Dr%20Erica%20Lombard: List of publications

This chapter explores the influence of Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom (1994), placing the autobiography within the context of the global Mandela phenomenon. Focusing on the symbolic function of Mandela’s life story, which was concretized by the autobiography but taken up in multiple media and disseminated widely both in South Africa and globally, the chapter examines the shaping of Mandela as an embodiment of racial reconciliation. Mandela was a figure of hope embraced by the global media and rendered a postcolonial saint at the end of a cataclysmic century in which the history of decolonization represented but one disappointing utopian project among many. The chapter suggests that, while the African-centred humanism outlined in Long Walk to Freedom held radical resistant potential, Mandela’s value as a symbol proved equally available to conservative uses. This ambivalent legacy is being increasingly contested in South Africa.