Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela

If we do nothing else for those who suffer for a cause, we must at least bear witness and say, I have seen, and understood.

Many people the world over have waxed prolific and poetic on this book, and all that is left to say is, it is a must-read for anyone who cares about anything at all in this world. This struggle cannot be dismissed as a partisan "engagement". It is not just about apartheid; it is not about fighting a harsh regime; it is not about man's inhumanity to man -- and all that "stuff" that so many readily dismiss, once the book is shelved again.

It is about one man, walking, and holding his head up despite everything that was thrown upon his shoulders. It is how to preserve dignity, strength and integrity -- and have the show more moral constitution to wake up to it day after day after day, for the entire course of his life. It's easy to maintain a posture for a day or a week or a month; but to hold on to it for a lifetime -- that is a strength that only a very few can maintain.

To emerge out of the darkness of his prison, of his life, and still shine with hope for humanity -- and faith that goodness will prevail -- leaves me speechless. show less

Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom takes readers from his early years in Mvezo through his twenty-seven year imprisonment and finally to his inauguration. This memoir focuses on the struggle to end apartheid, but does not discuss Mandela’s time in South Africa’s government so if you are looking for a complete picture of his life, you will need to supplement your reading. This memoir is interesting in a few different ways.

Despite your feelings about Mandela as a person, it must be acknowledged that the movement he led was incredible. Not only did the ANC manage to overthrow apartheid, he led South Africa to a democratic system in a time when more African countries were replacing their colonist yokes with dictatorships. South show more Africa is still in a lot of turmoil – racial inequalities and government corruption still reigns. But the steps he took are important, and it was fascinating to read about his journey.

Long Walk to Freedom is not a traditional memoir – instead, the narrative comes from two parts: first, Mandela’s “prison diary” describing his life up to his time in Robben’s Prison. Everything afterward has been converted from interviews between Mandela and journalist Richard Stengel, who ghostwrote Long Walk to Freedom. The flow of the memoir is fantastic and consistent – you really can’t tell the shift, and Stengel did an excellent job humanizing Mandela, combining the facts of his life on a grand scheme with the small pieces of daily life. One moment, he will be relaying information about early negotiations with the government and the next, an antidote about Mandela’s taste in wine. It’s all fascinating, but incredibly accessible, too.

While Long Walk to Freedom is quite a long memoir, I found it excellent and well worth reading, especially if you want to better understand the dismantling of apartheid from a primary source. This is not a piece of objective non-fiction. It’s a memoir, so it’s incredibly biased. That said, I really think it’s worth a read! Nelson Mandela is an important historical figure and a Nobel laureate and there’s no better source of information about an influential individual’s life then his memoir. show less

Mr. Mandela's autobiography is extremely well written. Don't let the length intimidate you because it's highly readable. Don't worry that 27 years in prison might not give the author much to say about that period because it is one of the most interesting parts of the book. A wonderful book about standing your ground, and a tribute: to patience, to loyalty to your supporters, your organization and your estanged spouse; to faith that things could and would change for the better.

Even knowing little detail about Mr. Mandela's life, I have admired him. After reading this book, he's become one of my heroes (and I don't have many of those). The way he managed to maintain such a balanced outlook, untainted by bitterness is truly inspirational. show more Also inspiring is his belief in true reconciliation, uniting the oppressed and the oppressors against a flawed system. Something we in Canada could learn from as we attempt to reconcile with our Aboriginal peoples. show less

4.5 stars, this is an incredible journey through the life of a fully human man - and he knows that about himself. I love that he was always exactly himself, never overly moral, but devoted to his cause. You can tell he struggled with what he made his priority - putting his activism over his family, but he was at peace with his choices. This is excellent, and I saw a few parallels to the Autobiography of Malcolm X, in their thoughts on activism and life priorities. Mandela is certainly my favorite of the two.

At over 700 pages, Nelson Mandela’s autobiography might look like a serious commitment. Actually though, it doesn’t feel like a heavy book at all. Like the thinking which informs it, the writing is clear, measured and straightforward, albeit scattered with bits of Harvard English that are presumably down to Mandela’s (uncredited) American ghostwriter, Richard Stengel.

I sped through it in under a week, thanks mainly to a couple of long train journeys. I’m left with a much more nuanced view of Mandela and what he stood for, and a much clearer idea of the man behind the symbol.

What I found particularly valuable were the insights into how deeply apartheid ingrained racism not just on to the white minority, but on to the attitudes show more and assumptions throughout the whole of South African society. Mandela at one point mentions being struck by the sight of a young beggar-girl by the side of the road in a township, and reacting completely differently because she was white:

While I did not normally give to African beggars, I felt the urge to give this woman money. In that moment I realized the tricks that apartheid plays on one, for the everyday travails that afflict Africans are accepted as a matter of course, while my heart immediately went out to this bedraggled white woman. In South Africa, to be poor and black was normal, to be poor and white was a tragedy.

A few years and several hundred pages later, he has the corollary experience while taking a clandestine flight in Ethiopia.

