The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

established through his professional work as an attorney and his political activism,
particularly his underground work in the early 1960s. 28
Mandela’s incarceration on Robben Island paved the way for the rise to leadership of
Tambo, long‐time associate of Mandela from Fort Hare days in the 1940s and also his
Johannesburg law partner in the 1950s. In exile, but unconfined by prison walls, it was
Tambo who “articulated most fully and widely the ANC vision of the country’s future”
until his stroke in 1989. But Tambo did so, implies Johns and Davis, as trusted caretaker
leader on behalf of Mandela during his enforced absence. However, while in prison and
out of the public eye, Mandela “continued to exhibit his unique qualities of leadership
among his fellow prisoners” and documents in a special section of the book are presented
to bear testimony to this. And after his release in 1990, Mandela began to emerge as the
ANCʹs “prime spokesperson ... at home and abroad”. 29
At no stage did Johns and Davis attempt to engage with the historiography of resistance in
South Africa, nor with the methodology of their book’s lineage originating largely in
Johns’ own editing of the first volume of Karis and Carter. Apart from a rudimentary
discussion of audiences, 30 little attempt was made to examine the production of political
documents, their distribution and redistribution and the meanings produced and
accumulated. Once again, African nationalism was taken as given, with almost no social
analysis nor any analysis of its discursive strategies. Leadership was also taken for
granted. In spite of biography being central to the organisation of the book, the approach
was largely empiricist and documentary realist, founded on untheorised notions of the
individual and leadership. Explanation was sought in chronology itself and in the linear
forms of causation constructed by the narrative.
28 Sheridan Johns and R Hunt Davis, Jr (eds), Mandela, Tambo and the African National Congress, pp
ix, xi, 3, 21.
29 Sheridan Johns and R Hunt Davis, Jr (eds), Mandela, Tambo and the African National Congress, pp 4,
317.
30 Sheridan Johns and R Hunt Davis, Jr (eds), Mandela, Tambo and the African National Congress, pp
10‐13.
122