Mandela VSI Book

The book: Nelson Mandela: A Very Short Introduction

The author: Elleke Boehmer, Professor of World Literature in English at the University of Oxford

The subject: A biography of Nelson Mandela looking at the different roles he fulfilled throughout his life.

Why I chose it: After Mandela's death I realised I only knew basic things about him and wanted to find out more. In particular, I saw people on Facebook saying he was a communist and a terrorist and couldn't figure out why from what I knew.

The rating: Four out of five stars

What I thought of it: I'm really glad that this was the first book I picked up about Nelson Mandela. I love the author's approach of looking at all the different roles Mandela played throughout his life. It is a lot more effective than a straight biography. The book can be a bit heavy-going at times, particularly if you're like me and aren't familiar with the way in which academics in the humanities write. However, it's still very well-written and its difficulty is probably a function of it being so short -- Boehmer has to cover a lot of ground in not very many pages -- as well as the structure being unorthodox. I also appreciate her willingness to be critical of Mandela about subjects such as his slow response to the AIDS crisis, while still maintaining perspective.

With regards to the reason I picked this book up: I see now why a certain type of person might consider Mandela a communist and terrorist, but thankfully also see how horribly misguided that certain type of person is. In fact, Mandela was relatively un-radical compared to his contemporaries and it took him a long time to accept communism as it was viewed as un-African, and even then he didn't fully embrace it. Also, while he did resort to violence, he and his fellow protesters were very careful to sabotage, rather than terrorise, only targeting sites where there would be no people to be injured. Peaceful protest is all well and good, but in apartheid-stricken South Africa black people's rights to this were eroded to the point of non-existence. What else could they have done? And if Mandela was a terrorist, what of all the leaders who supported apartheid?

All in all, I definitely recommend this book both to those familiar with Mandela and those who only know him as the political prisoner who became President of South Africa. It is far more than just a biography.

Just one more thing: This article is generally very interesting and covers important political ground, but the opening paragraph is just hilarious and shows one of Mandela's many facets.

Asked for his feelings on meeting the Spice Girls in 1997 - shortly after Mel B had compared their "girl power quest" with the anti-apartheid movement - Nelson Mandela obliged. "I don't want to be emotional," he explained, "but this is one of the greatest moments of my life."