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  International Acclaim for Anthony Sampson’s

  MANDELA

  “Written to the best journalistic standards, offering the reader a lively, fluid style with human interest touches that bring Mandela, the icon, to life on the page.… The best Mandela biography ever.”

  —The Seattle Times/Post-Intelligencer

  “Because he knows Mandela and his comrades so well, Sampson brings a depth of knowledge and emotion to retelling their story that makes this work a special addition.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  “An insightful and compulsively readable biography.… [Mandela] demonstrates beyond any doubt that extraordinary is precisely the kind of man that Nelson Mandela is.”

  —The Philadelphia Inquirer

  “Scrupulously researched.… Mandela has come to represent a nation reborn, and this account of his life is a convincing reminder of that remarkable achievement.”

  —The Daily Telegraph (London)

  “A provocative, entertaining and extremely important story of triumph.”

  —Daily News

  “Excellent.”

  —The Christian Science Monitor

  “Sampson has created a work of astounding breadth, helped immensely by his extraordinary access to vitally relevant sources, from political adversaries to prison warders, family members and colleagues and rivals in the African National Congress and the wider anti-apartheid movement.”

  —Newsday

  “No leader can bequeath his country everlasting freedom, but Mandela did bequeath an everlasting lesson. Sampson’s story is worthy of that bequest.”

  —The Times (London)

  “Meticulously researched and clearly written.”

  —Houston Chronicle

  “Anthony Sampson has written a magisterial, detailed and invaluable account of one of this century’s greatest figures.”

  —The Sunday Telegraph (London)

  “Sampson penetrates the mystique and romance accorded Mandela to reveal the man himself.”

  —The Chicago Reporter

  “[Mandela] can be treated as definitive.”

  —The Economist

  “Gives full play to all the symbolic aspects of its subject’s life, but, more importantly, it makes heroic efforts to give us the man behind the facade.”

  —The Washington Times

  “Sampson has produced a lucid, often moving and always readable book.”

  —The Financial Times (London)

  Anthony Sampson

  MANDELA

  Anthony Sampson is a distinguished British journalist, the author of nearly twenty books, including Anatomy of Britain, The Seven Sisters, and Company Man. His connection with South Africa dates back to the 1950s, when he was editor of the black magazine Drum in Johannesburg and first met Nelson Mandela. He has visited and reported from the country many times since.

  ALSO BY ANTHONY SAMPSON

  Drum: A Venture into the New Africa

  The Treason Cage

  Commonsense About Africa

  Anatomy of Britain

  Macmillan: A Study in Ambiguity

  The New Europeans

  The New Anatomy of Britain

  The Sovereign State

  The Seven Sisters

  The Arms Bazaar

  The Money Lenders

  The Changing Anatomy of Britain

  Empires of the Sky

  Black and Gold

  The Midas Touch

  The Essential Anatomy of Britain

  The Oxford Book of Ages (with Sally Sampson)

  Company Man

  The Scholar Gypsy

  FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, SEPTEMBER 2000

  Copyright © 1999 by Anthony Sampson

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a Division of Random House, Inc. Originlly published in the United Kingdom by HarperCollins Publishers, London, and subsequently published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., in 1999.

  Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of

  Random House.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:

  Sampson, Anthony.

  Mandela : the authorized biography / Anthony Sampson.

  1st American ed.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references (p.).

