![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
Abstract
This article argues that existing biographies of Nelson Mandela are constructed on archaic colonial stereotypes of African societies as ‘tribes’, ‘premodern’ and ‘pagan’. In none of the biographies do we learn anything about such vital aspects of Mandela’s life story as his Thembu royal family’s pragmatic policy of co-operation with colonial governments, the centrality of the quasi-parliamentary body known as the United Transkei Territories General Council, popularly known as the Bhunga (Council) in the life of the Transkei, and his family’s leadership role in that body, including that of his father, Gadla. The biographies are also based on incorrect attributions of his ethnic identity and the place of his family in the Thembu royal hierarchy. Mandela’s corrections of these misrepresentations were left out of his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, and he was quoted as saying the opposite of those corrections. These editorial practices pose troubling questions for the credibility and integrity of the Mandela archive.
Notes
1 H. Lee, Biography: A Very Short Introduction (New York, Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 7.
2 A. Sampson, Mandela: The Authorized Biography (London, Vintage Books, 1999), p. 11.
3 M. Meredith, Mandela: A Biography (London, Penguin, 1997), p. 10.
4 P. Limb, Nelson Mandela: A Biography (Westport, Greenwood Press, 2008), p. 6.
5 P. Bonner, ‘The Antinomies of Nelson Mandela’, in R. Barnard (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Nelson Mandela (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 36.
6 A. Brown, The Myth of the Strong Leader: Political Leadership in the Modern Age (London, Vintage Press, 2015), pp. 183–4.
7 S. Ndlovu Gatsheni and B. Ngcaweni, ‘Introduction’, in B. Ngcaweni and S. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (eds), Nelson R. Mandela: Decolonial Ethics of Liberation and Servant Leadership (Trenton, Africa World Press, 2018), p. 14.
8 Sampson, Mandela, pp. 574–5.
9 Quoted in F. Meer, Higher Than Hope: The Authorized Biography of Nelson Mandela (New York, Harper and Row, 1988), p. 116.
10 T. Lodge, Mandela: A Critical Life (New York, Oxford University Press, 2006), p. vii.
11 N. Motlana, ‘One Tough Chief’, Sunday Times, Johannesburg, 8 December 2013.
12 L. Vail (ed.), The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1989), pp. 4–5.
13 Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Secure the Base: Making Africa Visible in the Globe (New York, Seagull Press, 2016), p. 9.
14 A. Mafeje, ‘The Ideology of Tribalism’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 9, 2 (1971), pp. 253–61.
15 Sampson, Mandela, p. 16.
16 Limb, Nelson Mandela, p. 1.
17 S. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Decolonial Mandela: Peace Justice and the Politics of Life (New York, Berghahn Press, 2016), p. 14.
18 Nelson Mandela, interviewed by Rick Stengel, Shell House, Johannesburg, 10 March 1993, Nelson Mandela Foundation, Johannesburg.
19 N. Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom (New York, Little, Brown, 1993), p. 4.
20 David Smith, Young Mandela: The Revolutionary Years (New York, Little, Brown, 2010), p. 16.
21 Ngangomhlaba Matanzima, interviewed by the author, Cofimvaba, Eastern Cape, 7 August 2017.
22 Sampson, Mandela, p. 8.
23 John Carlin, Knowing Mandela (New York, Harper Collins, 2013), p. 102.
24 Meredith, Mandela, p. 1.
25 Lodge, Mandela, p. 1.
26 Limb, Nelson Mandela, p. 2.
27 Conversation with Phathekile Holomisa, 13 September 2019.
28 Mandela, interviewed by Stengel, 1993.
29 The Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Traditional Disputes and Claims, p. 167, available at https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201409/reports-paramountcies0.pdf, retrieved 25 September 2019.
30 Ngangomhlaba Matanzima, interviewed by Xolela Mangcu, Cofimvaba, 7 August 2017.
31 Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom.
32 P. Bonner, ‘The Headman, the Regent and the “Long Walk to Freedom”’, unpublished paper, Johannesburg, 2010, p. 11. This paper has since been edited, and is now published as an article elsewhere in this issue.
33 Ibid., p. 15.
34 This phrase does not occur in the edited version of the article as published elsewhere in this issue.
35 Drusilla Siziwe Yekela, ‘Unity and Division: Aspects of the History of the AbaThembu Chieftainship, c.1920–c.1980 (PhD thesis, University of Cape Town, 2011), p. 66.
36 See S. Dubow, ‘Holding “A Just Balance Between White and Black”: The Native Affairs Department in South Africa c.1920–33, Journal of Southern African Studies, 12, 2 (1986), pp. 217–39.
37 Limb, Nelson Mandela, p. 2.
38 Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, p. 179.
39 Mandela, interviewed by Stengel, 1993.
40 Ibid.
41 Sampson, Mandela, p. 6.
42 Lodge, Mandela, p. 2.
43 Mandela, interviewed by Stengel, 1993.
44 Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, p. 28.
45 Lodge, Mandela, p. 8; Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Decolonial Mandela, p. 17.
46 E.J.C. Wagenaar, ‘A History of the Thembu and their Relationship with the Cape, 1850–1900’ (PhD thesis, Rhodes University, 1988), p. 9.
47 W. Beinart and C. Bundy, Hidden Struggles: Politics and Popular Movements in the Transkei and Eastern Cape 1890–1930 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1987), p. 8.
