Mandela. The Authorised Biography

Cover Type: Softcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Jacket Condition: None Issued
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publisher Place: Uk
Publisher Year: 2000
Edition: Reprint

Description: 708 pages. Book is in Very good condition throughout.

Publishers Description: In 1975, imprisoned for life on Robben Island, Nelson Mandela covertly wrote his autobiography. After painstaking months the text was smuggled out--and was promptly quashed by the African National Congress. In his later Long Walk to Freedom Mandela politely expresses "surprise" at this. Sampson reveals that Joe Slovo suppressed the book for not giving enough prominence to Communists. This revelation is remarkable--the ANC could have made much mileage from the book at a time of low fortune--yet Sampson does not follow up. There is too often a sense of eggshells lightly walked upon. Mandela improves as the prisoners release approaches. Sampson sharply exposes the machinations of those undermining the ANCs struggle. The CIA knew of the Third Force years before the ANC, yet said nothing. Right-wing governments attacked "Mandela the Communist", preferring to promote Inkhatas Buthelezi, at that time secretly and violently colluding with de Klerks apartheid regime. Against the small-minded figures of Reagan, Thatcher and Kohl it is Mandela who emerges here a giant. South Africa won her freedom through Mandela: his strength of character and willingness to forgive helped push a country into an alternative future, avoiding the racial civil war almost all predicted. Yet he and his kin paid an awful price. Sampson draws a painful, clear picture of a disintegrating family: dislocation from children; the terrible effects of the war on Winnie, and her increasingly erratic, later murderous behaviour; Mandelas own aching loneliness. It is in capturing Madiba, the ultimate public figure, at his most intense and private, that Sampsons Mandela succeeds best. --Chris Woods

ISBN: 9780007437979