreiner (1989), Sitze (2013, 2014), Smith (2013), Stanley (2016), Steyn (2015), Thompson and Berat (2014), Welsh (2000, 2009, 2015).

  3. 3.

    See ‘Nelson Mandela’s childhood’ at https://nelsonmandelaresearchcenter.weebly.com/about-nelson-mandela.html; accessed 17 October 2018.

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  1. Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK

    Dennis Smith

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  1. University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK

    Julie M. Parsons

  2. Brunel University London, London, UK

    Anne Chappell

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Smith, D. (2020). Nelson Mandela: Courage and Conviction—The Making of a Leader. In: Parsons, J., Chappell, A. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Auto/Biography. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31974-8_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31974-8_17

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