Book Reviews IV: Wordsworth, Mandela

William Wordsworth: A Life by Stephen Gill
Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela, by Nelson Mandela



William Wordsworth: A Life
By Stephen Gill

In common with many other great writers, William Wordsworth would have liked to determine how he was to be seen by posterity.
Gill also suggests that you associate memories like Wordsworth collected pebbles.
Gill describes a setting “beneath flower-topped walls, [that] remained magical terrains in the memory of the poet as late as his seventy-third year.”
Following this, Gil suggests that “the supreme end, is to be happy.”
** Updated Monday, November 21, 2022
Gill writes that “knowledge of vital kinds was being absorbed. According to his first biographer, his brother Christopher, ‘the poet's father set him very early to learn portions of the works of the best English poets by heart, so that at an early age he could repeat large portions of Shakespeare, Milton and Spenser.”
Gill writes that Hawkshead was Wordsworth’s ‘happy valley,’ and fostered the young child with a loving discipline particularly fitted for the nourishment of a poetic mind.
The Sparrow’s Nest by William Wordsworth taught me that I am blessed because I have my youth and good health.
I also learned that this evocation captures the delight in physical exertion.
Wordsworth suggests that you can enjoy sharing memories.
Whereas books were the passion of his friend Southey, his passion was wandering.
Wordsworth drew on local characters, common people for many of his poems.
A fellow youngster in Wordsworth’s village authored The Two Thieves which taught him to think of the changes to which human life is subject.
Wordsworth used three elements to compose many of his poems: depiction of the natural world, describing life’s experiences, and using imagination to record it on paper.
As a boy, Wordsworth was eager to explore the world.
As a grammar school, Hawkshead gave a good grounding in the Classics.
Wordsworth writes, “Before I read Virgil I was so strongly attached to Ovid, whose Metamorphoses I read at school, that I was quite in a passion…” During this period, Wordsworth also enjoyed Juvenal, Cicero and Seneca.
Many of Wordsworth’s teachers “had first hand acquaintance with Newton’s Principia, and Opticks and with Euclidean mathematics."
Gill writes, he "read during his earliest days at school all Fielding’s works, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and any part of Swift that [he] liked; Gulliver’s Travels, and the Tale of the Tub, being much to [my] taste.”
Wordsworth also was lent Cowper's Task by a friend when it first came out, as well as Burns' Poems.
It was during this time that he was also acquainted with Langhorne, Beattie, Percy's Reliques, Crabbe, Charlotte Smith, and Joseph and Thomas Wharton.
Gill writes, "much has been written about the 'burden of the past,' on young poets of the Romantic period, their sense of being oppressed by the weight of past poetic achievement, but despite the evidence of abundant reading there is no trace of this oppression in Wordsworth's early work."
He goes on to write, "in The Vale of Esthwaite Wordsworth draws on what are to be the richest sources of all his poetry: first, the strength of his attachment to a particular place and his yearning for some localized conviction that his own feelings, his experiences of friendship, loss, or desire, demanded exploration in poetry."
In one passage of the 1799 Prelude, Wordsworth describes his sense of the shifting boundaries of self and the outer world.
Gill writes, "the sense of awe and reverence for natural beauty, the reaching out for some high purpose - all of these are celebrated in the climax to he 1799 Prelude."
Wordworth's strength of his later reverence for the values of rootedness, continuity, and sustained love, all originated after his father's death.
The author writes, "Wordsworth had been well trained at Hawkshead, especially in mathematics, excellence which would be a prerequisite for advancement at the university."
He writes that "Wordsworth entered Cambridge... well too aware that he was expected to exploit both his native intellect and the advantages which connections might provide to prepare for himself..."
I learned that Wordsworth sometimes employed imagination to describe the natural world.
On 27 January 1793 Louis XVI lost the throne in Paris. Eight days later two poems were published in London, An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches.
In An Evening Walk, Wordsworth uses impressive technique to describe what he saw during a walk he took one evening.
Descriptive Sketches is a similar poem to An Evening Walk. It describes a European tour.
After examining some texts, it appears that Wordsworth could have created a story about his walks, then set the story to a poem.
Gil writes that one of the most astonishing passages in The Prelude was written to describe the political atmosphere of England.
He writes, “asserting that there were Englishmen who would emulate the crimes of France in pursuit of liberty and equality, he proceeded to argue [thus].”
The Crossing of the Alps passage in The Prelude, is an impressive display of confident poetry according to Gill.
During this time, Dorothy Wordsworth believed that Wordsworth was going to France for the purpose of learning the French language.
Additionally, during this time The Prelude can be trusted as a biographical record, for in it Wordsworth draws on the poem and the intensity of the experiences at the time.
** Updated Wednesday, November 30, 2022
I learned that during one period, Wordsworth "was registering the new influence on his life... [William] Godwin's Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and its Influence on Morals and Happiness."
Gill writes, "Godwin's relentless application of reasoned enquiry to all aspects of social life is written with a directness that advertises the charm of Reason..."