48 See A. Odendaal, The Founders: The Origins of the ANC and the Struggle for Democracy in South Africa (Johannesburg, Jacana Media, 2012).
49 G. Mbeki, Transkei in the Making (Verulam, Verulam Press, 1939), p. 1.
50 R. Vigne, The Transkei: A South African Tragedy (London, African Bureau, 1969), p. 10.
51 J. Simons, African Women: Their Legal Status in South Africa (Chicago, Northwestern University Press, 1968), p. 52.
52 Ibid., p. 3.
53 Odendaal, The Founders, p. 319.
54 J. Peires, The House of Phalo: A History of the Xhosa People in the Days of Their Independence (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1982), p. 87.
55 D. Japha and V. Japha, ‘Two Missions: Case Studies in the Meaning of Tradition in Contemporary Development in South Africa’, Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, 8, 2 (1997), pp. 7–20.
56 For the early history of Thembuland, see E.G. Sihele, ‘Who Are AbaTembu, Where Do They Come From?’, unpublished manuscript, MS 18 534, Cory Library, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, n.d.; Wagenaar, ‘A History of the Thembu’.
57 Sihele, ‘Who Are AbaTembu’, p. 65.
58 Ibid., p. 67.
59 Ibid., p. 71.
60 Ibid., p. 90; Wagenaar, ‘A History of the Thembu’, p. 99.
61 C. Saunders, ‘Annexation of Transkeian Territories’ in C. Saunders and R. Derricourt, Beyond the Cape Frontier: Studies in the History of the Transkei and the Ciskei (London, Longman, 1974), p. 186.
62 See F. Brownlee, The Transkei Territories: The Historical Records (Alice, Lovedale Press, 1923); Wagenaar, ‘A History of the Thembu’; Sihele, ‘Who Are AbaTembu’.
63 Sihele, ‘Who Are AbaThembu’, p. 110.
64 M. Mda, Struggle and Hope: Reflections on the Recent History of the Transkeian People (Stellenbosch, Africa Sun MeDIA, 2019), p. 26.
65 Brownlee, The Transkei Territories.
66 L. Ntsebeza, Democracy Compromised: Chiefs and the Politics of the Land in South Africa (Boston, Brill, 2005).
67 C.C. Saunders, ‘Tile and the Thembu Church: Politics and Independency on the Cape Eastern Frontier in the Late Nineteenth Century’, Journal of African History, 11, 4 (1970), p. 569.
68 Brownlee, The Transkei Territories, p. 36.
69 Mda, Struggle and Hope, p. 26.
70 Wagenaar, ‘A History of the Thembu’, p. 378.
71 A. Hirschman, Getting Ahead Collectively: Grassroots Experiences in Latin America (New York, Pergamon, 1984), p. 42.
72 I. Berlin, The Sense of Reality: Studies in Ideas and Their History (London, Pimlico, 1997), p. 45.
73 S. Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails (New York, Other Press, 2016), p. 233.
74 C. West, Race Matters (Boston, Beacon Press, 1993), p. 37.
75 ‘United’ was added after the addition of the Pondoland General Council in 1931.
76 Yekela, ‘Unity and Division’, p. 43.
77 Ibid., p. 49.
78 Cited in ibid., p. 52. Previous papers from the Office of the Governor-General of South Africa, 9/76/2 (Cape Archives), Minute No. 931 from Dalindyebo, chief magistrate of the Transkeian Territories, 19 August 1914.
79 Mda, Struggle and Hope, p. 27.
80 Cited in Yekela, ‘Unity and Division’, p. 55.
81 Sol Plaatje, Native Life in South Africa (Johannesburg, Picador Africa, 2007), p. 160.
82 Cited in Yekela, ‘Unity and Division’, p. 57.
83 David Jongintaba Dalindyebo, ‘What Missions Have Meant to Tembuland’, ‘The Deathless Years’, MS 15,336-8, Corey Library, Grahamstown.
84 Mthatha Library, Mthatha, Proceedings and Reports of Select Committees of the Transkei Territories General Council, 24 May 1921, p. 118.
85 Ibid.
86 Ibid., p. 118.
87 Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, p. 526.
88 Mthatha Library, Mthatha, Proceedings and Reports of the Select Committees, Transkei Territories General Council, 1921, p. 121.
89 Ibid.
90 Ibid., pp. 70–71.
91 Mthatha Library, Mthatha, Proceedings and Reports of Select Committees, 1921, p. 75.
92 Mthatha Library, Mthatha, Proceedings and Reports of the Select Committees, Transkei Territories General Council, 1918, p. 51.
93 Jeffrey Stewart, The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke (New York, Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 16–17.
94 Mandela’s Victorianism is further explored in my upcoming biography: X. Mangcu, Mandela: The Aristocrat and the Revolution – the New Biography (Cape Town, Tafelberg Press, [forthcoming] 2020).
95 Jeffrey Stewart, The New Negro, p. 18.
96 H. White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Form and Historical Representation (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), p. 10.
97 Z. Bauman, ‘Legislators and Interpreters’, in H. Haferkamp (ed.), Social Structure and Culture (Berlin, Walter de Gruyter, 1989), p. 313.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Xolela Mangcu
Xolela Mangcu Professor of Sociology and History and Interim Director of Africana Studies, George Washington University, Phillips Hall, 901 22nd St NW, Washington DC, 20052, USA. E-mail: [email protected]