PDF Summary:Long Walk to Freedom, by Nelson Mandela

Long Walk to Freedom chronicles Nelson Mandela’s extraordinary life story, as told by the man himself. Mandela is known as one of history’s great peacemakers, but his own life wasn’t a peaceful one. He fought against South Africa’s racist government policies and its system of apartheid from the 1940s to the 1960s. He then spent 27 years in prison, where he became a worldwide symbol of the South African struggle for freedom.

This guide explores Mandela’s experiences during four time periods: his childhood, his time as a young political activist, the years he spent in prison, and the time after his release. Our commentary provides background information about South Africa, including its political parties and important historical figures, as well as explores broader global trends of racism and oppression. We’ll also briefly examine Nelson Mandela’s legacy and what South Africa is like in its post-apartheid years.

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Mandela finally put his law studies to use in 1952 when he co-founded a firm dedicated to defending poor Black people from the NP’s unjust laws. Since the law was on the side of the oppressors, the firm won few of their cases.

(Shortform note: Chancellor House, where Mandela’s law firm was once located, is now a museum dedicated to the South African struggle for freedom.)

History of the National Party

To be more specific, the party Mandela refers to here is the Reunited National Party.

The original National Party was founded in 1914, and this was the party that Malan initially joined. However, when the National Party merged with the South African Party in 1934, Malan abandoned this newly formed United Party. He founded what he called the Purified National Party, a hardline Afrikaner nationalist party, to oppose the United Party’s more moderate platform.

In 1939, the leader of the United Party made peace with Malan, and together, they created the Reunited National Party. It wasn’t long before the two were at odds again, and several important members of the Reunited National Party withdrew, leaving Malan as the undisputed party leader. It was this incarnation of the National Party that won the 1948 election, making Malan the Prime Minister of South Africa and allowing him to institute his apartheid policies.

Escalating Violence Leads to Mandela’s Arrest

Mandela is known as one of history’s greatest peacemakers. In keeping with that reputation, as well as the ANC’s beliefs, he explains that he initially tried to fight back against discrimination and apartheid using nonviolent methods—strikes, petitions, and the like. Eventually, however, Mandela and other ANC leaders became disillusioned with peaceful, legal tactics; they concluded that Black South Africans would need to fight for their freedom.

The ANC tasked Mandela with creating a guerilla force, legally separate from the ANC itself, to fight against the National Party. In 1961, he founded a fighting force called Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK for short), which translates to ”Spear of the Nation.” The MK—a relatively small force that couldn’t hope to stand against the government’s military—relied on guerrilla tactics to disrupt the NP’s operations, most notably by bombing government buildings and power stations.

In response to the ANC’s escalating tactics, government forces aimed to capture and convict party leaders, including Mandela. Mandela was found and arrested in 1962. He recalls that he used his time in court to make several powerful statements. First, he said that he felt no loyalty to the National Party nor any obligation to follow its laws, as he hadn’t been allowed to vote in the election that put the NP in power. Second, he discussed several occasions when the government had refused to address the ANC’s concerns, thereby leaving violence as their only recourse.

Mandela was convicted of all charges in 1964. Although his crimes would normally carry the death penalty, the NP was facing strong international resistance: Much of the world supported Mandela and opposed apartheid. Executing Mandela would therefore have led to even stronger international censure, likely including harmful economic sanctions and trade embargos. As a result, instead of facing the death penalty, Mandela was sentenced to life in prison.

The Historical Trend of Political Violence

Politically-motivated violence is often frightening and controversial. Even so, it’s a common theme throughout world history. As one UK Labour Party politician observed, no major political change occurs without some degree of violence.

In the 20th century, Mandela and the MK’s fight against apartheid was by no means the only notable instance of political violence. Another prominent example from this time period was the suffragette movement in the UK: In the early 1910s, just 50 years before the MK was founded, women in the UK resorted to violence in fighting for their right to vote. Mandela may have even learned about suffragette violence in school and drawn inspiration from it for his own struggle—he received his primary education under British rule, and the suffragette movement was still fresh in British minds at the time.

The suffragettes’ tactics were very similar to those of the MK, consisting largely of bombing and burning infrastructure such as banks and post offices. Notably, their reasons for resorting to violence were also nearly identical to those of the MK: After decades of protesting and demonstrating peacefully, they decided that they had to use more extreme measures to get the men in government to pay attention to their cause. Just as Mandela observed during his trial, this political violence happened because people with power refused to listen to those without power.

The government response to suffragettes also closely mirrored what happened in South Africa during Mandela’s lifetime. Women who fought for the right to vote may not have faced the death penalty as Mandela risked, but they suffered police brutality, fines, and harsh prison terms. Many prisoners also endured painful and degrading force-feeding when they attempted hunger strikes. (Freedom fighters in South Africa also used hunger strikes as a form of protest, as we’ll explain later.)