He writes, "what clearly did influence, and exhilarate, Wordsworth, however, was Godwin's belief in the power of Truth," the omnipotence of truth.
Then there is a short passage on truth.
Gill suggests that in every step of the social order, we should remember and make applicable the knowledge of those rules of political justice."
In The Prelude Wordsworth relates how finding William Taylor's grave in Cartmel had set him musing on past and present.
The author also mentions that The Prelude was a poem on the development of his own mind.
At one point point, "the news that Maximillien Robespierre was dead, tossed to him by a traveller as they crossed Leven sands, transformed his mood."
Gill goes on to write that Wordsworth was experiencing some joy, and was "able now to look with 'unabated confidence' towards the future and the progressive liberation of mankind."
Gill points out that at one point, William Godwin's Cursory Strictures made him the hero of the hour.
** Updated Friday, December 2, 2022
Gill Notes that, "in public Godwin was notoriously ‘the most diffuse and tiresome of speakers’ and he hated to speak to an unwilling listener, but he had a passion for what he called ‘colloquial discussion’ and Wordsworth was not an unwilling listener.
With friends, Gill writes, “Wordsworth’s impact on them must have been considerable and immediate, for his needs evoked the same quality of generosity that both Calverts had shown the year before.”
Gill writes that The Prelude substantiates its account of the poet’s spiritual journey, its record of awakening… in the innermost world of the mind and heart, by locating it on the map.
Writes, “what makes Wordsworth’s poem [Adventures on Salisbury Plain] special is that disparate elements of protest are fused by one controlling vision.”
Mentions that it is unclear the exact cause of Wordsworth’s crisis in The Prelude.
Writes, “The Prelude… clinches the exposition of the poem’s dominant message— that Nature had chosen Wordsworth to be her prophet, that he had always been potentially the great poet he had become, and that bewilderment and crisis had only temporarily obscured him as a clouded, not a waning moon.
It is clear then, that Wordsworth was a great poet, as evident from his impressive poetry.
”Nation is a moral essence because a true nation — the English — embodies justice and respect for law, reverence for the past, awareness of man’s nature as a creature of feelings, prejudices, domestic loyalties and in its totality reflects acknowledgement of his status before God.”
At one point, Wordsworth and Coleridge were playing the civilized eighteenth-century game of open literary allusion. This is a good idea for playing simple, civilized games with your neighbors.
During one point, Wordsworth’s writings “all record his ceaseless attempt to scrutinize his own experience.”
** Updated Saturday, December 3, 2022
Gill writes, “Coleridge was determining in the course of his life from a belief that in retirement he could, through study, reflection, and writing, be of more use to mankind.”
Gill mentions that at one point Wordsworth sought to maximize human potential.
** Updated Tuesday, December 6, 2022
Gill writes that Coleridge had been seeking an intellectual equal he could love.
On 6 March Wordsworth announced to James Tobin: “I have written 1300 lines of a poem in which I contrive to convey most of the knowledge of which I am possessed. My object is to give pictures of Nature, Man, and Society.” The title of the projected poem was to be — The Recluse: or, Views of Nature, Man, and Society.
At this point, Wordsworth assumed the title Coleridge was determined to confer upon him—philosopher-poet.
** Updated Saturday, December 10, 2022
The Recluse, however was never completed, nor did Wordsworth ever publish a poem called The Recluse.
As all of Wordsworth’s greatest autobiographical poems do, Tintern Abbey seizes imperiously on the facts, to forge a poetic fiction with which to convey essential truth.
The poet himself is the subject of Tintern Abbey. Here, Wordsworth presents his whole life as a series of distinct phases, characterized by different responses to Nature.
** Updated Sunday, December 11, 2022
Wordsworth is seeking to demonstrate that creative power is a fundamental human attribute, that its origins and development cannot be parceled out by geometric rules.
Wordsworth presented his own life as guided by a providential power, which had fostered his creativity, heaping on him privileges which demanded in return dedication to a great task.
In December 1799 Wordsworth acted to make his life as a man and as a poet coherent in all its parts.
Wordsworth’s model was Milton.
His way of life would, he hoped, attest the genuineness of the values to be conveyed through his poetry: life and art should exist in reciprocal and mutually strengthening relation.
** Updated Thursday, December 15, 2022
Writes that Wordsworth had attempted to trace the primary laws of our nature.
It was the common man, rather than supernatural acts which inspired much of Wordsworth’s poetry.
One of Wordsworth's poems suggests focusing on the sense of sight: how the eye can distinguish different colors and forms.
The 1799 Prelude had been designed not to present a chronology of his life but to reveal the shaping forces which had fitted him to become a philosophic poet.
Gill writes that one of Wordsworth’s poems contained “additional scraps of narrative.”
He also writes that many of Wordsworth's poems tell a story when read together.
** Updated Sunday, December 18, 2022
In a previous chapter describes the unchanging landscape.
** Updated Monday, December 19, 2022
When asked ‘what is meant by the word Poet? What is a Poet?’ Wordsworth replied, “He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the Universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them.”
