Knowing Mandela E-Book

John Carlin

• Herausgeber: Atlantic Books
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

As Nelson Mandela was released from prison and the ensuing years saw the collapse of South Africa's apartheid regime, John Carlin ('one of the great post-apartheid chroniclers' Financial Times) was the South Africa correspondent of London's Independent newspaper. In his acclaimed Playing the Enemy (filmed by Clint Eastwood as Invictus) he told the story of Mandela's role in the Rugby World Cup of 1995, when Mandela's political genius transformed a sporting event into a moment that defined, unforgettably, a new nation. In his new book, Carlin now offers an illuminating and inspiring personal account of the iconic figure who has come both to define post-apartheid South Africa and to represent the possibility of a moral politics to the world at large. Knowing Mandela focuses on the years from 1990 to 1995, when Mandela faced his most daunting obstacles and achieved his greatest triumphs; it was the time when the full flower of his genius as a political leader was most vividly on display. Carlin spent those years reporting on Mandela's feats, trials and tribulations and was one of the few foreign journalists in South Africa to cover both his release from prison and his accession to the presidency four years later. Drawing on conversations with Mandela and interviews with people close to him, Carlin has crafted a remarkable account of a man who is as flawed as he is gifted, neither superman nor saint. Knowing Mandela offers a profound understanding of the man and what has made him the towering moral and political figure of our age.

Leseprobe

KnowingMandela

ALSO BY JOHN CARLIN

Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela andthe Game That Made a Nation

First published in the United States of America in 2013 by

Harper Perennial, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers LLC.

First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Atlantic Books,

an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © John Carlin, 2013

The moral right of John Carlin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN: 978-1-78239-432-7

E-book ISBN: 978-178239-433-4

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-78239-434-1

Designed by William Ruoto

Title page photograph © David Goldblatt

Printed in Great Britain.

Atlantic Books

An Imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

Ormond House

26–27 Boswell Street

London

WC1N 3JZ

www.atlantic-books.co.uk

For South Africa

CONTENTS

Preface

1.

The President and the Journalist

2.

Great Expectations

3.

Nelson and Cleopatra

4.

Wooing the Blacks

5.

The Bitter-Enders

6.

A Hero to His Valet

7.

White Tears

8.

Magnanimity

Acknowledgments

PREFACE

This is a short book about a big man I was fortunate to get to know, Nelson Mandela. The story centers on the epic period, between 1990 and 1995, when Mandela faced his most daunting obstacles and achieved his greatest triumphs; the time when the full flower of his genius as a political leader was most vividly on display.

I spent those five years recording Mandela’s feats, trials, and tribulations as the South African correspondent for the London Independent and, as such, was one of the few foreign journalists there to cover both his release from prison, on February 11, 1990, and his accession to the presidency four years later. My proximity to Mandela throughout this decisive period in South Africa’s history allowed me to observe the man as closely as anyone in my position could reasonably have expected. I don’t presume to call him a friend, but I can safely say that he knew very well who I was, and read much of what I wrote, which fills me with pride.

After I left South Africa for Washington in 1995, I continued to study and think about Mandela in the course of interviewing many people who had been close to him as research for a number of film documentaries and for my previous book, Playing the Enemy, about his crowning political moment, a turning point in history masquerading as a game of rugby. I have accumulated an enormous amount of information, along with many telling anecdotes about Mandela that have shaped my perceptions about his private and public life.

I believe that, large as Mandela’s presence on the global stage has been, there’s still much more to say about the man, the quality of his leadership, and the legacy he leaves the world. My hope is that readers will come away from this book with a more profound understanding of Mandela the individual and of why he has been the towering moral and political figure of our age.

Yet he had his flaws and bore the scars of much personal anguish. His triumphs on the political stage were won at the cost of unhappiness, loneliness, and disappointment. He was neither a superman nor a saint. But this only serves, in my view, to magnify his achievement, placing him alongside men like Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. on the sparsely populated pantheon of historical greats.

General Alan Brooke, Britain’s Chief of the Imperial General Staff during the Second World War, said of Winston Churchill, “He is quite the most wonderful man I have ever met, and it is a source of never-ending interest studying him and getting to realize that occasionally such human beings make their appearance on this earth, human beings who stand out head and shoulders above all others.”

To me, those words may as well have been said, with at least as much relevance, about Mandela. He is the one political leader I have encountered in more than thirty years as a journalist—reporting on conflicts all over the world, from bloody guerrilla warfare in Central America to bloodless battles of words in the U.S. Congress—who succeeded in up-ending the cynicism that tends to go hand in hand with the business of journalism. I arrived in South Africa after ten years in Latin America, sickened by the horrors wrought by murderous generals on their own people and by the puppet presidents put in place by Cold War powers. Mandela changed all that. Thanks to him, I left South Africa newly convinced that noble and enlightened leadership had not, after all, been erased from the roster of human possibilities.

Just about everywhere we look, our faith in political leaders has hit rock bottom; mediocrity, fanaticism, and moral cowardice abound. Nelson Mandela, who remained as generous as he was shrewd, despite spending twenty-seven years in jail, stands as a timely reminder and a timeless inspiration. Humanity is, and always has been, capable of great things, and there is always room and reason for us to do better.

With gratitude and affection, I submit this attempt to capture Mandela’s imperishable legacy in words.

August 2013

1

THE PRESIDENT ANDTHE JOURNALIST

Condemned in 1964 to life in prison for taking up arms against the state, he was supposed to have died in a small cell on a small island. Yet here was Nelson Mandela, almost thirty years later, standing before me, no longer a prisoner of that state, but the head of it. Barely a month had passed since he had been elected president of South Africa when he welcomed me into his new office at the Union Buildings in Pretoria, wearing his large and familiar smile, enveloping my hand in his enormous one, leathery after years of forced labor. “Ah, hello, John!” he cried with what felt like genuine delight. “How are you? Very good to see you.”

It was flattering to have the most celebrated man in the world call me by my first name with such seemingly spontaneous exuberance but, for the hour I spent with him, in the first interview he did with a foreign newspaper after assuming power, I chose to forget that Mandela, like that other master politician Bill Clinton, seemed able to recollect the name of virtually every person he’d ever met. It was only later, when the glow of his charm had worn off, that I paused to consider whether his behavior was calculated, whether he had deliberately sought to beguile me, as he had succeeded in doing with every other journalist, every politician of every hue, practically every single person who had spent any time in his company. Was he an actor or was he sincere? I’d come up with an answer in due time, but the honest truth is that, back then, I, like all the others, was powerless to resist.