Mandela

...spring of his action...

...In real life, it turns out, Reed 1912) and most enduring organization Chris Appy was not simply an actress, a registered devoted to equality for blacks and the Republican, and a mother of four sons, concept of a nonracial democracy...

...What a price he had to pay...

...But course of Nelson Mandela's life, from Mandela oh...

...atrocities of the past century, a separapen immediately...

...and ultimately his negotiations man who unwittingly stars in a nonstop or even treasonous...

...The Truman Show, a film about a war activists as self-absorbed, craven, cause...

...The book provides an missionary school where he matriculatN cept for some large, tran- enormous amount of information about scendent purpose...

...They seem to member or interpret their extraordinary tempted to understand and "convert...

...At Fort Hare, the dren, and the effect that separation had black college he attended, "his imme- on all of them...

...Z. The price was steep to die for his ideal...

...Of necessity, much of Sampson's book suburban housewife...

...His love was the African Na- from reading Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones's tional Congress, the oldest (founded in Peace Now...

...formation by whites...

...Much less...

...deKlerk for television drama, does not strike them as Antiwar amnesia cannot be explained his own release and the legalization of especially revelatory or troubling...

...pupil for his country boy's accent, his tivist into the reflective and self-disci- Mandela the hero paid a terrible slowness in class, and for walking in his plined world statesman...

...But offers against a state in which his only right as I read this long, long book, I found priestly as a black man was to do as he was told myself wishing there were less of it...

...did grow up with a sense of entitlement But it is, in many respects, an unsat- and self-importance because of his famo sane man gives up almost isfying book...

...dured in the prisons of apartheid South important questions-what does the Africa except for a noble, compelling subject believe in...

...ration from his wife, Winnie, and his chil- Mandela's family...

...I have cher- current practice in American political covished the ideal of a democratic and free erage of focusing on the "horse race" as- POPE JOHN XXIII society in which all persons live togeth- pects of an election campaign, to the ex- NATIONAL SEMINARY er in harmony with equal opportunities...

...She was, in other Mandela and the colleagues-black, M have seen her on "Nick at words, one of millions of women and white, colored, Indian-who made com- Nite" reruns, frozen in the men who stood in defiant opposition to mon cause with him in prison, in exile, early 1960s, a perfectly adorned, scrupu- the American war in Vietnam, a war and in opposition within South Africa...

...what transcendent Mandela's ideal was a "nonracial purpose motivates his work and, in democracy," with fairness and equality Mandela's case, his sacrifice?-are vir- Pope John for all...

...realize, in ways I could never quite fath- resistance to a war-making government...

...with P.W...

...I have fought against dela's thoughts and actions in terms of white domination, and I have fought tactics and strategy...

...clusion of any serious coverage of the For further information: It is an ideal which I hope to live for and substance of candidates' speeches and Write...

...But years, anyone is tempted to say that the respected merit and intelligence more the price of that transformation was apartheid era was not all that bad (as than hereditary status...

...some now say of slavery and the segIn his youth and young adulthood, The most poignant and wrenching regation era in the United States), let Sampson says, Mandela's aspirations chapters of the book deal with his sepa- them read here what it did to Nelson were anything but grand and majestic...

...this approach tends to shrink a great man E-mail: popejohn@iiplink.net Fortunately for South Africa, fortu- to a small one or worse, to the stature of nately for the world, he was not forced a common, scheming, ward-heeling pol...

...Botha and F.W...

...ular knowledge of a man who has be- Mandela was the son of a Xhosa chief, come one of the heroes of our time...

...Winnie, who was brutal- Don Wycliff is editorial page editor of the diate ambition was to be a court inter- ized by the apartheid regime and became Chicago Tribune...

...Mandela was expecting the "The prison years," Sampson writes, brutal in turn, might have become deother pupils to treat him with respect as "are often portrayed as a long hiatus in structive in any case...

...But if needs be, it is an ideal for ideas and programs...

...African people...

...For less, I suspect, would ul- for men in "During my lifetime," Mandela said timately have been more...

...It is quite evident, for ex- ily background...

...by the passage of time alone...

...They Mother for Peace...

...high, and not just for Mandela himself...