Mandela’s Years in Prison

Mandela spent a total of 27 years in three prisons, enduring harsh conditions but never giving up the fight for racial equality and freedom.

Robben Island Prison: 1964-1982

For the first 18 years, Mandela was held in a brutal facility called Robben Island Prison. Mandela notes that most inmates at Robben Island had no beds nor plumbing, and they spent their days doing hard manual labor. Furthermore, prisoners were almost completely isolated from the outside world—not even allowed visits from their families—and they were frequently forced into solitary confinement for minor infractions.

(Shortform note: Today, Robben Island is a museum that offers tours of the old facility, including Mandela’s tiny cell. Many of the tour guides are former prisoners—they tell stories of how Mandela, Sisulu, and others kept the prisoners’ spirits up, educated them, and helped them survive these harsh conditions of imprisonment.)

While enduring these harsh conditions, Mandela had to stay alert for attempts on his life. For example, a prison warden once offered to help him escape, but Mandela refused. He later learned that the warden was a plant from the Bureau of State Security, and he would have made sure that Mandela died during the “escape attempt.”

(Shortform note: While this attempt on Mandela’s life may seem shocking, assassination attempts are a common tactic for political extremists of all kinds. The goal is to eliminate “high-value targets,” important political figures whose death will (theoretically) destabilize the current government or weaken and frighten the opposition.)

Prisoner Protests at Robben Island

Mandela notes that at Robben Island, the prisoners engaged in numerous protests against the prison’s inhumane conditions and practices. Most commonly, they went on hunger strikes. However, those strikes were frequently unsuccessful because they only worked if word about the protest spread outside the prison—otherwise, the inmates would simply starve themselves to death while the guards and wardens watched.

(Shortform note: Hunger strikes are effective in large part because they reflect poorly on the authorities. A government that lets people starve themselves to death instead of addressing their concerns is likely to face backlash from its citizens and, possibly, from the rest of the world as well. Furthermore, there’s a chance that dead hunger strikers could become martyrs, bringing more attention and more people to their causes. To avoid these problems, it’s often better for authorities to give in to the hunger striker’s demands or at least to start negotiating with them.)

Mandela says that he advocated for more disruptive forms of protest, such as refusing to work or refusing to clean. However, he was often outvoted, and he always supported the group’s decisions once they were made.

Effective Protests Must Be Disruptive

While Mandela’s comrades resisted his calls for more disruptive protests, he was arguably right to suggest them. Experts say that protests do need to be disruptive to be effective; they need to upset people’s routines and somehow force them to pay attention.

What qualifies as a “disruptive” protest has changed over time. During the US Civil Rights Movement, for example, peaceful marches were uncommon enough—and therefore attracted enough attention—that they got people talking about civil rights issues. Today, however, such marches and demonstrations are routine; therefore, protestors are engaging in new tactics such as revealing private information about politicians or interfering with an administrator’s daily life.

Pollsmoor Prison: 1982-1988

In 1982, the authorities moved Mandela to Pollsmoor Maximum Security Prison, located near Cape Town. Mandela isn’t sure why he was moved out of Robben Island, though he suspects that the government was trying to undercut the resistance there by removing its leadership.

Mandela says that, compared to his previous situation, Pollsmoor seemed luxurious. He had to share a room with three other political prisoners—but that room was large, clean, furnished, and had indoor plumbing. Furthermore, prisoners at Pollsmoor got much better food, had a wider selection of reading materials, and were allowed visitors much more frequently than at Robben Island. Even so, it was still a prison.

(Shortform note: Contrary to the relatively nice conditions Mandela described at Pollsmoor, most of the prison is dirty, severely overcrowded, and lacking in basic amenities like hot water; it’s very similar to what Mandela experienced at Robben Island. Many prisons such as Pollsmoor—apartheid-era facilities that were designed to break Black prisoners’ spirits—still exist today, with their inhumane practices and conditions largely unchanged.)

In 1985, prison authorities moved Mandela to a solitary room. Though he regretted being separated from his compatriots, Mandela took advantage of his isolation to start writing letters to the government, trying to arrange a meeting between the ANC and the NP.

According to Mandela, this was a bold step and one he couldn’t have taken while he was with the other prisoners—asking for negotiations might have looked like a sign of weakness or even surrender. However, Mandela believed there was no hope of defeating the NP in a civil war and no sense in wasting more lives trying. Therefore, he decided that he would be the first to reach out and try to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

(Shortform note: By pushing for talks with the National Party, Mandela was challenging assumptions about their motivations. This is a crucial step in any negotiation—if both parties think they already know what the other wants and are unwilling to give it to them, then the negotiation can’t proceed. In this case, Mandela and his colleagues assumed that the NP would have no interest in diplomacy. However, as it turned out, the NP was under immense political and economic pressure to end apartheid; as a result, as we’ll soon discuss, party leaders eventually did start taking steps toward reconciliation.)

