Arts/Review

Political details missing in Mandela bio

HIGHER THAN HOPE: The
Authorized Biography of Nelson
Mandela. By Fatima Meer. Hamish
Hamilton, London, 1988. Second edi-
tion, 1989. Hardcover, 429 pages,
$27.95.

While in prison in the 1970s, Nelson
Mandela asked Fatima Meer to write his
biography, but her own trouble with the
authorities (she was banned from 1976 to
1984) delayed the work. The first edition of
Higher Than Hope was published in 1988,
and amended by Mandela himself for this
second edition, published in 1989.

Meer says of her own work: “At best it is
my interpretation of him,” and that a defini-
tive biography, based on extensive inter-
views with Mandela, has yet to be written.
This is an honest self-appraisal but, in the
meantime, she has given us a good narrative
history of the Mandela family.

Meerisa long-time friend of the Mandela
family and was able to interview their other
friends and relatives to provide many anec-
dotes about the young Nelson Mandela and
Winnie Madikizela in the pastoral African
world in which they grew up. She describes,
from her own observations, Mandela’s first
marriage to Evelyn Mase, which ended in
divorce, and Winnie’s long struggle to raise
afamily while under constant harassment —
including banning, imprisonment and tor-
ture. Meer also includes almost 80 pages of
the imprisoned Mandela’s letters to his fami-
ly in which he deals with many personal
aspects of their lives.

Meer traces Mandela’s political develop-
ment from when, as a child, he learned the
proud history of his people from stories told
by his elders. She traces his initial attempts
to get a university education at Fort Hare in
1939, from which he was expelled in 1940,
and follows Mandela’s move to Johannes-
burg to find work — first as a policeman in
the mines, then as an estate agent.

A fellow estate agent, future partner and
anti-apartheid leader Walter Sisulu, intro-
duced him to a law firm where he could work
and study. Mandela obtained his BA degree
in 1942 and enrolled in the Faculty of Law
at multi-racial Wiwatersrand University,
where he plunged into the whirlwind of
political discussion.

He joined the African National Congress
in 1944 and soon helped to found, with
Sisulu and many others, the ANC Youth
League. He immediately displayed great
abilities at writing, speaking, and organizing
non-violent struggles against the widening
system of racial segregation and exploita-
tion.

One political theme which Meer dev-
elops is the dispute which led to the split
within the ANC and the formation of the Pan
Africanist Congress in 1958. Within the
ANC there had been along struggle between
the “Africanists,” who, in general, rejected
unity with activists in other population
groups, and the “democrats,” who sought
this unity. It was acomplex struggle in which
many individual members changed their
positions gradually, while working together

Post-Folk Fest concerts

The Vancouver Folk Music Festival
plans a series of concerts immediately fol-
lowing the July 13-15 festival weekend at
Jericho Beach Park. Taking place at the Van-
‘couver East Cultural Centre, the concerts
are: July 16, Martin Carthy, Dave
Swarbrick, The Waterdaughters and Roy
Bailey; July 17, Italian music with Calican-
to, La Ciapa Rusa, Re Niliu and Patrick
Vaillant; July 18, three women — Jeanne
Bichevskaya, USSR, Gaudalupe Urbina
of Costa Rica, and Rosalie Sorrels, U.S.;
July 19, Japanese music with Katari Taiko
and The Frank Chickens; July 20, Quebec
with Richard Desjardins and Danielle Vil-
liere; July 21, Holly Graham, Davey
Graham, Tony Bird. All concerts at 8 p.m.
Tickets $12 per concert, phone 254-9578.

the moder revival of Celtic languages, on
Sunday, July 22, 8 p.m.; Canadian skater
Toller Cranston and others in Dream-
weaver/Strawberry Ice, on Sunday, July
22, 9 p.m.; on NFB Theatre, Black Sugar,
concerning the virtual slavery of Haitian
migrant cane workers in the Dominican
Republic, Wednesday, July 25, 10 p.m.

KCTS in Seattle meanwhile airs Great
Journeys: The Ho Chi Minh Trail, on a
photographer’s retum trip to Vietnam, Sun-
day, July 22, 8 p.m. and Tuesday, July 24,
4 a.m.; on American Masters, a special on
one the U.S.’ renowned realistic film direc-
tors in Martin Scorcese Directs, on Sun-
day, July 22, 10 p.m. (closed-captioned);
also Through the Wire, a documentary on
three U.S. women convicted of “politically

xne motivated crimes” and sentenced to a high
The Tube: Knowledge Network security unit in Kentucky, on Friday, July
presents The Celts: The Final Conflict,on 27, 10 p.m. Closed-captioned,
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against increasing government oppression
and terror.

In particular, the Africanists opposed the
non-racial Freedom Charter, which had
been drafted in 1955 by representatives from
many groups, including the ANC. In 1958,
with Mandela and many other ANC leaders
banned or in prison, the Africanists tried to
get the ANC to renounce the charter, failed
and left en masse to form the PAC.

Now revered worldwide for his dedica-
tion to the equality of all population groups,
and to the unity of all political groups which
oppose apartheid, Mandela also, Meer
reports, was once a staunch Africanist. But,
she writes: “His antagonism against ‘for-
eigners’: against Communists, whites, In-
dians and Coloureds subsided and in the
course of time disappeared. In 1952 [when
the ANC and the Indian Congress organized
the Defiance of Unjust Laws Campaign]
Mandela, the Africanist emerged ... as the
arch non-racial democrat ....”

Meer does a great job in showing Nelson
and Winnie Mandela as flesh-and-blood
human beings at the centre of intense politi-

cal storms. But as a work with a large aud-
ience world-wide, this book has flaws which
should have been dealt with by the publish-
ers.
While Meer’s prose is punctuated with
references to South African groups and
events, Higher Than Hope contains very
little information about the workings of the
apartheid system, about South Africa’s long
and devastating war on the frontline states,
or about the many persons and organiza-
tions, other than the ANC and PAC. This
background information, which could have
been given in a few footnotes, would have
been very useful to the book’s many readers
outside South Affica, and its lack is inex-
cusable in a second edition by an exper-
ienced London publisher.

Those readers who want a family portrait
of the Mandelas, rich in personal details, will
be well pleased with Higher Than Hope,
while those who want a thorough political
history of the South African struggle may be
disappointed.

— Glenn Bullard

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Pacific Tribune, July 16, 1990 «7

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