** Updated Wednesday, December 28, 2022
After Wordsworth moved to Town End, “‘the blessed life we lead here’ had been shaped into a new and even stronger configuration.”
”To her roles as amanuensis, companion, and homemaker, Dorothy added a new one."
Such domestic stability over many years was both a spontaneous growth and the result of much care, self-effacement, and discipline.
At this point, "Wordsworth was no longer a wanderer of uncertain occupation, but a settled, married man."
Wordsworth held the ideas of friendship and kinship in awe.
At one point, Wordsworth and a friend discovered that "it seemed likely that the making of poetry would be the enduring bond between them."
At one point, Sir George Beaumont was soon captivated by Coleridge's conversation and in particular touched by his advocacy of Wordsworth's powers.
"He would thus contribute to the pleasure and improvement of the world" by promoting poetry.
Wordsworth felt drawn to the Beaumonts -- it grew because each respected and admired the other and wished to learn.
"Beaumont was telling friends that 'He was infinitely indebted to Wordsworth for the good he had recd. from his poetry which had benefited him more, had more purified his mind, than any Sermons had done."
One poem, Madoc (1805), Wordsworth felt "fails in the highest gifts of the poet's mind imagination in the true sense of the word, and knowledge of human nature and the human heart -- but he came to admire his industry and professional committment to literature which it represented."
Wordsworth had a zest for philosophical-theological discussion.
Toward the end of 1803 Coleridge had been immersed in Kant's Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. As a philosophical enquirer Coleridge found much that he agreed with in Kant's discussion of authority and law, but as an erring human being he was acutely aware of the gap between the abstract truths and life as it is lived.
** Updated Friday, January 6, 2023
At one point, Dorothy Wordsworth wrote, “All in all, I think these years have been the happiest of my life.”
There were many people who valued Wordsworth’s poetry.
At one point, he was contented in his mind, and had settled his affairs at home to his satisfaction.





Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela
by Nelson Mandela

Mandela's mother lived in the village of Qunu in South Africa, which consisted of no more than a few hundred people who lived in huts.
Cattle, sheep, goats and horses grazed together in common pastures.
Maize, what people in the West call corn, sorghum, beans and pumpkins firmed the largest portion of the diet. The people lived on a very simple diet.
The wealthier families supplemented their diet with tea, coffee and sugar, but for most people in Qunu these were exotic luxuries far beyond their means.
The water used for farming, cooking and washing had to be fetched in buckets from streams and springs.
Few if any of the people in the village knew how to read and write, and the concept of an education was a foreign one to many.
Mqhekezweni was far more soohisticated than Qunu, whose residents were regarded as backwards by the people of Mqhekezweni.
In African culture, the sons or daughters of one's aunts or uncles are considered brothers and sisters, not cousins. We do not make the same distinctions among relations practiced by whites. We have no half brothers or half sisters. My mother's sister is my mother; my uncle's son is my brother; my brother's child is my son, my daughter.
Of my mother's three huts... one was used for sleeping. In the hut in which we slept, there was no furniture in the Western sense. We slept on mats and sat on the ground. I did not discover pillows until I went to Mqhekezweni.
Everything we ate we grew and made ourselves.
When playing as a boy, I defeated my opponents without dishonoring them.
After games, I would return to my mother's kraal where she was preparing supper. Whereas my father once told stories of historic battles and heroic Xhosa warriors, my mother would enchant us with Xhosa legends and fables that had come down from numberless generations.
Like all Xhosa children, I acquired knowledge mainly through observation. We were meant to learn through imitation and emulation, not through questions. When I first visited the homes of whites, I was often dumbfounded by the number and nature of questions that children asked of their parents - and their parents' unfailing willingness to answer them. In my household, questions were considered a nuisance; adults imparted information as they considered necessary.
My life, and that of most Xhosas at the time, was shaped by custom, ritual, and taboo. Men followed the path laid out for them by their fathers; women led the same lives as their mothers had before them.
In one chapter, Mandela writes, "No one ever said life would be easy."
Gradually a new world opened to me. I felt many of my established beliefs and loyalties begin to ebb away.
Religion, Christianity was an integral part of life for Mandela.
My later notions of leadership were profoundly influenced by observing the regent and his court. I watched and learned from the tribal meetings that were regularly held at the Great Place. These were not scheduled, but were called as needed, and were held to discuss national matters such as a drought, the culling of cattle, policies ordered by the magistrate, or new laws decreed by the government.
On these occasions, the regent was surrounded by his amaphakathi, a group of councilors of high rank who functioned as the regent's parliament and judiciary. They were wise men who retained the knowledge of tribal history and custom in their heads and whose opinions carried great weight.
Everyone who wanted to speak did so. It was democracy in its purest form. There may have been a hierarchy of importance among the speakers, but everyone was heard, chief and subject, warrior and medicine man, shopkeeper and farmer, landowner and laborer.
People spoke without interruption and the meetings lasted for many hours.
I noticed how some speakers rambled and never seemed to get to the point. I grasped how others came to the matter at hand directly, and who made a set of arguments succinctly and cogently. I observed how some speakers used emotion and dramatic language, and tried to move the audience with such techniques, while other speakers were sober even, and shunned emotion.
