Book Review of Long Walk to Freedom

LONG WALK TO FREEDOM the Autobiography of Nelson Mandela (1995). By Nelson Mandela. 558 pp. Boston: Little, Brown & Company. $13.90.

Nelson Mandela became a myth. To much Africans and much of the world he is, in fact, the South Africa liberator. He triumphed over the Apartheid regime after spending 27 years locked in a cell for the crime of just being a citizen in his native homeland. The problem with a myth, even when it contains truth facts is that it can lead to unachievable expectations

Fortunately for the reader, the Nelson Mandela who arises from his autobiography, "Long Walk to Freedom," (1995) is considerably more human than mythic. Nelson Mandela is a naive and stubborn youth, a neglectful husband, a distraught father. He deceives his friends and misleads his followers. He doesn't want to critic his despots' supporters of the walk to freedom. He often emphasizes tactics over principles, he just pragmatic and realistic, he is not a moralist. He is a politician with a strong faith to have been called for the ultimate mission of ending the apartheid

Nelson Mandela was born in 1918 into the Thembu tribe royal family. He was raised to be an advisor to the chief tribe. Tribal identity is important in South Africa and the regime of Apartheid discredited the concept of ethnicity by linking it to cruelty. But Nelson Mandela appreciates the paramount role tribal relationships still play in South Africa. He proudly writes with affection about the of village life at the royal Thembu court. He acquired there a sense of formal dignity, a judicial character, and his first leadership lessons. He saw consensus-seeking debates at the court; he learned that the chief is like a shepherd does: "A leader... .is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.” (Mandela, 1995). That exactly how he ruled as the leader of his party ANC and then as the president of South Africa

The young Mandela attended the English missionary boarding school grooming for the African elite. He took at heart liberal values. His first political experience was a student protest at the University College of Fort Hare; he refused to yield on a minor point of principle and returned home under threat of getting expulsed. Looking back, he calls that intransigence "foolhardy."

He Fled because of the prospect of an arranged marriage, he stole some royal oxen to sell for travel expenses, and through a series of manipulations he arrived in Johannesburg. He studied in law school and became a politician and an ardent black nationalist. He broke up with the Communist Party meetings because he considered Communist as foreigners

Then he entered a partnership of convenience with the Communist party. Looking back, he writes "The cynical have always suggested that the Communists were using us...But who is to say that we were not using them?" (Mandela, 1995)

In the one of his many adaptive tactics, Nelson Mandela, in 1953, was among the first ANC leaders to shift from peaceful protestation to armed struggle. Even after his peers rejected violence, he traveled to China to request weapons. In 1961 finally, the ANC party decided the armed insurrection. Mandela writes, "For me ...nonviolence was not a moral principle but a strategy; there is no moral goodness in using an ineffective weapon.”

The Apartheid state prosecuted and convicted Mr. Mandela and his colleague for sabotaging and conspiring to overthrow the regime. And Nelson Mandela got the opportunity to rise to be the spokesman for his people.

The autobiography becomes a jail memoir for about 200 pages. Nelson