Critical Review of Nelson Mandelas Autobiography, A Long Walk to Essay

Critical Review of Nelson Mandelas Autobiography, A Long Walk to Freedom - Essay Example Along with his peers, Mandela was inculcated with a tremendous sense of responsibility to his family and community. This is evident from his statement, "at night, I shared my food and blanket with these same boys. I was no more than five when I became a herd-boy, looking after sheep and calves in the fields." The important element that contributed to the political consciousness of Mandela during his youth was his listening to the elders of his village discuss the history of their people. "It was from Chief Joyi that I began to discover that the history of the Bantu-speaking peoples began far to the north continent." He learned much about some of the atrocities experienced by his people under European colonial rule and this began to shape his consciousness. Mandela's desire to study law emanated from his observations of the paramount chief conducting court in his village and from his commitment to helping to end minority rule in South Africa. "My later notions of leadership were prof oundly influenced by observing the regent and his court. I watched and learned from the tribal meetings that were regularly held at the Great Place". Mandela's initiation into political activism began in 1940 while he was working on his degree at Fort Hare College in the Eastern Cape. He did well academically but he began to realize himself as 'the other'. "We were taught -- and believed -- that the best ideas were English ideas, the best government was English government, and the best men were Englishmen. " Such education persuaded him to forge an identity of his own. As a member of the Student's Representative Council, he was suspended from school for participating in a boycott to protest the reduction of the council's powers by authorities. After returning home briefly, he soon left for Johannesburg to avoid an arranged marriage and being trained for chieftainship. The events that occurred here are important as they shape Mandela's views about segregation. While working as a mine policeman, he observed, "the mining companies preferred such segregation because it prevented different ethnic groups from uniting around a common grievance and reinforced the power of the chiefs." During this period, the early 1940's, Mandela became politically aware and joined the African National Congress (ANC), a middle-class political movement founded in 1912. Chafing at the ANC's ineffectiveness in getting the government to recognize African rights, he helped launch its Youth League in 1944. Four years later, the Afrikaner-dominated National Party's rise to power began the apartheid era and made ANC activities more urgent. In the early 1950s he initiated the defiance campaign' against the discriminatory policies of the South African government, and argued for non-violent resistance to apartheid. However, following the Sharpeville massacre in 1960 his position changed, and he was forced underground to avoid the newly-imposed ban on the ANC. The horrors at Sharp eville hardened Mandela's resolve, and he began to advocate a different course of non-terrorist' action, aimed at the state but theoretically preventing civilian unrest. He was appointed the campaign's national volunteer-in-chief, which required that he travel throughout South Africa visiting the many black townships in order to explain and win mass support for the campaign.