At first, I was astonished by the vehemence - and candor - with which people criticized the regent. He was not above criticism - in fact, he was often the principal target of it. But no matter how flagrant the charge, the regent simply listened, not defending himself, showing no emotion at all.
The meetings would continue until some kind of consensus was reached. They ended in unanimity or not at all. Unanimity, however, might be an agreement to disagree, to wait for a more propitious time to propose a solution. Democracy meant all men were to be heard, and a decision was taken together as a people. Majority rule was a foreign notion. A minority was not to be crushed by a majority.
Only at the end of the meeting, as the sun was setting, would the regent speak. If no agreement could be reached another meeting would be held.
I always remember the regent's axiom: a leader, he said, 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.
During theses days, I learned of other Xhosa heroes from the chiefs and headmen who came to the Great Place to settle disputes and try cases. Though not lawyers, these men presented cases and then adjudicated them. Some days, they would finish early and sit around telling stories. I hovered silently and listened. They spoke in an idiom that I'd never heard before. Their speech was formal and lofty, their manner slow and unhurried.
At first, they shooed me away and told me I was too young to listen. But, eventually, they permitted me to stay, and I discovered the great African patriots who fought against Western domination.
In pantomime, Chief Joyi would fling his spear and creep along the veld as he narrated the victories and defeats.
Chief Joyi said that the African people lived in relative peace until the coming of the abelungu, the white people, who arrived from across the sea with fire-breathing weapons.
After one ritual was performed, Mandela exclaimed, “Ndiyindoda!” (I am a man!)."
At the ceremony, I was given a new name, Dalibunga, meaning “Founder of the Bunga,” the traditional ruling body of the Transkei. To Xhosa traditionalists, the name is more acceptable than either of my two previous given names, Rolihlala or Nelson, and I was proud to hear my new name pronounced: Dalibunga.
At the end of the ritual, a great ceremony was held to welcome us as men to society. Our families, friends, and local chiefs gathered for speeches, songs, and gift-giving.
I was given two heifers and four sheep, and felt far richer than I ever had before. I was hopeful, and thinking that I might someday have wealth, property, and status.
Unlike most of the others with whom I had been at the school, I was not destined to work in the gold mines on the Reef. My destiny was to become a counselor to Sabata, and for that I had to be educated.
I was about to cross the Mbashe River for the first time on my way to the Clarkebury Boarding Institute in the district of Engcobo. The regent said that I must learn from a Reverend Harris. The regent advised me on my behavior and my future... I observed him and followed his example.
Clarkesbury was far grander even than Mqhekezweni. It was the first place I'd lived in that was Western, not African, and I felt I was entering a new world whose rules were not yet clear to me.
The regent explained that I was being groomed to be a counselor to the king and that he hoped the reverend would take a special interest in me.
Mandela meets a classmate, a female friend. "In many ways, she was the model for all my subsequent friendships with women, for with women I found I could let my hair down and confess to weaknesses and fears I would never reveal to another man."
For the first time, I was taught by teachers who had themselves been properly educated. Several of them held university degrees, which was extremely rare.
Although he was strict, behind the reverend's mask of severity was a gentle, broad-minded individual who believed fervently in the importance of educating young African men. As an example of a man unselfishly devoted to a good cause, Reverend Harris was an important model for me.
During this time, Mandela learns that it is not lack of ability that limits his people, but lack of opportunity.
Like many students in his university in Africa, Mandela studied zoology.
Mandela tells an anecdote, and asks the question common to law and philosophy, “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” (Who will guard the guardians themselves?) If the prefect does not obey the rules, how can the students be expected to obey? In effect, the prefect was above the law because he was the law, and one prefect was not supposed to report to another.
Mandela explained the impact that seeing the entrance of a black man in tribal garb rather than a white professor had on the students. “It seemed to turn the universe upside down… We could barely contain our excitement.”
During one experience in student government, we informed the warden that if he overruled us we would all resign from the House Committee, depriving the committee itself of any integrity or authority. In the end, the warden decided not to intervene.
We remained firm, and we had won. This was one of my first battles with authority, and I felt the sense of power that comes from having right and justice on one’s side.
My education at Fort Hare was as much outside as inside the classroom.
Running, for example, taught me valuable lessons. In cross-country competition, training counted more than intrinsic ability, and I could compensate for a lack of natural aptitude with diligence and discipline. I applied this in everything I did. Even as a student, I saw many young men who had great natural ability, but who did not have the self-discipline and patience to build on their endowment.
Mandela takes part in a play where he learns of the play’s moral, that men who take great risks often suffer great consequences.
Mandela meets a friend who he admires because he was a keen debater who did not accept the platitudes that so many automatically ascribed to. It was, consequently, easy for Mandela to see that Oliver was destined for great things.
