The Evolution of Mandela's Political Philosophy: Its significance in the Search for Social Justice and for Transforming the Discourse in American Politics (original) (raw)

Nelson Mandela’s changing idea of South Africa

Critical African Studies, 2018

This article is a critical reflection on Nelson Mandela's changing idea of South Africa as reflected in his widely known autobiography Long Walk to Freedom. It seeks to understand how he worked towards laying down a profound post-racial humanism based on a broader inclusive South African nationalism that transcended the narrow and exclusionist racial apartheid idea of South Africa. His autobiography is intertwined inextricably with the complex and ever-changing idea of South Africa. The formation of Mandela's political consciousness from that of a rural Thembu boy in Eastern Cape, to an urban nationalist firebrand in Johannesburg, a prisoner of conscience at Robben Island, a pragmatist and voice of reason during the Convention for South Africa Democracy (CODESA) negotiations, and right up to his one-term presidency (1994-1999) reflects the life of an active politician and an embodiment of the contested idea of South Africa. While Mandela never stopped seeking to understand the complex aspects of the contested idea of South Africa, his idea was also influenced by instances of mass action, the influence of friends, work and political colleagues, the ANC and his experiences during the 27 years of his imprisonment. Therefore, if his life of struggle embodied the complex and ever-changing idea of South Africa, it is not surprising that his political actions are blamed as the source of the present crisis engulfing the country. However, this article posits that South Africans who remained stuck in racial adversarial politics failed Mandela in his decolonial endeavour to set afoot a new humanism. Based on a platform that radically transcended the colonial/apartheid paradigm of difference, Mandela's vision depended on a successful metamorphosis of the erstwhile 'white/black' dichotomy as an essential prerequisite for the rebirth of a new political community.

Ideologies in Mandela's No Easy Walk to Freedom

Ideology has great influence on the traits and behaviors of leaders. It is the vehicle by which we could understand our leaders and our leaders could understand us. The present paper is an endeavor to reveal the ideological dimension that is embedded in the discourse of Nelson Mandela, with special reference to his address No Easy Walk to Freedom which was delivered in 1953. It is conducted on the approach of Critical Discourse Analysis. Van Dijk's (2004) Political Ideological Strategies and Wodak's (2005) Discursive Strategies of Positive Self-and Negative Other-Presentation were accommodated to achieve the objective of the study. The findings demonstrated that Van Dijk's strategies of actor description, positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation and Wodak's two chosen strategies of argumentation and perspectivation were supportive in exploring the ideologies penetrated in Mandela's discourse. They five strategies proved to be helpful devices in exploring the fundamentally embedded ideologies in Mandela's discourse which are "white superiority" and "black inferiority". White superiority was the ideological foundation of the white minority to establish the apartheid system in South Africa for decades, whereas black inferiority was the ideological foundation of the black majority to sustain different forms of resistance against the white governments. Therefore, it could be perceived that the social acts of both the blacks and the whites were formed and structured in terms of these two ideological foundations.

Mandela the zeitgeist, in antiquity, to posterity

I have often wondered why many find it difficult to conscientiously reflect about former President Nelson Mandela, not least now because of his demise. Some people consider it easy to engage in such reflections and in fact most “write what they like” about this international icon, often in ahistorical and depoliticised narratives. Paradoxically, I am also inclined to concur: it is not difficult to write and say anything about Madiba. What is difficult is writing what ought to be written, what ought to be said about what he really represents; if the milieu that shaped him, the context that shaped his decisions which, is truly appreciated by all those who invoke his name, the world we live in would undoubtedly be a better place today. Unfortunately, what most writers, commentators and politicians do is selectively draw and apply ‘lessons from Mandela’. Habitually, commentary is punctuated with posture that suggests those in power don’t qualify to be there because they are not a ‘Mandela’. In South Africa in particular, a debate is unfolding which unfairly gauges the performance and style of contemporary leaders in terms of the yardstick of the Mandela persona. The blemish in the comparison is two-fold.

