On 6 May 2014, on the eve of the fifth democratic national elections and the five-month anniversary of the death of former president Nelson Mandela, a new scholarly book hit the shelves with the former statesman as the topic.
The launch was attended by renowned struggle veterans and longstanding friends of Mandela, Dr Ahmed Kathrada and Advocate George Bizos, as well as Zanele Mbeki, wife of former president Thabo Mbeki.
Titled The Cambridge Companion to Nelson Mandela, the book, published by Cambridge University Press and compiled and edited by Rita Barnard, Professor in English and Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania and publisher of extensive literature on South African politics, contains essays by experts in history, anthropology, jurisprudence, cinema, literature, and visual studies, examining how Mandela became an icon during his lifetime; and consider the meanings and uses of his internationally recognisable image. The book contains contributions from several Wits academics. View all the contributors here.
Their overarching concerns include Mandela’s relation to “tradition” and “modernity”, the impact of his most famous public performances, the oscillation between Africanist and non-racial positions in South Africa, and the politics of gender and national sentiment. The volume concludes with a meditation on Mandela’s legacy in the 21st Century and a detailed guide to further reading.
At the launch of the book, Professor Achille Mbembe, a researcher from the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research and a contributing author, said that with the upcoming elections and in the wake of Mandela’s death recently, South Africa needs to think about the questions Mandela asked in his time, and apply it to our current contexts.
“Mandela was a major political thinker – a typical 20th Century thinker – and the 20th Century ended for us not in 1999, but when Mandela died. The political questions he translated in his time are still valid today, but what are the new questions we could ask about him? Maybe we will never know him completely,” said Mbembe.
The launch coincided with a short discussion about the spectre of Mandela and the project of freedom by Mbongiseni Buthelezi, of the Centre for Law and Society at the University of Cape Town.
Buthelezi’s comments centred around questions regarding reconciliation. “What are the questions Mandela allows us to ask and which ones do we need to ask now? What future do we have without Mandela? One of the angers and hurts people feel is how we maintained the status quo during the apartheid era and how we are dealing with reconciliation in terms of our difficult past and post-Mandela,” he said.
Verne Harris, Director of Research at the Nelson Mandela Foundation, also commented on the book and its significance.
Barnard said that the book places emphasis on politics redefined in a few different ways: “The book examines how Mandela looked, how he presented and carried himself, and inspires ongoing debate about Mandela, modernity and tradition.”
Bizos honoured the occasion by speaking fondly of his friend, and said that it is important for the country that Mandela’s memory be preserved because he genuinely cared about people. “We know that his memory will live forever, but before we say that we will follow in his footsteps, let us first inform ourselves where his footsteps would have been. It might not have been in the way that some purport it to be,” said Bizos.