4 - Africa’s Avuncular Saint

Abstract

Mandela: A Critical Life by Tom Lodge Oxford University Press, 2006

Tom Lodge, a former politics profes sor at South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand, has written a biography of South Africa’s first democratically-elected president, Nelson Mandela, that follows three earlier biographies by Fatima Meer, Anthony Sampson, and Martin Meredith. Lodge seeks to shed more light on the role of Mandela’s childhood in shaping his leadership qualities; he assesses Mandela’s role in ‘leading from prison’, examines the mythical cult that was consciously developed around his iconic status, and analyses Mandela’s ‘messianic’ leadership of South Africa’s democratic transition...