A Conditional Offer of Freedom

Mandela notes that even while he was in prison, his name and message continued to spread. Resistance—much of it violent—built against the National Party as more and more South Africans joined Mandela’s cause.

That’s why, in 1985, State President P. W. Botha offered to release Mandela from prison if he publicly denounced the ongoing violence against the government. Mandela refused, saying that the National Party itself was responsible for that violence. The government held the power—therefore, the government chose whether issues would be resolved peacefully or not.

(Shortform note: This was not the only time that President Botha offered terms for freeing Mandela. For example, in 1986, Botha attempted to negotiate the release of several hostages, with Mandela’s freedom as part of his offer. However, the ANC rejected Botha’s offer out of hand—the group demanded that Mandela be freed without conditions, not simply as a political bargaining chip. This showed that the ANC and the South African people were indeed still fighting against the National Party; there was no room for compromise or deals with their oppressors.)

Victor Verster Prison: 1988-1990

Mandela recalls that in 1988, he contracted tuberculosis—a potentially deadly lung infection—due to the damp, dirty conditions in his new room. He was taken to a hospital for treatment. Once he’d recovered, instead of returning to Pollsmoor, he was moved to a nearby facility called Victor Verster Prison.

(Shortform note: Tuberculosis is a very common disease among incarcerated people all over the world. Though Mandela blamed the dank cell for his disease, other possible explanations for its prevalence include malnutrition and overcrowding—conditions that either weaken the immune system or make exposure to tuberculosis more likely.)

Mandela says that Victor Verster Prison had an excellent reputation and was much more comfortable than even Pollsmoor. Instead of a cell, he had a cottage and the surrounding land all to himself; instead of having to follow a strict schedule, he could do as he pleased. In fact, Mandela says that the cottage felt deceptively “free”—he could do anything he wanted, except leave.

(Shortform note: Victor Verster Prison was commonly the last stop for political prisoners before the authorities released them. This, along with the relative privacy and freedom that Mandela’s cottage provided, suggests that the government was planning to release him years before F.W. de Klerk actually gave the order to do so. However, it’s also possible that Mandela was moved to Victor Verster due to his ongoing health issues, as this new prison was closer to doctors and healthcare facilities that could treat him.)

Mandela continued his efforts to arrange a meeting between ANC and NP leaders. In July of 1989, his efforts paid off and he had a brief meeting with State President Botha. Mandela says that, while their discussion didn’t yield any major breakthroughs in ending the conflict, the meeting itself was significant; it was the first time that party leaders had come together for peaceful talks. He hoped that it would be the first step toward peace throughout South Africa.

(Shortform note: State President Botha didn’t just uphold the status quo of apartheid—he was one of its staunchest supporters, and he fought fiercely to protect apartheid at the height of the South African resistance. Numerous quotes from Botha show he firmly believed that apartheid was natural and just; that Black people should be subservient to white people, and that Blacks were happy in their inferior positions unless they were brainwashed to feel otherwise.)

As it turned out, that meeting would be the only time that Mandela spoke to Botha as state president—Botha had suffered a stroke in February of 1989, and he stepped down from the presidency in August of that same year.

(Shortform note: Mandela had a great deal of respect for Botha. He praised the former state president for taking the first steps toward equality and peace in South Africa, rather than focusing on the years that Botha spent viciously defending apartheid. When Botha died in 2006, Mandela delivered a moving and heartfelt speech in his former jailer’s honor.)

Mandela’s Freedom and Presidency

Mandela explains that Frederik Willem de Klerk, commonly known as F.W. de Klerk, became state president after Botha resigned. De Klerk’s presidency proved to be a major turning point both for Mandela and for South Africa as a whole. At his order, Nelson Mandela was finally released from Victor Verster Prison on February 11, 1990.

(Shortform note: Victor Verster Prison—renamed Groot Drakenstein Correctional Center in 2000—now has a bronze statue of Nelson Mandela standing outside its gates. Though the prison is in a fairly remote location, meaning people would have to go out of their way to see the statue, the spot was chosen to commemorate Mandela’s first moments of freedom.)

Mandela and de Klerk Tear Down Apartheid

According to Mandela, de Klerk’s administration also began the daunting project of dismantling apartheid. A week before freeing Mandela, de Klerk made a number of shocking announcements: Most notably, he lifted the bans on the ANC and dozens of other illegal organizations, and he declared that all nonviolent political prisoners would be released.