  eISBN: 978-0-307-81402-9

  1. Mandela, Nelson, 1918– . 2. Presidents—South Africa—Biography. 3. South Africa—politics and government—20th century.

  I. Title.

  DT1974.S26 1999

  968.06′5′092—dc21

  [B] 99-18498

  www.vintagebooks.com

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  List of Illustrations

  Map: Apartheid South Africa

  Introduction

  Prologue: The Last Hero

  PART I: 1918–1964

  1 Country Boy: 1918–1934

  2 Mission Boy: 1934–1940

  3 Big City: 1941–1945

  4 Afrikaners vs. Africans: 1946–1949

  5 Nationalists vs. Communists: 1950–1951

  6 Defiance: 1952

  7 Lawyer and Revolutionary: 1952–1954

  8 The Meaning of Freedom: 1953–1956

  9 Treason and Winnie: 1956–1957

  10 Dazzling Contender: 1957–1959

  11 The Revolution That Wasn’t: 1960

  12 Violence: 1961

  13 Last Fling: 1962

  14 Crime and Punishment: 1963–1964

  PART II: 1964–1990

  15 Master of My Fate: 1964–1971

  16 Steeled and Hardened: 1971–1976

  17 Lady into Amazon: 1962–1976

  18 The Shadowy Presence: 1964–1976

  19 Black Consciousness: 1976–1978

  20 Prison Charisma: 1976–1982

  21 A Family Apart: 1977–1980

  22 Prison Within a Prison: 1978–1982

  23 Insurrection: 1982–1985

  24 Ungovernability: 1986–1988

  25 The Lost Leader: 1983–1988

  26 “Something Horribly Wrong”: 1987–1989

  27 Prisoner vs. President: 1989–1990

  PART III: 1990–1999

  28 Myth and Man

  29 Revolution to Cooperation

  30 Third Force

  31 Exit Winnie

  32 Negotiating

  33 Election

  34 Governing

  35 The Glorified Perch

  36 Forgiving

  37 Withdrawing

  38 Graça

  39 Mandela’s World

  40 Mandela’s Country

  41 Image and Reality

  Notes

  Select Bibliography

  Illustrations Credits

  Illustrations

  ill.1 The plain thatched rondavel that was the home of the young Mandela from the age of nine. (Photograph reproduced courtesy of the Mayibuye Centre/Link Picture Library)

  ill.2 Chief Jongintaba Dalindyebo, Mandela’s guardian for much of his youth.

  ill.3 The nineteen-year-old Mandela. (Photograph reproduced courtesy of the Mayibuye Centre/Link Picture Library)

  ill.4 In 1944 Mandela was married in Johannesburg to Evelyn Mase. (Photograph reproduced courtesy of the Mayibuye Centre/Link Picture Library)

  ill.5 Mandela in the offices of Mandela & Tambo. (Photograph © Jürgen Schadeberg)

  ill.6 Black Johannesburg in the 1950s was bursting with creative energy. (Photograph © Jürgen Schadeberg)

  ill.7
Mandela immersed in protests against the apartheid government, with Walter Sisulu, J. B. Marks and Ruth First. (Photograph © Jürgen Schadeberg)

  ill.8 In the Defiance Campaign of 1952 Mandela worked alongside both the conservative Dr. Moroka and the communist Dr. Dadoo. (Photograph © Jürgen Schadeberg)

  ill.9 Mandela sparred regularly with boxing champions like Jerry Moloi. (Photograph by Bob Gosani for Drum magazine. © Bailey’s African History Archives/Link Picture Library)

  ill.10 The accused in the Treason Trial, which began in 1957.

  ill.11 Mandela’s wedding to his second wife, Winnie, in 1958.

  ill.12 Winnie, Mandela and their second daughter, Zindzi, photographed in 1961. (Photograph © Alf Kumalo)

  ill.13 Mandela at the Treason Trial in 1958. (Photograph © Jürgen Schadeberg)

  ill.14 Mandela burns his pass-book in the turmoil after the Sharpeville massacre in 1960. (Photograph © IDAF/Sipa Press/Rex Features)

  ill.15 Mandela meets the exiled Oliver Tambo at a conference in Ethiopia in 1962. (Photograph reproduced courtesy of the Mayibuye Centre/Link Picture Library)

  ill.16 At the military headquarters in Algeria, Mandela and Robert Resha met revolutionary leaders and received advice about guerrilla warfare.