Despite many modern comforts, perhaps as a result of all this unfamiliarity, I yearned for some of the simple pleasures I had known as a boy. As a result, we would sit around, eating ears of corn and telling tall tales. We did this not because we were hungry, but out of a need to recapture what was most homelike to us. We boasted about our conquests, our athletic prowess, and how much money we were going to make once we had graduated.
Although I felt myself to be a sophisticated young fellow, I was still a country boy who loved country pleasures.
During this time, Mandela learns more about the African National Congress, an organization that he had vaguely heard of but knew very little about.
As a result of events with friends, Mandela was "beginning to realize that a black man did not have to accept the dozens of petty indignities directed at him each day."
Mandela comes closer to earning a university degree, a passport not only to community leadership but to financial success.
As a result of a technicality in the student government, Mandela decides to resign. Then he is called in to see the principal, a graduate of Edinburgh University, and greatly respected man. The principal calmly reviewed the events and then asked Mandela to reconsider his decision to resign. "I told him I would not. He told me to sleep on it and give him my final decision the following day."
Even though I thought what I was doing was morally right, I was still uncertain as to whether it was the correct course. Was I sabotaging my academic career over an abstract moral principle that mattered very little? I found it difficult to swallow the idea that I would sacrifice what I regarded as my obligation to the students for my selfish interests.
Mandela reunites with an old friend of his. He says, “no matter how long we were apart, the brotherly bonds that united us were instantly renewed.”
At that time, Mandela was more advanced socially than politically. "Ironically, it was the regent himself who was indirectly to blame for this, for it was the education he had afforded me that had caused me to reject such traditional customs.
Mandela travels to Johannesburg. "Electricity, to me, had always been a novelty and a luxury, and here was a vast landscape of electricity, a city of light. I was terribly excited to see the city I had been hearing about since I was a child.
Johannesburg had always been depicted as a city of dreams, a place where one could transform oneself from a poor peasant to a wealthy sophisticate, a city of danger and of opportunity."
It was eGoli, the city of gold, where I would soon be making my home. On the outskirts of the city the traffic became denser. I had never seen so many cars on the road at one time.
I was just becoming aware of the history of racial oppresssion in my own country, and saw the struggle in South Africa as purely racial. But soon I saw South Africa's problems through the lens of the class struggle. To them, it was a matter of the Haves oppressing the Have-nots.
He met a friend, Michael Harmel, and recalled, "this chap has an M.A. and he is not even wearing a tie!... I came to admire him greatly, in no small measure because he rejected so many of the rather foolish conventions which I once embraced."
I found myself being drawn into the world of politics because I was not content with my old beliefs.
One friend that he met had one of the sharpest, most incisive minds that he had ever encountered.
"To be an African in South Africa means that one is politicized from the moment of one's birth, whether one acknowledges it or not. An African child is born in an Africans Only hospital, taken home in an African Only bus, lives in an Africans Only area, and attends Africans Only schools, if he attends school at all."
When he grows up, he can hold Africans Only jobs, rent a house in Africans Only townships, ride Africans Only trains, and be stopped at any time of the day or night and be ordered to produce a pass, failing which he will be arrested and thrown in jail.
His life is circumscribed by racist laws and regulations that cripple his growth, dim his potential, and stunt his life.
I had no epiphany, no singular revelation, no moment of truth, but a steady accumulation of a thousand slights, a thousand indignities, a thousand unremembered moments, produced in me an anger, a rebelliousness, a desire to fight the system that imprisoned my people. There was no particular day on which I said, From henceforth I will devote myself to the liberation of my people; instead, I simply found myself doing so, and could not do otherwise. More and more, I had come under the wise tutelage of Walter Sisulu. Walter was strong, reasonable, practical, and dedicated. He never lost his head in a crisis; he was often silent when others were shouting. He believed that the ANC was the means to effect change in South Africa, the repository of black hopes and aspirations.
Mandela meets two friends, A. Lembede and Peter Mda. While Lembede tended to imprecision and was inclined to be verbose, Mda was controlled and exact. Lembede could be vague and mystical; Mda was specific and scientific. Mda's practicality was a perfect foil for Lembede's idealism.
Other young men were thinking along the same lines and we would all meet to discuss these ideas.
Mandela was moved by the brutality of the British toward the Zulus.
Mandela's meetings with the ANC were done in the English manner, "the idea being that despite our disagreements we were all gentlemen."
An area of concern was that the ANC was in danger of becoming marginalized unless it stirred itself and took up new methods.
One spokesman stated his belief that Africans were too unorganized and undisciplined to participate in a mass campaign and that such a campaign would be rash and dangerous.
The basic policy of the league did not differ from the ANC's first constitution in 1912. But we were reaffirming and underscoring those original concerns, many of which had gone by the wayside.
African nationalism was our battle cry, and our creed was the creation of one nation out of many tribes, the overthrow of white supremacy, and the establishment of a truly democratic form of government.
We were extremely wary of communism. The documen stated, "We may borrow...from foreign ideologies, but we reject the wholesale importation of foreign ideologies into Africa."
I possessed a certain insecurity, feeling politically compared to Walter, Lembede, and Mda. These were men who knew their minds, and I was, as yet, unformed. I still lacked confidence as a speaker, and I was intimidated by the eloquence of so many of those in the league.
