The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

of the “struggle against apartheid”, centred on the public political careers of Nelson
Mandela and Oliver Tambo. 26 This study presented a chronological arrangement of
statements and writings by Mandela, Tambo and the ANC into a familiar periodisation
and arrangement of resistance history centred on the ANC. These were accompanied by
interpretive essays, which drew the documents into narratives of resistance and
leadership.
The year 1948 ‐ the start of the book’s concentration ‐ was taken to be the beginning of
apartheid, and the first portion of documents reflected the “challenge” to apartheid by a
“new generation” as represented by the ANC Youth League, especially in the persons of
Mandela and Tambo. 1960 was the next important date and this marked the phase of
“proscription and enforced reorientation”. 1964 signalled the beginning of the phase of
ʺpost‐Rivonia politicsʺ, a period which was taken to run until the unbanning of the ANC
and the release of Mandela in 1990. The documents arranged in this order were taken to
“articulate the aspirations of Africans for full participation in a more equitable and
democratic order in South Africa”. 27
At the centre of the articulation of African aspirations according to Johns and Davis, were
Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo, who were at the “heart” of more than four decades of
struggle and who were “central to any resolution of the South African crisis”. The
biographic focus on “the two leaders”, Mandela and Tambo, was the main organising
feature of the book. They were among the new generation, which revitalised the ANC and
they were on the ANCYL executive committee, which drafted the Programme of Action
adopted by the ANC in 1949. As a result, they were able to strike “a more responsive
chord in the African populace”. At the time of his imprisonment in 1962, Mandela was
“the pre‐eminent figure in African politics” whose position of political leadership was
26Sheridan Johns and R Hunt Davis, Jr (eds), Mandela, Tambo and the African National Congress: The
Struggle Against Apartheid, 1948‐1990, A Documentary Survey.
27Sheridan Johns and R Hunt Davis, Jr (eds), Mandela, Tambo and the African National Congress, pp
xiii‐xvii, 13.
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