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Mandela

The Aristocrat and the Revolution

Mandela cover

Mandela

The Aristocrat and the Revolution

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Pre-order. Available 03 Sep 2026
£14.40 RRP £18.00 Website price saving £3.60 (20%)

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Description

The first biography of Nelson Mandela written by an African scholar, this groundbreaking book offers a radically de-mythologized take on a global icon of anticolonial liberation struggles.

Leading sociologist Xolela Mangcu draws on original interviews and archival research – as well as on his own unique understanding of the complexities of Black South African culture – to offer an important corrective account of Mandela's identity, character, and political career. Mangcu not only sets the record straight about Mandela's Thembu, rather than Xhosa, heritage, but also uncovers a fundamental political pragmatism Mandela developed thanks to his family's strategic alliances with colonialists and through his own Victorian-style education at leading British mission schools. What emerges is a Mandela whose life story belongs less to the realm of hagiography and more to the realm of real-world struggle, with all the contradictions it entails.

Table of Contents

Part I: Mandela's Colonial Victorian Heritage
1. Introduction
2. Of Imperial Monarchs
3. Men of the Bhunga – A Parliamentary Heritage
4. Black Victorian
5. In Jabavu's Mode: The University Years A Baptism of Racism
6. Vanity and Virtue in the Heart of a Prince
7. Baptismal of Racism
8. The Struggle Needs Many Tactics
9. Communist or Pragmatist?
10. Mandela and the Cold War

Interlude

Part II: Mandela's Tragic Pragmatism/Pragmatic Cooperation With the Enemy
11. Into the Lion's Den
12. Infidelities and Infelicities
13. The Somana Affair
14. Tragic Hero on Trial
15. In the Belly of the Beast: The Robben Island Years
16. Time Out of Joint
17. Victory in Defeat
18. On the Wheel of History

Product details

Bloomsbury Academic Test
Published 03 Sep 2026
Format Ebook (Epub & Mobi)
Edition 1st
Extent 272
ISBN 9781350522138
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

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