Mandela married, and then had a son, "I had perpetuated the Mandela name and the Madiba clan, which is one of the basic responsibilities of a Xhosa male. I finally had a stable base, and I went from being a guest in other people's homes to having guests in my own."
Mandela writes, "in my culture, all the members of one's family have a claim to the hospitality of any other members of the family; the combination of my large extended family and my new house meant a great number of guests."
Mandela was influenced by Gandhi's nonviolent protests in India.
Mandela notes, that in some ways, it is easier to be a dissident, for then one is without responsibility. As a member of the executive, I had to weigh arguments and make decisions, and expect to be criticized by rebels like myself.
During one victory, Mandela notes that "it was the first time I had taken a significant part in a national campaign, and I felt the exhilaration that springs from the success of a well-planned battle against the enemy and the sense of comradeship that is born fighting against formidable odds."
I was far more certain in those days of what I was against than what I was for.
One of his party members was a man whose role as a fighter for human rights had made him a hero to all groups.
Mandela found himself drawn to the idea of a classless society, "which, to my mind, was similar to traditional African culture where life was shared and communal. I subscribed to Marx's basic dictum, which has the simplicity and generosity of the Golden Rule: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."
For our struggle to succeed, Mandela notes, we have to transcend black and white.
I was first and foremost an African nationalist fighting for our emancipation from minority rule and the right to control our own destiny. But at the same time, South Africa and the African continent were part of the larger world. Our problems, while distinctive and special, were not entirely unique, and a philosophy that placed those problems in an international and historical context of the greater world and the course of history was valuable.
We discussed whether we should follow Gandhian principles of nonviolence.
Additionally, during one instance, Mandela writes, "we had no alternative but to resort to civil disobedience, and we embarked on preparations for mass actions in earnest."
It was suggested that we should approach this issue not from the point of view of principles but of tactics, and that we should employ the method demanded by the conditions. If a particular method or tactic enabled us to defeat the enemy, then it should be used.
One program of noncooperation and nonviolence included a mass defiance, accompanied by strikes and industrial actions across the country.
Mandela hoped to focus the attention of the world on what was going on in South Africa.
During a speech where Chief Luthuli, president of the Natal ANC, and other dignitaries were present, about ten thousand people were in attendance.
During one meeting, asked whether he thought there should be equality between black and white in South Africa, Dr. Moroka replied that there would never be such a thing.
Mandela was found guilty of what the judge defined as "statutory communism." Because he had tried to follow a peaceful course of action and to avoid violence in any shape or form, he was sentenced to nine month's imprisonment, but the sentence was suspended for two years.
As a result of the campaign, our membership swelled from 20,000 to 100,000. The ANC emerged as a truly mass-based organization with an impressive corps of experienced activists who had braved the police, the courts, and the jails.
Chief Albert Luthuli, the new ANC president, combined an air of humility with deep-seated confidence. He was a man of patience and fortitude, who spoke slowly and clearly as though every word was of equal importance.
Mandela gains more experience and opens his own law office. He meets a gentleman who impressed him because of his thoughtful intelligence and sharp debating skills. "With his cool, logical style he could demolish an opponent's argument - precisely the type of intelligence that is useful in a courtroom. Before Fort Hare, he had been a brilliant student at St. Peter's in Johannesburg. His even-tempered objectivity was an antidote to my more emotional reactions to issues."
Mandela describes Apartheid: "it was a crime to walk through a Whites Only door, a crime to ride a Whites Only bus, a crime to be on the streets past eleven, a crime to live in certain places..."
Mandela and Tambo, Mandela's law office, meant a lot to ordinary Africans. "It was a place where they could come and find a sympathetic ear and a competent ally, a place where they would not be either turned away or cheated, a place where they might actually feel proud to be represented by men of their own skin color."
Mandela mentions that during one event, in the heat of the moment he did not think of the consequences, and that his words "did not come out of nowhere."
During this period, he had begun to analyze the struggle in different terms.
Walter Sisulu visits the People's Republic of China and discuss with them the possibility of supplying weapons for an armed struggle.
Mandela says that he likes to see the coming of dawn, the change between night and day, which is always majestic. He also mentions that certain things have always had a magical effect on him -- particularly the landscape of many of the African provinces.
Mandela asks the question, do we live in a just society? He also states that we have the inherent right to fight against oppression.
Mandela makes the argument that we have the right to campaign for our political beliefs even if they are opposed to the government.
Mandela notes that "it is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another."
He writes, "the mission schools provided Africans with Western-style English-language education, which I myself received. We were limited by lesser facilities but not by what we could read or think or dream.
He mentions that "the disparities in funding tell a story of racist education. The government spent about six times as much per white student as per African student."
The minister of Bantu education explained that education "must train and teach people in accordance with their opportunities in life." He further writes, "education for ignorance and for inferiority is worse than no education at all."
