# Mandela

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/xolela-mangcu/mandela/9781350522121

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![Mandela](https://quivercdn.com/covers/bloomsbury/xolela-mangcu/mandela_978-13-5052-212-1-2f0c702d.webp?v=2026-10-30%2003%3A29%3A49)

- Book: [Mandela](https://www.bookquiver.com/xolela-mangcu/mandela) ([Mandela.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/xolela-mangcu/mandela.md))
- Authors: [Xolela Mangcu](https://www.bookquiver.com/xolela-mangcu)
- Publisher: Bloomsbury
- ISBN: 978-13-5052-212-1
- Pages: 312
- Published: 2027-04-29
- Language: en_US
- Binding: Hardcover

## Description

The first biography of Nelson Mandela written by an African scholar, this groundbreaking book offers a radically de-mythologized take on a global icon of anticolonial liberation struggles. Leading sociologist Xolela Mangcu draws on original interviews and archival research – as well as on his own unique understanding of the complexities of Black South African culture – to offer an important corrective account of Mandela’s identity, character, and political career. Mangcu not only sets the record straight about Mandela's Thembu, rather than Xhosa, heritage, but also uncovers a fundamental political pragmatism Mandela developed thanks to his family’s strategic alliances with colonialists and through his own Victorian-style education at leading British mission schools. What emerges is a Mandela whose life story belongs less to the realm of hagiography and more to the realm of real-world struggle, with all the contradictions it entails.