Mandela: A critical life, by Tom Lodge

Abstract

Lodge's ‘life’ is different from the others of Mandela that I have read, providing a thorough examination of how Mandela's character developed and how this determined the political decisions that he took. His approach has produced a much shorter book, but one giving more direct access to relevant events without sometimes having to trawl through coverage of fringe activities. Compared with most black South Africans, Nelson Mandela enjoyed a very privileged life, the first period of which was in the Transkei and Ciskei ‘black peasant reserves’ where he experienced something most unusual for a black person in South Africa: ‘the absence of intimidating or humiliating encounters with white people’. This began with his upbringing as the ward of a Thembu regent in the Transkei, where he learned ‘about the importance of defeating one's opponents without humiliating them’, continued in two Methodist secondary schools where he ‘absorbed principles of etiquette and chivalry that remained important precepts through his public life’, and ended in Fort Hare, the only black university in South Africa, where he met Oliver Tambo. Mandela was expelled in 1940 for refusing to take up his position on the Students Representative Council in protest against the ‘dreadful food’ and returned to the regent's Great Place, where he found that marriages had been arranged for both himself and the regent's son. They rebelled and fled to Johannesburg in 1941.