Mandela and Beyond: Thinking New Possibility in the 21st Century

Routledge eBooks, 2020

To map my way, I'd like to begin with two recent cultural texts or events featuring the name and biography of South Africa's first democratic president. One is an exhibition, the other a poem. Both after their fashion approach Nelson Rohihlahla Mandela as a symbol that, though built on a twentieth century base, also bears reference to twenty-first-century culture and politics. The texts allow me to ask something I have asked before, in my short 2008 biography Nelson Mandela, but to angle that question to the decades that lie ahead. 1 The question probes the value of Mandela's career and life's work as an ongoing object lesson or theory-in-practice. How did his way of doing politics, his almost charmed facility of interacting evenhandedly with political enemies and friends alike, lay down a model for South Africa in the future? In particular, what might Mandela's story continue to teach us, further into the twenty-first century-especially when that story is re-evaluated, freshly interpreted and historically re-angled, as in this special issue? My first 'text' is the Nelson Mandela Official Exhibition that ran at the Leake Street Gallery in London from 8 February to 2 June 2019, and then travelled internationally. It was supported by the Robben Island Museum, the Mayibuye Archives at UWC, and others, including Zelda La Grange, Mandela's long-serving personal assistant, and members of the Mandela family. The exhibition sought to represent the life of the statesman through photographs and video clips, as well as a selection of his treasured objects, ranging from handwritten letters through to his watch. But it also had an interest in calling visitors to a sense of moral action by insistently reminding them of the values of justice, peace, reconciliation and humanity for which Mandela stood. 2 My second text is '1994: a love poem', a hard-hitting, witty lyric by the Cape Town poet-activist Koleka Putuma. In the 21-line poem, she calls for someone to love her adoringly, even abjectly, fawningly, 'the way that white people look at / and love / Mandela'. 3 She wants, she quips, 'a TRC kind of lover'. The poem threads together a series of loose couplets linking white 'love' for Mandela to 'betrayal', 'fuckery' and living in the past, culminating in an intentionally shocking charge-that white

Nelson Mandela, Historical Studies, the Past and the Future

Dalibhunga: The Historical Studies Bulletin, 2013

No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite. - Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom Taking its cue from Nelson Mandela, after whom the journal Dalibhunga is named, this "Message from the Chair" encapsulates the vision of the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Toronto.

Nelson Mandela: Decolonization, Apartheid, and the Politics of Moral Force

boundary 2, 2014

was one of the world's most important twentiethcentury political prisoners. At a moment when world politics was in the throes of the "Cold War," Mandela's imprisonment focused much of the world's attention on the authoritarian racial system in South Africa-apartheid. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the white settler country, the Union of South Africa, became independent. By then, South Africa was a society where all the processes of colonialism, its ways of life, its forms of rule, its ideology of white and European supremacy, its construction of African ethnic groups into "natives," making them nonhuman, had congealed into a specific historical form. As Njabulo Ndebele writes about twentieth-century South Africa, "Everything [in South Africa] has been mind-bogglingly spectacular: the monstrous war machine developed over the years;. .. mass shootings and killings;. .. the mass removals of people;. .. the luxurious lifestyle of whites.. .. It could be said, therefore, that the most outstanding feature of South African oppression is its brazen, exhibitionist openness." Apartheid was a regime of death and murder, and as Antjie Krong tells us, deaths were often "so gruesome as to defy the most active imagination." It was against this regime of white racial domination, death, and murder that Mandela began his political life. During that life, he was a radi

'Mandela: The Historians view'

BBC History Magazine

Debate article in the BBC History Magazine about Nelson Mandela's life, legacy and impact between historians Matthew Graham, Saul Dubow, Keith Shear and David Killingray

Mandela’s Long Walk with African History – Part 3

2013

Paul Tiyambe Zeleza explores the role of reconciliation in the political discourse of transition to independence among some African leaders. This is the last of three posts in which the historian posits South Africa’s founding father alongside some of the major events of the 20th century.