Mandela: His Life and Legacy for South Africa and the World

by Bob Crew

Nelson Mandela is known worldwide as a great moral and political leader, the first democratically elected South African president, the recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize, and a beacon of interracial goodwill. In Mandela , former foreign correspondent Bob Crew demystifies the icon and his legacy. After over a decade of travels in South Africa, Crew seeks truth in the unexpected details of the lives of Mandela and current South African president Jacob Zuma, comparing them to other world icons in order to bring a new understanding of their legacies to Western readers.

Mandela presents a wealth of information, including character studies of Mandela and Zuma, the historical social background of South Africa, and the effect Zuma has had on the racially divided country. Crew uses his own reflections and insights as well as interviews with many South Africans to color his analysis of historical and current events. This book is a seasoned view of the history and politics of a country that produced one of the most iconic leaders of the world, who wished more than anything else for peace.

Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Arcade, Good Books, Sports Publishing, and Yucca imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Our list includes biographies on well-known historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as villains from history, such as Heinrich Himmler, John Wayne Gacy, and O. J. Simpson. We have also published survivor stories of World War II, memoirs about overcoming adversity, first-hand tales of adventure, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Biography

304 pages, Hardcover

First published December 24, 2013

Reviews

[Aurora · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened to this on Audible. It is my second book about Mandela. I would not recommend if you are looking for a book about Mandela. Or (hear me out) read just the first two chapters and mark it as read. Choice is yours.

[Christiaan Schalkwyk · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very disingenuous title.

Only the first two chapters are about Mandela. The remainder is supposedly about his legacy. A big part has nothing to do about his legacy, but rather about ensuring that the English legacy should be positive only.

A lot of what he said is not close to my experience in South Africa, but he talks about his own experience. I don't care that he only knows racist Afrikaans speaking people and non-racist English speaking people. Stating that all English speaking people are non-racist, and all Afrikaans are is very silly and rather racist in itself.

Complaining that Afrikaans papers and people criticized Zuma and that he was still loved by black South Africa, is also false. South African blacks are very much used to the fact that they should vote ANC. Some of them won't criticize a leader as they think that is bad. A lot of them were criticizing Zuma. That said the Sowetan (a paper in Soweto) also criticized Zuma.

Stating that a South African artist should criticize the American president and the catholic church as much as their own president is rather silly. The painting he wants to criticise was a bad idea according to me, but his reasoning is so bad that I would end up supporting the artist.

His history is fine until he brings in how Britain was the only reason why apartheid ended. He would vilify Jan Smuts as an Afrikaner, but then later try to say he was OK as a British representative.

The first two chapters were good, the rest mediocre till he starts saying how great Zuma is. That was just outright wrong most of the time.

His idea that the NG church is still against black people is just wrong. From the early 90s till the early 2000s I went with the church to black areas to distribute food and later teach kids etc. These were in my mid-teens till my mid-twenties when I had the time to do things like that.

I know few Zulus that are great people and not Christian, so his statement that Zulus must be Christian to be good people is just ridiculous and racist.

I would not read this if you want an even picture of South Africa, and definitely no further than the second chapter if you want to know anything about Mandela.

[Ben Dawson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this book was going to be President Mandela, but I felt like the book had more about other people and less about President Mandela. Maybe that was the point, but I felt like I was learning more about the history of South Africa and less about the life President Mandela. It was still and interesting book and I learned a lot about what was happening at that time and why President Mandela did what he did. I don't know, maybe I need to read this one again.

[Medhat ullah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sociopolitical metamorphosis of dialogic statesmanship engendered a paradigmatic recalibration of entrenched apartheid structures in South Africa.Mandela's ontological commitment to egalitarianism, even amidst protracted carceral adversity, rendered him a sine qua non of emancipatory discourse on global human rights, while his rhetorical gravitas consolidated a collective heuristic for deconstructing hegemony

[Jessica]

Listened on audible

[Jordan Maloney · Rating 2 out of 5]

There was something off-putting about this author's prose and, ultimately, I feel that this book offered nothing new to the conversation about Mandela or South Africa in general.

[Dawn Todhunter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Halfway through chapter 2 and I'm done. Did no one edit this mess?