The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

underground as political commander in the early 1960s, 260 on his auto/narrations during
his trials, and on his emergence as a leader with a reputation during the Rivonia Trial in
1963‐64. It also drew on the decision made by the ANC to build Mandela’s image. From
then on, according to Callinicos, “the image of Mandela grew steadily in stature, and was
to become a successful weapon in globalising the struggle against apartheid”. 261 More than
merely the propagation of an image and the growth of a reputation, here we argue that
these interventions since the early 1960s were also deliberate biographical acts, with
Mandela’s narrated biography put to the work of drumming up support for a liberation
movement in exile and in framing the struggle against apartheid.
Further biographies commemorating milestones of imprisonment and celebrating
birthdays were produced subsequently. The ANC ensured that it kept up a heroic story of
Mandela’s life in its campaigning. 262 Mandela biographies were also produced and
distributed by IDAF, successor to the Treason Trial Defence Fund, which built upon these
images and consolidated Mandela as symbol of South African survival, sacrifice and
resilience. 263 By the 1980s, as biographies of the unseen Mandela were produced through
growing campaigns in South Africa and abroad for his release, the enduring image of
Mandela as leader began to take on Messianic proportions. 264 Through his release, it was
believed that Mandela would deliver the South African people from evil. That such
deliverance was perceived to take place after Mandela’s release was part of the emergence
of Mandela as pater familias, as public father of the national family. The discursive
260 Mandela released a stylised image of himself in 1962 while he was underground as a “graphic
message” to the people of South Africa, “asserting his African heritage”. The image was an Eli
Weinberg portrait of Mandela dressed in a blanket, with beads around his neck (Luli Callinicos, The
World that Made Mandela, p 13). Anthony Sampson has also referred to Mandela as “a master of images
who knows how to project himself” (Anthony Sampson, Mandela, p 579).
261 Luli Callinicos, ‘Reinventing the ANC’, p 20.
262 See for example the editorial, ‘Mandela – 60 Years Old’, and the article ‘Mandela and our
Revolution’, in Sechaba, Third Quarter, Vol. 12, 1978.
263 Apart from those mentioned before, see Nelson Mandela, The Struggle is My Life (London: IDAF,
1986).
264 This process saw the launch of the Free Mandela Campaign in 1980 in a strategy conceived Oliver
Tambo and the ANC in Lusaka and included the unveiling of a “larger than life bust” of Mandela by
Oliver Tambo on London’s South Bank in 1985. See a photograph of the unveiling in Anthony
Sampson, Mandela, between pp 326 and 327. See also Luli Callinicos, The World that Made Mandela, pp
262‐263.
281