Tag: Mandela

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Nelson Mandela: Quotes & Facts

This book is an anthology of 141 quotes from Nelson Mandela and 88 selected facts about Nelson Mandela.   Nelson Mandela was a Christian. The Mandela clan came from royalty.  His great-grandfather was ruler of the Thembu people in South Africa’s modern Eastern Cape Province. Mandela’s father had four wives. Mandela is the youngest of all of the sons that his father had; he is the only one surviving. Nelson Mandela once worked as a guard at a mine. Nelson Mandela allowed his chef to publish a cookbook of his favorite meals: farm chicken, tripe and sour milk are some of his favorite things to eat. After he was separated from his second wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Nelson Mandela asked struggle stalwart Amina Cachalia, with whom he had a long relationship, to marry him but she turned him down. Nelson Mandela was married 3 times and had 6 children. Nelson Mandela had 17 grandchildren and many great-grandchildren. When Nelson Mandela was first elected president of South Africa, a local newspaper ran a quote of his in front-page bold type: “I’M NOT MESSIAH.” Nelson Mandela was the first black president of the Republic of South Africa (1994 – 1999).   “I am the master of my fate and the captain of my destiny.” “A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.” “As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.” “Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.” “A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor, who defines the nature of the struggle, and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor. At a point, one can only fight fire with fire” “A good head and good heart are always a formidable combination. But when you add to that a literate tongue or pen, then you have something very special.” “A leader is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.” “A Nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but it’s lowest ones” “After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.”

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Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela is one of the great moral and political leaders of our time: an international hero whose lifelong dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South Africa won him the Nobel Peace Prize and the presidency of his country. Since his triumphant release in 1990 from more than a quarter-century of imprisonment, Mandela has been at the center of the most compelling and inspiring political drama in the world. As president of the African National Congress and head of South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement, he was instrumental in moving the nation toward multiracial government and majority rule. He is revered everywhere as a vital force in the fight for human rights and racial equality. The foster son of a Thembu chief, Mandela was raised in the traditional, tribal culture of his ancestors, but at an early age learned the modern, inescapable reality of what came to be called apartheid, one of the most powerful and effective systems of oppression ever conceived. In classically elegant and engrossing prose, he tells of his early years as an impoverished student and law clerk in Johannesburg, of his slow political awakening, and of his pivotal role in the rebirth of a stagnant ANC and the formation of its Youth League in the 1950s. He describes the struggle to reconcile his political activity with his devotion to his family, the anguished breakup of his first marriage, and the painful separations from his children. He brings vividly to life the escalating political warfare in the fifties between the ANC and the government, culminating in his dramatic escapades as an underground leader and the notorious Rivonia Trial of 1964, at which he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Herecounts the surprisingly eventful twenty-seven years in prison and the complex, delicate negotiations that led both to his freedom and to the beginning of the end of apartheid. Finally he provides the ultimate inside account.

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Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela

The book that inspired the major new motion picture Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.
Nelson Mandela is one of the great moral and political leaders of our time: an international hero whose lifelong dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South Africa won him the Nobel Peace Prize and the presidency of his country. Since his triumphant release in 1990 from more than a quarter-century of imprisonment, Mandela has been at the center of the most compelling and inspiring political drama in the world. As president of the African National Congress and head of South Africa’s antiapartheid movement, he was instrumental in moving the nation toward multiracial government and majority rule. He is revered everywhere as a vital force in the fight for human rights and racial equality.

LONG WALK TO FREEDOM is his moving and exhilarating autobiography, destined to take its place among the finest memoirs of history’s greatest figures. Here for the first time, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela tells the extraordinary story of his life–an epic of struggle, setback, renewed hope, and ultimate triumph. The famously taciturn South African president reveals much of himself in Long Walk to Freedom. A good deal of this autobiography was written secretly while Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years on Robben Island by South Africa’s apartheid regime. Among the book’s interesting revelations is Mandela’s ambivalence toward his lifetime of devotion to public works. It cost him two marriages and kept him distant from a family life he might otherwise have cherished. Long Walk to Freedom also discloses a strong and generous spirit that refused to be broken under the most trying circumstances–a spirit in which just about everybody can find something to admire.