The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

importance of relations of cultural production in the creation of biographic images of
Mandela and the crystallisation of a terrain of image construction in this genealogy. In the
connections between Mandela’s biographers, there was an intermingling of the public and
the private, of their own lives and the material they wrote about. 258
During the late 1950s, in the early years of the Treason Trial, the image of Nelson Mandela
as the born leader had not yet taken shape. His mini‐biographic profile of 25 words took
its place among the rest of the accused in Treason Trial publicity material produced in
1957. It was virtually hidden and there was nothing extraordinary about it. It read merely
Born 1918, the son of Chief Henry Mandela of the Transkei.
Attorney. Was amongst those sentenced for leadership of the
Defiance Campaign. Keen amateur boxer. 259
The notion of Mandela as born leader of the masses and outstanding individual began to
take shape in the early days of exile in the early 1960s, partly through the biographical
work of Mary Benson and Ruth First. This biographic image drew on a narrative of daring
leadership and a romantic picture of bravery generated by Mandela himself while
258 Two more examples of this relationship of representation are those between Steve Biko and Robert
Sobukwe and their respective biographers, Donald Woods and Benjamin Pogrund. The relationship
between former newspaper editor Donald Woods and Steve Biko gave rise to more than one
biographical project after Biko’s death in detention in 1977. Woods’ biography of Biko (Biko, New
York: Paddington Press) was first published in 1978 and claimed to be a “personal testimony” of the
man he described as “the greatest ... I ever met” (pp 10; 60). The film Cry Freedom, directed and
produced by Richard Attenborough (Marble Arch Productions, c1987), was based partly on Woods’
biography and depicted Woods’ relationship with Biko. Ultimately, both sought to foreground Woods
himself as hero and brave protagonist in defying his banning order, writing the book in secret,
smuggling it out chapter by chapter and evading security police surveillance. According to Biko’s
comrade and lover, Mamphela Ramphele, described by Woods as “that black bombshell of a girl”
(Biko, p 47), Cry Freedom was an “inaccurate portrayal of Steve’s political life, which Donald Woods
had not understood in the short time he had come to know Steve”. It also “misrepresented his
personal relationships” (Mamphela Ramphele, A Life, Cape Town: David Philip, 1995, p 136). It has
been suggested by former exile Bennie Bunsee, that Woods, in the “most vulgar” fashion, “capitalised”
on his friendship with Biko by turning himself into an anti‐apartheid hero and benefiting from this
(Cape Argus, 4 April 1997). See also Mandla Langa, ‘Why Biko Film Became a White Man’s Tale’,
Sunday Independent, 31 August 1997. Another example is the relationship between Robert Sobukwe
and Bejamin Pogrund, also a journalist. Pogrund’s biography of Sobukwe (Sobukwe and Apartheid,
Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball Publishers) was published in 1990 and was the product of a long
friendship between the two men.
259 South Africa’s Treason Trial. Prominence, however, was given to a profile of Luthuli’s life.
280