  ill.17 Mandela in London in June 1962. (Photograph by Mary Benson)

  ill.18 The eight men sentenced to life imprisonment at the Rivonia trial in 1964. (Photograph reproduced courtesy of the Mayibuye Centre/Link Picture Library)

  ill.19 Mandela’s mother came to Pretoria in 1964 for her son’s trial, and watched him being sentenced to life imprisonment. Four years afterward she visited him on Robben Island, and died a few weeks later. (Photograph © Alf Kumalo)

  ill.20 Prisoners, including Mandela, in the Robben Island courtyard in 1965. (Photograph © Juhan Kuus/Sipa Press/Rex Features)

  ill.21 Mandela and Sisulu on Robben Island. (Photograph reproduced courtesy of the Mayibuye Centre/Link Picture Library)

  ill.22 Kaiser Matanzima, Mandela’s nephew and earlier his hero, visits Winnie in Soweto. (Photograph © Alf Kumalo)

  ill.23 Mandela in the garden on Robben Island in 1977 with the Namibian leader Toivo ja Toivo and Justice Mpanza. (Photograph © Reuters/Popperfoto)

  Images of Mandela:

  ill.24 The handsome man-about-town with his glamorous young wife, Winnie. (Photograph reproduced courtesy of the Mayibuye Centre/Link Picture Library)

  ill.25 The bearded “Black Pimpernel.” (Photograph reproduced courtesy of the Mayibuye Centre/Link Picture Library)

  ill.26 The Xhosa prince appearing in tribal regalia for his trial in 1962.

  ill.27 The larger-than-life bust of Mandela on London’s South Bank, unveiled by Oliver Tambo in 1985. (Photograph © Jillian Edelstein/Link Picture Library)

  ill.28 Mandela emerges from prison, hand in hand with Winnie. (Photograph © Argus/I-Afrika/Link Picture Library)

  ill.29 The first meeting between the ANC and the government in May 1990. (Photograph © Benny Gool/PictureNET Africa/Link Picture Library)

  ill.30 Mandela and de Klerk at the national peace conference in Johannesburg in September 1991, smiling … (Photograph © Rodger Bosch/I-Afrika/Link Picture Library)

  ill.31 … and glowering. (Photograph © Rodger Bosch/I-Afrika/Link Picture Library)

  ill.32 Zulu Chief Buthelezi refuses to shake hands with Mandela and de Klerk at the end of the conference. (Photograph © Louise Gubb/I-Afrika/Link Picture Library)

  ill.33 Mandela and the ninety-four-year-old widow of Hendrik Verwoerd. (Photograph © Henner Frankenfeld/PictureNET Africa/Link Picture Library)

  ill.34 Mandela visits Verwoerd’s statue. (Photograph © Reuters/Popperfoto)

  ill.35 Mandela and Percy Yutar, who, as prosecutor, had helped to send him to jail for twenty-seven years. (Photograph © Louise Gubb/I-Afrika/Link Picture Library)

  ill.36 Mandela and P. W. Botha. (Photograph © PA News)

  ill.37 Mandela presents Springbok captain Francois Pienaar with the 1995 rugby World Cup. (Photograph © PA News)

  ill.38 Mandela and Winnie with lawyers Ismail Ayob and George Bizos at Winnie’s 1991 trial for kidnapping Stompie Seipei. (Photograph © Link Picture Library)

  ill.39 Mandela takes President Clinton to see his old cell on Robben Island. (Photograph © PA News)

  ill.40 Mandela and the Queen during his 1996 state visit to Britain. (Photograph © Louise Buller/Associated Press)

  ill.41 Mandela with Diana, Princess of Wales. (Photograph © PA News)

  ill.42 Mandela with a group of his grandchildren. (Photograph © Siphiwe Mhlambi/Sygma)

  ill.43 Mandela and Graça Machel. (Photograph © Associated Press)

  ill.44 Thabo Mbeki succeeds Mandela as President of the ANC in December 1997. (Photograph © PA News)

  ill.45 Mandela’s eightieth birthday banquet in July 1998 also became the celebration of his wedding to Graça. (Photograph © Sygma)

  Introduction

  I AM conscious of both the unusual opportunity and the responsibility in undertaking this book. When I wrote to President Mandela in 1995 suggesting an authorized biography he invited me to breakfast in his house in Johannesburg, and told me he would like me to write it because of our long friendship—“Provided,” he joked, “that you don’t mention that we first met in a shebeen.” He reminded me that he had read my book Anatomy of Britain when he was awaiting trial in 1962. He promised to discuss critical questions with me, to try to ensure that the facts were accurate, and to let me see relevant letters and documents. But he would leave me free to make my own judgments and criticisms: it was important, he said, for the movement to learn from mistakes; and, he insisted, “I’m no angel.”

