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Academic Insights for the Thinking World
Here we celebrate the life and legacy of Nelson Mandela. From his early days as an activist, to his trial and imprisonment, to his presidency, this reading list covers all aspects of his life, and looks beyond the work he did to see how he influenced South Africa and the world.
By Julian Barling
Retrospectively understanding the leadership of anyone who has achieved iconic status is made difficult because we ascribe to them our own needs, dreams and fears. When we try and understand the leadership of Nelson Mandela, it’s natural to think that leadership must be something you are born to do. As but one example, organizational scholar Rosabeth Moss Kanter observed that “There are very few people in the world who could have done what he did.
By Barry S. Levy and Victor W. Sidel
Once or twice in a generation a global champion for social justice emerges. Martin Luther King, Jr. Mahatma Gandhi. Nelson Mandela.
How does one begin to describe Nelson Mandela? As a leader that fought for civil rights, freedom, equality, socioeconomic development, health awareness, and peace in South Africa. A true revolutionary. One who fought for what he believed was right, despite the consequences. One whose purpose was far greater than his fears. One who sacrificed his freedom for a cause much bigger than himself. One whose actions were so great that the world now mourns the loss of a true global ambassador of peace and progressive change.
By Yogan Pillay
Our late former President Mandela has passed on but his legacy will live on and should live on for generations to come. He inspired millions across the world to do good, to forgive, to work for the common good. This also inspired me – from my youth in university when he was in prison and as a government official since he became the President of our country and today as we mourn his passing.
By Kenneth S. Broun
Nelson Mandela began his 27-year prison term in 1962, when he was convicted of illegally leaving the country and inciting workers to strike. He was brought back from his Robben Island imprisonment to face far more serious charges in 1963 under South Africa’s Sabotage Act.
Not long before Barack Obama was first elected President of the United States, in October 2008, the African American novelist Alice Walker commented that the then still Senator Obama, as the leader in waiting of the most powerful nation on earth, might be regarded as a worthy successor to the towering figure of Mandela. She discerned within the American leader’s authoritative and crusading self-presentation the template of Robben Island’s most famous one-time resident.
By Kenneth S. Broun
This October 25th marks the fiftieth Anniversary of the beginning of Nelson Mandela’s twenty-seven years in South African prisons. He was initially sentenced in October, 1962 to five years imprisonment for inciting African workers to strike and for leaving the country without valid travel documents. Immediately after sentencing, he was sent to the Robben Island prison, lying off Cape Town harbor, where he was held in solitary confinement.
By Kenneth S. Broun
Twenty-two years ago, on the 11th of February 1990, Nelson Mandela walked out of a South African prison, a free man for the first time in twenty-seven years. He immediately assumed the leadership role that would move South Africa from a system of apartheid to a struggling but viable democracy. No one person, not even Nelson Mandela, was solely responsible for this miracle.
By Elleke Boehmer
The name Nelson Mandela and the word icon are once again on people’s lips, as if spoken in the same breath.
On Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday, Elleke Boehmer looks at the symbolic legacies of Mandela in South Africa.
An excerpt from Tom Lodge’s critical biography ‘Mandela’
When Nelson Mandela visited Havana in 1991, he declared: “We come here with a sense of the great debt that is owed the people of Cuba. What other country can point to a record of greater selflessness than Cuba has displayed in its relations to Africa?” In all the reflections upon the death of Fidel Castro, his contribution to Africa has been neglected
This Day in World History
April 26, 1994 marked the beginning of the end of a period of monumental change in South Africa. On that day, for the first time in the nation’s history, more than 17 million black South Africans began casting their votes for government officials. When the election ended four days later, the vote made Nelson Mandela South Africa’s first black president.
15 years ago Albie Sachs was appointed by Nelson Mandela to South Africa’s first Constitutional Court. Here he talks about one of the most important buildings in the post-apartheid era and the artwork that makes its visitors pause.
In September 2020, President Trump signed an order calling for a commission on “patriotic education,” in response to what he considered anti-American sentiments seeping into school curricula around the United States. He accused teachers of teaching a “twisted web of lies” by including lessons from the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which examines American history through the lens of the African slave trade.