This book is the life story of the world’s outstanding iconic political figure, Nelson Mandela. It is a story which has become legendary in his lifetime. Yet, despite numerous previous biographies, this excellent book opens new doors by offering different insights and revealing fresh aspects on the incomparable Mandela. These are considerable achievements when writing about a man to whom the world has already committed its devotion.
It is important to note that its author, Peter Hain, is Labour MP for Neath, a leading member of recent Cabinets and, more significantly, someone uniquely equipped to write about his hero since Hain and his family were themselves victims of the disease called apartheid, the South African racial evil which, with savage irony, effectively created a global hero.
Hain, now 60, was born in South Africa and lived there until the age of 16. His parents were actively involved in campaigning against white supremacy before Peter was born; his mother and father were jailed for their activities and his father, an architect, effectively barred from work by the regime, which eventually led to the family moving to Britain in 1966. At the age of 10 Peter’s bedroom was invaded by South African security police searching for “incriminating documents” on his parents – an experience which probably shaped his life. In England, as a student, he became head of the famed Stop the Tour campaign in 1969 and 1970 whose objective was to disrupt the tours of Britain by South Africa’s rugby union and cricket teams. It was a landmark disruption against apartheid and an important element in the campaign to free Nelson Mandela from his long imprisonment on Robben Island. BOSS, the South African secret police, never forgave Hain. For years afterwards government security agents tried their hardest to frame Hain and even assassinate him.
Hain’s courage never wavered and British politics, notably the Labour Party, have been gifted, unintentionally, by the evil of apartheid, in having Hain with us, just as the rest of the world has been gifted by Mandela’s presence on the global stage. Which is why I start by reminding Tribune readers that while this book is important in discussing a massively significant and historic man it is also the work of a significant and courageous Labour politician of the left.
There have been previous biographies as well as Nelson Mandela’s own autobiography which he started in scribbled notes smuggled from Robben Island jail. Yet this biography is special for a number of reasons. It contains new material and additional research; it is well written in an easy style attractive to a wide audience and is superbly illustrated with new images of Mandela as he moved along that extraordinary, turbulent and historic road that led to the overthrow of a criminally cruel regime. Few, if any, contemporary stories can compete with Mandela’s march against what sometimes seemed impossible odds.
In his introduction Archbishop Desmond Tutu refers to his friend in these terms: “While in prison Mandela grew in stature. The 27 years were a crucible that helped to remove the dross, turning a young angry activist into a magnanimous icon who amazed the world with his generosity of spirit, free from bitterness; he inspired his people to walk the path of forgiveness and reconciliation rather than revenge and retribution.” That, briefly, is the story Hain now describes.
He takes us along the path of Mandela’s earliest influences and early education; his reading of Marxist books as he aspired to a legal career to equip his fight to liberate his people. We travel through the early tensions as the ANC developed with its Communist Party links and the contradictions in its struggle to find a credible strategy. We glean fresh insights into the birth of the evil apartheid laws as they grew from a combination of white prejudice, material greed, blind stupidity and fear along with sheer cruelty by individual white leaders. We tour Mandela’s tortured private life, his attempt to build a happy marriage with Winnie and those long years in prison – where he endured torture and brutalities that can be likened to Nazi conduct in the concentration camps – that came near to destroying both their lives. Then the extraordinary turnaround at the end of 1989 when de Klerk amazed the world by freeing Mandela and opening the gates for the abolition of apartheid and the formation of a new South Africa. No matter how often repeated, the Mandela story remains riveting reading.
There are still massive problems in South Africa, now under its second successor to Mandela’s historic presidency. There are immense difficulties as this young nation struggles to contain corruption, crime, political inexperience and therefore incompetence. Mandela himself, as well as his successors, draw criticism. Yet the real future, as Gordon Brown noted in his recent African tour, is only just beginning for this fledgling nation inspired by its founder.
His critics will doubtless continue their often malicious search for his flaws and taunt us with some notional imperfections. But nothing can ever remove Mandela’s contribution to the global march against perfidy. In a world so empty of great leaders he remains imperiously standing out on his own.