...My children and are remarkably few stories in our postties and with his warders, most of them former students are all far more savvy Vietnam popular culture to help us reuneducated Afrikaners whom he at- about TV than I ever was...

...He enunciated it most eloquent- tually buried under the mountain of rel- XXIII ly in 1963, at his trial (along with a host atively insignificant detail...

...ple, or any of us, really understand the memoirs, and films about the Vietnam Commonweal 2 4 February 25, 2000...

...0 Quite the contrary...

...He saw a degree as his passport not to political leader- STILL FIGHTING THAT WAR ship, but to a position in the community which would enable him to support his family...

...This is not unlike the against black domination...

...phy of Mandela...

...preter, a much-esteemed profession in the rural areas, which promised both influence and status...

...Unlike Moses and Such reservations aside, Sampson, a Martin Luther King, Jr., Mandela final- Briton who first met Mandela in 1951, ly made it to the Promised Land with does a commendable job of tracing the his people...

...If, in future He found himself in a community which and read about in the newspapers...

...Indeed, he led them in...

...It is that states- price for his triumph-and so, sadly, brand-new boots 'like a horse in spurs.' man that we see on television nowadays did his wife and family...

...No people and events...

...After all, the ANC and other proscribed political And yet, I do not believe young peo- we've had thousands of books, novels, organizations...

...Additionally- the age in his oft-quoted peroration, "I have and this is another journalist's habit- range of dedicated myself to this struggle of the there is a tendency to depict all of Man- 30 to 60...

...his gradu- om, that the tube creates a make-believe And the fragmentary images that occaally evolved role as the acknowledged world that screens out most reality and sionally float by often represent antileader of the ANC and the liberation history...

...He began to lose those twenty-eight years of his life ample, that Sampson is more journalist illusions at Clarkebury, the Methodist vital years, prime years-ex- than biographer...

...Mandela spent sever- American Society and the tion from reality that seems not to close, al years just finding his footing in the Ending of the Vietnam War in spite of the Internet's ability to "link" city, which included finding his voca- Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones us to every war zone on the planet...

...So much informa- Is Cod calling you man endures what Nelson Mandela en- tion, in fact, that the answers to the most to priesthood...

...gloomy rumination was inspired by a politics, he fell hard-like a young lover fact about Donna Reed that I learned smitten...

...degree and cost of our isolation from The political bug did not bite Mandela the unmediated world and its history, until, still single, he moved to Johannes- our emotional distance from the serial burg in 1941, and even then it didn't hap- Peace Now...

...It will fill a gap in pop- first and only term...

...This tion, the law...

...In Mandela's case, Call: 781.899.5500 Fax: 781.999.9057 which I am prepared to die...

...But it is not unreaa royal whose great-grandfather had the midst of Mandela's political career...

...And and thus a minor royal in his tribe...

...his rigorous self-discipline...

...When Mandela did fall into Yale University Press, 525, 297 pp...

...National of other leaders and activists of the I yield to no one in my admiration for Seminary African National Congress) for treason and curiosity about Nelson Mandela...

...What do kids make Many anonymous "Donna Reeds" concerns Mandela's life in prison-his of all those old family sitcoms like the were politicized in the 1960s, but there relationships with the prison authori- "Donna Reed Show...

...S58 South Avenue, Weston, MA 02493.2599 achieve...

...His it no doubt will be a valuable resource was not a pampered upbringing, but he Don Wycliff for future biographers...

...It en- any young Americans know but also, by 1968, cochair of "Another dured largely because of the loyalty of about Donna Reed...

...lously tidy, and obligingly deferential that killed 3 million people...

...Commonweal 2 3 February 25, 2000 ed in 1934...

...sonable to think that the daily presence founded the school," Sampson writes...

...what is the mainideal...

...but I see them as key to his develop- of Nelson might have attenuated her "Instead he was mocked by one girl ment, transforming the headstrong ac- worst instincts...

...No sane man sacri- Mandela, about South Africa, about the fices the comforts of home and family ex- black liberation struggle, and related cept for some grand, majestic goal...

...his birth in 1918 in the Transkei region The Authorized Biography Anthony Sampson has done a real of South Africa to his retirement from Anthony Sampson service with this authoritative biogra- the presidency in 1999, at the end of his Alfred A. Knopf, 530, 672 pp...