  It had been my good luck to have first known Mandela in Johannesburg in 1951, and to have seen him at several decisive moments over the next decade before he went to prison. I first encountered him after I had come out to South Africa to edit the black magazine Drum, which opened all doors into the vibrant and exciting world of black writers, musicians and politicians in the Johannesburg in which Mandela moved, and gave me a front seat from which to observe the mounting black opposition to the apartheid government which had come to power in 1948. I attended the ANC conference which approved the Defiance Campaign of 1952; I watched Mandela organizing the first volunteers, and mobilizing resistance in 1954 to the destruction of Sophiatown, the multiracial slum where I had spent many happy evenings. In 1957 I saw him frequently at the Treason Trial, about which I later wrote a book; and in 1960, as a correspondent of the Observer, I covered the Sharpeville crisis and interviewed Mandela in Soweto just after the massacre. My last, poignant sight of him was in 1964, when I was observing the Rivonia trial in Pretoria, which gave me a chance to see the final speech he was then preparing (see this page–this page). As a journalist I could not see Mandela during his twenty-seven years in prison, but I revisited black South Africa and kept in touch with exiles in London and elsewhere. In the mid-1980s, when the conflict was escalating, I saw much of Oliver Tambo, the ANC President, in London, and arranged meetings for him with British businessmen. I also talked often to Winnie Mandela by telephone. I returned to Johannesburg for the crises of 1985 and 1986, preparing a book about black politics and business, Black and Gold, before the South African government in 1986 banned me from returning. My ban was temporarily lifted just in time for me to return before Mandela’s release from jail in February 1990; later, I visited him twice a week in his Soweto house. Over the next four years I saw him many times, both in London—where he asked me to introduce him at fund-raising receptions—and in Johannesburg, to which I often returned, and where I watched the elections of April 1994.

  Since beginning this book I have made several journeys through South Africa with my wife, Sally, trying to piece together the jigsaw of Mandela’s varied life, while immersing myself in the fast-changing contemporary scene. I have seen President Mandela in contrasted settings: in his offices and mansions in Pretoria and Cape Town, in his
own house in Houghton, on Robben Island, at banquets and conferences, in Parliament in Cape Town, at the UN in New York or at state occasions in London. I have traveled to the Great Place where he was brought up in the Transkei, and to his new house in Qunu. I have talked to scores of his old friends and colleagues, but also to his former opponents, whether warders, officials or political leaders—including ex-President P. W. Botha in Wilderness, ex-President F. W. de Klerk in Cape Town, and the former Foreign Minister, Pik Botha, in the Transvaal.

  Mandela’s moving autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, published in 1994, has provided his own invaluable record of his political development; I have had generous advice from his collaborator, Richard Stengel, whose recorded interviews with Mandela have also been useful. I have also been given access to the unpublished memoir which Mandela wrote in jail, and have seen the original manuscript in his own hand. But Mandela’s own autobiography, published when he had first become President, with political discretion and modesty, leaves all the more scope for a many-sided picture which can describe him as others saw him, show how he interacted with friends and enemies, and put his life into a global context.

  In writing this book I have tried to show the harsh realities of Mandela’s long and adventurous life as they appeared to him and to his friends at the time, stripped of the gloss of mythology and romance; but also to trace how the glittering image of Mandela was magnified while he was in jail, acquiring its own power and influence across the world; and to show how the prisoner was able to relate the image to reality.

  I have given special emphasis to the long years in prison, with the help of extensive interviews, unpublished letters and documents; for Mandela’s prison story has unique value to a biographer, with its human intensity and tests of character, providing an intimate play rather than a wide-ranging pageant; and Mandela’s relationships with his friends and warders became a universal drama, with a significance that transcended African politics. The prison years are often portrayed as a long hiatus in the midst of Mandela’s political career; but I see them as the key to his development, transforming the headstrong activist into the reflective and self-disciplined world statesman.