De Klerk met with Mandela in December of 1990 to discuss how South Africa could move forward as a unified nation. However, reconciliation between Black and white South Africans would be a difficult undertaking.

Mandela recalls that two of the largest problems that he and de Klerk had to overcome were Black South Africans’ desire for revenge against their oppressors and white South Africans’ fears that they themselves would be oppressed under a majority Black rule. The ANC’s mission statement—to be a party for all South Africans, regardless of skin color—was instrumental to the reconciliation process.

Mandela repeatedly said in speeches that he would need the help of all citizens of all races to create a better future for a united South Africa. ANC representatives traveled throughout the country, holding town meetings for people to share their ideas and their concerns. Negotiations between the ANC and the National Party went on for years as party leaders hashed out how to dismantle the infrastructure of apartheid in a way that benefited everyone.

The ANC and the National Party didn’t always work in perfect cooperation. Mandela notes that de Klerk attacked the ANC for things like maintaining the Umkhonto we Sizwe paramilitary force and proposing economic plans that included spending billions of dollars on social programs and new homes for Blacks. While Mandela publicly reprimanded de Klerk on these occasions, he also made it clear that he ultimately considered de Klerk an ally in the struggle to create a free and equitable South Africa.

Mandela and de Klerk jointly received the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize for their work in overturning apartheid and bringing democracy to South Africa.

(Shortform note: De Klerk’s anti-ANC statements arguably weren’t entirely surprising. Before taking office, de Klerk was a strong proponent of white supremacy. His actions as state president were motivated by economics and politics, not morality: He recognized that apartheid was damaging his country both financially and politically. However, like with Botha, Mandela chose to focus on the good that de Klerk did for South Africa rather than on his previous racist actions.)

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission

South Africa’s reckoning with apartheid, and the difficult process of constructing a new nation that served both white and Black people’s interests, extended far beyond the time frame covered in Long Walk to Freedom. For instance, in 1995, the new South African government established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to investigate human rights abuses committed under apartheid, pay reparations to its victims to help them recover in the short term, and develop rehabilitation programs to help them thrive in the long run. The Commission also had a committee dedicated to hearing pleas for amnesty for crimes committed during apartheid and granting or denying that amnesty.

The TRC attracted international attention, particularly because of its focus on reconciliation between perpetrators and victims (as opposed to just punishing the perpetrators). The TRC was generally considered to be a great success, although some felt that it focused too much on shaming people who had actually carried out apartheid laws, rather than punishing those who created the laws and benefited most from them economically.

The Commission dissolved in the early 2000s, but some of its most influential members banded together to create the Institute of Truth and Reconciliation, a non-governmental organization dedicated to carrying on the work of reconciliation, as well as promoting economic and social justice for South Africans.

President Nelson Mandela

Mandela explains that he was elected president of the ANC in 1991. After he and de Klerk worked together to eliminate apartheid’s race-based voting restrictions, Mandela went on to win South Africa’s first democratic general election in 1994.

Once Mandela was installed as president, he appointed de Klerk as his second deputy president. This meant that de Klerk was Mandela’s assistant and third-in-command of the government—behind the first deputy president (Thabo Mbeki) and Mandela himself.

This wasn’t the first general election held in South Africa, but it was the first time that citizens of all races could vote: Therefore, it was the country’s first truly democratic election. Furthermore, the constitution that de Klerk’s administration drafted officially created an Office of the President—previous leaders had held the title of Prime Minister or State President—which is how Mandela became the first President of South Africa.

Mandela’s Legacy and South Africa Today

Nelson Mandela passed away on December 5th, 2013, at the age of 95. Around 4,500 people attended his funeral, ranging from family members and former political prisoners to world leaders. Millions more watched the ceremony on TV.

Mandela is most often remembered not as a freedom fighter, nor as a politician, but as a peacemaker. His legacy is beginning the reconciliation between Black South Africans and the Afrikaners who oppressed them, helping to build the first fully democratic South African government.

Though apartheid and legalized discrimination were repealed decades ago, South Africa’s people are still grappling with the aftermath of those devastating policies. Even today, Black South Africans are far more likely to live in poverty than their white counterparts and have much lower economic mobility.

Furthermore, while racial discrimination is now illegal, the South African government continues to use racial classifications for its citizens. This is theoretically to keep track of economic recovery and to correct the imbalances left behind by apartheid through affirmative action programs. However, some people argue that those categories are only worsening racial divisions and say that the government should be offering assistance based on economic status rather than race.

In short, while Nelson Mandela made enormous strides toward creating a fair and democratic South Africa, there is still a long way to go before the country is truly racially equal.