As I was boarding the plane I saw that the pilot was black. I had never seen a black pilot before, and the instant I did I had to quell my panic. How could a black man fly a plane? But a moment later I caught myself: I had fallen into the apartheid mind-set, thinking Africans were inferior and that flying was a white man’s job.

If the leaders of the resistance movement can react like this – How could a black man fly a plane? – the reactions of less committed or thoughtful South Africans can readily be imagined, and you begin to get a sense of the sheer scale of the problem which faced the ANC and other activsts. A problem which has not entirely gone away.

These are the well-chosen memories of someone interested in their own thoughts and responses, and who had the time – so much of it – to examine his life and sift out the experiences that counted. Everywhere in the book, there is this sense of a man who has thought long and hard about the choices he made, and can explain them simply and directly.

Not all of them are necessarily easy to sympathise with, or at least they perhaps shouldn’t be. Let’s be clear: Mandela is not Ghandi. We should remember (and he is admirably open about it) that Amnesty International always declined to work on Mandela’s behalf because he refused to renounce violence as a valid tool in the fight against apartheid. He was the first head of the ANC’s militant wing, the MK, and involved in paramilitary training; he drew up plans for action that ran from sabotage to guerrilla warfare. At one point, he describes his 1950s self as ‘a young man who attempted to make up for his ignorance with militancy’ – but actually, that militancy never goes away, it just becomes more grounded in political and moral justifications. Mandela’s ethical sensibility is always there; but ethics are not paramount.

For me, non-violence was not a moral principle but a strategy; there is no moral goodness in using an ineffective weapon.

Effective weapons were considered to include explosives, as demonstrated for example in the Church Street bombing of 1983 which killed 19 people and wounded over 200, including many civilians. Mandela mentions it in passing, and has the following to say.

The killing of civilians was a tragic accident, and I felt a profound horror at the death toll. But disturbed as I was by these casualties, I knew that such accidents were the inevitable consequence of the decision to embark on a military struggle. Human fallibility is always a part of war, and the price of it is always high. It was precisely because we knew that such incidents would occur that our decision to take up arms had been so grave and reluctant. But as Oliver said at the time of the bombing, the armed struggle was imposed upon us by the violence of the apartheid regime.

We are on dangerous ground here. Can we put a number on how many civilian deaths are considered a reasonable price to pay for ending apartheid? At the same time, though, who on earth am I to question his decisions and moral code – I who have never experienced a fraction of the abuse and discrimination which was his daily life, and who am never likely to have to make the impossible choices that were so common under apartheid?

All I can say is Mandela doesn’t shy away from it. I may not always be comfortable about it, but I felt a deep respect for his willingness to stand behind his actions and explain them as best he can.

Ultimately, Mandela was saved from being a truly ambiguous figure by the simple fact that he was arrested and imprisoned before he could be directly involved in any violence himself; for him, it’s all theoretical, and, locked away behind bars, he could be viewed more simply as an innocent martyr to a just cause. And indeed, it’s in his response to the years of incarceration that the greatness of Mandela’s character comes through. Twenty-seven years in jail would be enough to make any man bitter; but he is the opposite of bitter. Time and again he shows himself willing to listen to and work with those who might easily be called his enemies – from dissenting black activists, through ambivalent prison warders, up to the president of South Africa.

It’s his astonishing ability to do without bitterness – essentially, his capacity for forgiveness – which really makes Mandela an inspiration. Perhaps it’s my naïveté, but I can’t help concluding that, when international pressure got too much for South Africa’s government, it was Mandela’s openness in negotiations which forged the breakthrough and not the MK’s sporadic attempts to meet violence with violence. That’s certainly what I’ll take away from this excellent and fascinating memoir: that, and a delight in his unshakable belief that no matter how degrading the conditions, or how long the imprisonment, no one had the power to damage who he was on the inside:

Prison and the authorities conspire to rob each man of his dignity. In and of itself, that assured that I would survive, for any man or institution that tries to rob me of my dignity will lose because I will not part with it at any price or under any pressure. show less

There are some people who inspire such awe that it is difficult to conceive that they are only flesh and blood: Nelson Mandela is one of them. After 27 years in prison, for nothing more than believing a black man to be an equal to a white, how does one treat one's captors with dignity?
This book, not only gives an insight as to how Mr. Mandela so did, but also tells of a modest man who brought his country into the twenty-first century with the minimum of bloodshed.
My favourite story, is the tale of his eventual release when President de Klerk told Mandela that he was to be released with immediate effect and Nelson declines; he wants a week to make arrangements! Typical of the man, he accedes to de Klerk's request when he learns that the show more World press are expecting his release and anything else will start rumours of a breakdown in negotiations towards a free South Africa.
The 600 pages of this book fly by: an excellent read. show less

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
I am not sure how I want this review to go because I was incredibly touched by this story and the struggles that Nelson Mandela went through. I think that the struggles he went through made him the man that he was. I think that any man who can stand forward to unify the races and to bring peace is an admirable person. No one is perfect and neither was Mandela and his story told this. I love an autobiography when a person can admit there weaknesses and strengths show more as they tell a story. show less