Mandela discusses a campaign to boycott the school which involved thousands of pupils and lasted several years. It had mixed results. It was often sporadic, disorganized, and ineffectual. Regarding the results, "the campaign should be judged on two levels: whether the immediate objective was achieved, and whether it politicized more people and drew them into the struggle." On the first level, the campaign failed, but on the second level, the government was sufficiently rattled by the protest to modify the act and adopt a stance of equal education for all.
Mandela drafts a blueprint for the liberation struggle and the future of the nation, the charter for the Congress of the People. The requirements laid out include that: The people shall govern; all national groups shall have equal say; the people shall share in the country's wealth; the land shall be shared among those who work it.
The charter was not meant to be capitalist or socialist but a melding together of the people's demands to end oppression.
Mandela was listening to a popular program called "Rediffusion Service," which featured most of the country's leading African singers: Miriam Makeba, Dolly Rathebe, Dorothy Masuku, Thoko Shukuma, and the smooth sound of the Manhattan Brothers.
He writes, "I enjoy all types of music, but the music of my own flesh and blood goes right to my heart... it tells a tale."
Mandela mentions that he regrets having "lost track" of a girl he knew.
Mandela meets with chiefs who were taken aback by his behavior and upbraided him for his rudeness. "I explained that I had merely treated him in the manner that he had treated me."
During one instance, Mandela has a meeting. "I did not want our meeting to be a showdown, or even a debate, I did not want any grandstanding or faultfinding, but a serious discussion among men who all had the best interests of their people and their nation at heart."
Mandela meets a man who he speaks to, who "was entertaining, and I found his conversation useful and interesting."
Mandela was frustrated because "I saw white men who were my inferiors in ability and brains earning fifty times what I was."
Mandela describes driving across the countryside, "for the first time in my life I saw wild elephants and baboons. A large baboon crossed the road in front of me, and I stopped the car."
For one report, the central theme of the report was the rejection of the idea of integration between the races in favor of a policy of separate development of black and white.
Mandela joins a gym, and acquires an admiration for boxing. "Boxing is egalitarian," he writes, "in the ring, rank, age, color, and wealth are irrelevant. When you are circling your opponent, probing his strengths and weaknesses, you are not thinking about his color or social status."
At the time, Mandela writes, "African boxers, like all black athletes and artists, were shackled by the twin handicaps of poverty and racism. He was denied the opportunity of belonging to the white boxing clubs that had the equipment and trainers necessary to produce a first-rate, world-class boxer." African boxing champions, "are the most eloquent example of what African boxers could achieve if given the opportunity."
During one instance, "I was pessimistic... and I thought it only fair to inform him of my feelings."
Mandela mentions Natalians, Zulus "who are noted for their loyalty to their region, whose peculiar bonds of attachment can sometimes even transcend color."
At one point, Mandela was listening to independent and articulate Africans who were spelling out their political beliefs and how they hoped to realize them.
Mandela continues to talk about detention without trial. He also discusses deplorable conditions in jails and the dangers of conducting your own defense.
"To a narrow-thinking person," Mandela writes, "it is hard to explain that to be 'educated' does not only mean being literate and having a B.A., and that an illiterate man can be a far more 'educated' voter than someone with an advanced degree."
Mandela mentions the intensity of the experience of addressing a large crowd.
Mandela describes a ruling in his favor that was an embarrassment to the government.
In a Tanganyikan town, Mandela notes, “I truly realized that I was in a country ruled by Africans. For the first time in my life, I was a free man. Everywhere I went in Tanganyika my skin color was automatically accepted rather than instantly reviled. I was being judged for the first time not by the color of my skin but but by the measure of my mind and character. Although I was often homesick during my travels, I nevertheless felt as though I were truly home for the first time.”
When Mandela meets with a chief, he was surprised to see how small the chief appeared, but his dignity and confidence made him seem like the African giant that he was. It was the first time I had witnessed a head of state go through the formalities of his office, and I was fascinated. He stood perfectly straight, and inclined his head only slightly to indicate that he was listening. Dignity was the hallmark of all his actions.
Mandela criticizes “a leadership that commits a crime against its own people.”
After certain announcements that Mandela makes, he is met with loud cheers, encouragement from the crowd.
At many points in his autobiography, Mandela describes himself as a freedom fighter.
Mandela says that Rabat in Morocco, with its ancient and mysterious walls, its fashionable shops, and its medieval mosques, seemed a charming mixture of Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. This represented the crossroads of virtually every liberation movement on the continent.
"Despite Britain being the home of parliamentary democracy," Mandela writes, "it was that democracy that helped inflict a pernicious system of iniquity on my people."
During one court appearance, Mandela wore a traditional Xhosa leopard-skin kaross instead of a suit and tie. He writes, "I had chosen traditional dress to emphasize the symbolism that I was... literally carrying on my back the history, culture, and heritage of my people."
Mandela writes, “I found solitary confinement the most forbidding aspect of prison life. There is no end and no beginning; there is only one’s own mind, which can begin to play tricks. One begins to question everything. Did I make the right decision, was my sacrifice worth it?"
