Mandela : The Authorised Biography [Hardcover]

In 1975, imprisoned for life on Robben Island, Nelson Mandela covertly wrote his autobiography. After painstaking months the text was smuggled out--and was promptly quashed by the African National Congress. In his later Long Walk to Freedom Mandela politely expresses "surprise" at this. Sampson reveals that Joe Slovo suppressed the book for not giving enough prominence to Communists. This revelation is remarkable--the ANC could have made much mileage from the book at a time of low fortune--yet Sampson does not follow up. There is too often a sense of eggshells lightly walked upon.

Mandela improves as the prisoner's release approaches. Sampson sharply exposes the machinations of those undermining the ANC's struggle. The CIA knew of the Third Force years before the ANC, yet said nothing. Right-wing governments attacked "Mandela the Communist", preferring to promote Inkhata's Buthelezi, at that time secretly and violently colluding with de Klerk's apartheid regime. Against the small-minded figures of Reagan, Thatcher and Kohl it is Mandela who emerges here a giant. South Africa won her freedom through Mandela: his strength of character and willingness to forgive helped push a country into an alternative future, avoiding the racial civil war almost all predicted. Yet he and his kin paid an awful price. Sampson draws a painful, clear picture of a disintegrating family: dislocation from children; the terrible effects of the war on Winnie, and her increasingly erratic, later murderous behaviour; Mandela's own aching loneliness. It is in capturing Madiba, the ultimate public figure, at his most intense and private, that Sampson's Mandela succeeds best. --Chris Woods

In his authorized biography of Nelson Mandela, Sampson set himself the task of penetrating the myth, of writing of the man and not the icon. He succeeds and produces a lucid, often moving and always readable book. Born in the Transkei in 1918, a minor member of the Tembu royal house, Mandela ran away to Johannesburg in 1941. There he encountered the humiliations of racism that helped him outgrow his purely Xhosa perspectives and met Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo, who together formed a unique association that would eventually overthrow white rule. Sampson charts Mandela's growing political sophistication against the background of his two marriages and the coming to power of the Afrikaner nation. The steps he took led him, in 1964, to life imprisonment. In the second section of the book, Sampson draws a convincing picture of Mandela's imprisonment and the process that led to his emerging from prison more myth than man. And yet, describing Mandela's masterly statesmanship during negotiations along with his personal sadness, Sampson never forgets that Mandela's great strength is his very humanity. This book does indeed transcend the icon. Review by GILLIAN SLOVO Editor's note: Gillian Slovo's anti-apartheid activist mother, Ruth First, was killed by a letter bomb in 1982. To piece together the reasons behind the murder, Slovo returned to her South African homeland and wrote the autobiographical Every Secret Thing. (Kirkus UK)

A comprehensive treatment of the life of the South African political prisoner, martyr, and president by journalist Sampson (Company Man: The Rise and Fall of Corporate Life, 1995, etc.), a long-time acquaintance and admirer. Adhering to a strict chronology, this biography follows Mandela from his boyhood in remote villages (where his father was a hereditary chief with four wives) to his miraculous transformation into an "overwhelming global icon." Mandela benefits from Sampson's thorough research and from his intimate knowledge of South Africa and of the myriad personalities who formed the cast for one of history's most compelling dramas of personal sacrifice and redemption. Sampson reveals that Mandela at 16 endured a painful circumcision in a tribal rite of passage; he portrayed John Wilkes Booth in a college play; he was a skilled boxer; for 18 of his 27 years in prison, he lived in an eight-food-by-seven-foot cell and slept on a straw mat; and he once acknowledged that his second wife, Winnie (there have been two other spouses), kindled "a thousand fires in me." Sampson enjoyed the full cooperation of Mandela, who not only granted access to his personal letters and other papers but also read and corrected drafts of Mandela. Although Sampson assures readers that he was "free to make . . . [his] own judgments and criticisms," there are in this lengthy work very few places where Mandela emerges as anything other than a secular saint. Sampson concedes only that Mandela's oratory is "far from thrilling" and that his devotion to the destruction of apartheid forced him to neglect his family. Winnie Mandela, by contrast, comes off poorly. She earns high marks for her pulchritude and panache, low marks for candor, probity, and, ultimately, sanity. A richly detailed political history, a generous portrayal of a consummate politician, and a true profile in courage - a courage both unimaginably immense and stunningly rare. (Kirkus Reviews)

‘A magisterial, detailed and invaluable account of one of this century’s greatest figures … it is hard to believe that a better biography will ever be written.’ Justin Cartwright, Sunday Telegraph

Nelson Mandela is perhaps the most admired statesman in the world today, his story of opposition to apartheid and subsequent jailing at the hands of the South African all-white regime made familiar through the international success of his 1994 autobiography LONG WALK TO FREEDOM.

Now the eminent writer Anthony Sampson (who has known Mandela since the 1950s) has been given complete access to all his personal papers, to Mandela himself, his friends and political associates, to write the full extraordinary story of Mandela’s life. In addition to covering his years before, during and after his incarceration, he assesses Mandela’s impact as President on South Africa and the world. He also reveals many features of the apartheid system that have hitherto been hidden, and describes the changing attitudes of big business to the ANC and to Mandela himself. The result is a compelling and authoritative biography of one of the greatest men of the 20th century.

The life of Nelson Mandela, from the personal and the global perspective, is one of the epic stories of the twentieth century. It is also one of the most inspiring. Twenty years ago, Mandela was an almost forgotten figure languishing in jail on Robben Island; today, as he leaves office as President of South Africa, he is one of the most widely admired leaders on earth.

By giving Anthony Sampson unprecedented access to 27 years' worth of unpublished correspondence from prison, as well as to other unpublished writings including his original, suppressed, autobiography, Mandela has enabled the author to write the most comprehensive account of his life to date. Sampson, who has known Mandela from the early 1950s, has also conducted hundreds of interviews with colleagues, family and friends as well as prison warders and Afrikaner ex-cabinet ministers, and he is the first person to have examined prison archives in South Africa and diplomatic papers in Great Britain, the United States and South Africa.

As a result, the book sheds new light at every turn on the moral dilemmas and personal choices of both Mandela's private and public life. In the struggle for freedom against the apartheid system, Mandela paid a tragic price, becoming alienated from his wife Winnie and remote from his own children. Prison, which he turned into a kind of university, transformed him from 'raw revolutionary' into a consummate statesman dedicated to reconciliation.

The book provides many new insights into Mandela's story. It shows how British and American diplomats cold-shouldered him before he went to jail; how he foresaw the need for free enterprise in a statement which Communists suppressed; how his colleagues dreaded that he was selling out to the government in his last years in jail; how British right-wingers encouraged the Zulu Chief Buthelezi in his war against the ANC; and how Mandela trusted P.W. Botha while distrusting de Klerk.

Sampson does not conceal Mandela's own failings – his stubbornness, fixed loyalties and princely detachment. But the human story that emerges from this masterly, authoritative biography is a fitting complement to Mandela's celebrated autobiography and will enthral all who read it.

In the late 1950s Anthony Sampson spent four years in Johannesburg editing the black magazine Drum, an experience which led to a lifelong fascination with South African politics. He was on the staff of the Observer in the 1960s, and since then has written a series of major bestselling books, all translated into over 15 languages.