"But the human body has an enormous capacity for adjusting to trying circumstances. I have found that one can bear the unbearable if one can keep one’s spirits strong even when the body is being tested."
To get out of prison and gain access to the privileged hospital, Mandela and his cellmates explored hunger strikes.
"I never imagined," Mandela writes, "the struggle would be either short or easy."
When Mandela was overwrought about his wife and grieving for his mother, then to hear that his son had died, he writes, "I do not have the words to express the sorrow, or the loss I felt. It left a hole in my heart that can never be filled... there is nothing that one man can say to another at such a time."
During one instance, Mandela writes, "we threatened work stoppages, go-slows, hunger strikes - every weapon at our disposal, unless he reformed his ways and restored many of the privileges that he had rescinded."
One event "was a useful reminder that all men, even the most seemingly cold-blooded, have a core of decency, and that if their heart is touched, they are capable of changing."
On another instance, Mandela writes, "we decided that we would at least appear to be working, but what work we did would be at a pace that suited us."
Mandela writes, "Robben Island was known as the University because of what we learned from each other. We became our own faculty, with our own professors, our own curriculum, our own courses. Our university grew up partly out of necessity... these men had little formal education, but a great knowledge of the hardships of the world. Their concerns tended to be practical rather than philosophical."
Mandela mentions that he and Walter Sisulu wanted a story which would serve to remind people of what they had fought for and were still fighting for. He added that it could become a source of inspiration for young freedom fighters. Consequently, he set out to writing a manuscript, "the spine of this memoir."
Mandela writes, "in June of 1976, we began to hear vague reports of a great uprising in the country. The youth of Soweto had overthrown the military and the soldiers had dropped their guns and fled."
Mandela mentions that while in prison, he read "all the unbanned novels of Nadine Gordimer and learned a great deal about the white liberal sensibility... many American novels, and recall especially John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, in which I found many similarities between the plight of the migrant workers in that novel and our own laborers and farmworkers."
In 1980, Mandela and the other prisoners learn of a campaign for their release. Ultimately, he is transferred to Pollsmoor
Prison a few miles southeast of Cape Town. Here, the conditions were considerably improved.
During one event with Winnie, Mandela writes that he was "plagued by the feeling of powerlessness and inability to help her."
In a discussion with two Americans, Mandela writes, "I told them that the conditions in which Martin Luther King struggled were totally different from my own: the United States was a democracy with constitutional guarantees of rqual rights that protected nonviolent protest; South Africa was a police state with a constitution that enshrined inequality and an army that responded to nonviolence with force.
Finally, Mandela is released from prison. He writes, "when I was amid the crowd I raised my right fist and there was a roar... it gave me a surge of strength and joy."
Mandela entered prison at forty-four, and was released at seventy-one.
Mandela notes that "freedom without civility, freedom without the ability to live in peace, is not true freedom at all."
Upon seeing his old friend, Mandela writes, "seeing my old friend and law partner was the reunion I most looked forward to.
Oliver was not well, but when we met we were like two boys in the veld who took strength from our love for each other." He goes on to write, "though we had been apart for all the years that I was in prison, Oliver was never far from my thoughts."
At this point, Mandela writes "what was foremost in my mind and heart was paying my respects to my mother's grave." "I regret that I had been unable to be with her when she died, remorse that I had not been able to look after her properly during her life, and a longing for what might have been had I chosen to live my life differently."
Upon return to his village Qunu, despite some changes, he writes, "what had endured was the warmth and simplicity of the community..."
Mandela notes that during the time that he spoke in the U.S., he learned about the Inuit, or Eskimo people.
I learned that Nelson Mandela enjoyed a drink of fermented cow's milk, similar to yogurt, that he learned how to make in his village.
Mandela holds a series of political negotiations, many of which were successful.
The previous structure formed the basis of one of the harshest, most inhumane societies the world has ever known. Now, after more than three centuries of rule, the white minority was conceding defeat and turning over power to the black majority. That system had been overturned forever and replaced by one that recognized the rights and freedoms of all peoples regardless of the color of their skin.
At every opportunity, Mandela said that all South Africans must unite and join hands and say "that we are one country, one nation, one people, marching together into the future.
"That day had come about through the unimaginable sacrifices of thousands of my people," he writes, "people whose suffering and courage can never be counted or repaid. I felt that day, that I was simply the sum of all those African patriots who had gone before me. That long and noble line ended and now began again with me."
He writes, "my country is rich in the minerals and gems that lie beneath its soil, but I have always known that its greatest wealth is its people, finer and truer than the purest diamonds. It is from these comrades in the struggle that I learned the meaning of courage. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear."
He goes on to write, "I never lost hope that this great transformation would occur. Not only because of the great heroes I already cited, but because of the courage of the ordinary men and women of my country. I always knew that deep down in every human heart, there is mercy and generosity. No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
Toward the end of the piece, Mandela writes, "I have completed my journey, now I pass the torch on to the next generation."
On the book's last page, he says "we took up the struggle with our eyes wide open, with no illusion that the path would be an easy one." Mandela then discusses freedom, and mentions that "I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended."



Top of page