I read this book again after 20 or so years because I really needed a hero. It’s just as inspiring this time
Around and it’s just as relevant now. Mandela spent 30 years in political prison and yet he stepped down after a single term, he compromised with Deklerk and the national congress, he was derided as a sellout by the young activists in prison. The man embodied grace and wisdom.

Original review:

Excellent. Not only give a better description of South Africa, but also raises questions about any fight for freedom and what needs to be done by the powerless to be heard.

A hero who fought till he succeeded.

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برای من لحظه مشخصی برای کشف حقیقت نبوده و هیچ چیز بخصوصی ناگهان الهام بخش من نشده، بلکه فقط مجموعه ای منظم از هزاران مورد بی حرمتی، هزاران مورد خرد شدن شخصیت و هزاران مورد لحظه از یاد رفته مرا به خشم می آورد، شورشی می کرد و این خواسته را در من تقویت می کرد که با سیستمی که مردم مرا اسیر خود کرده مبارزه کنم.
هیچ روز بخصوصی وجود نداشته که در آن روز گفته باشم از امروز به بعد زندگی خود را وقف آزادی مردم می کنم، بلکه فقط پی بردم که در حال مبارزه هستم و جز این نمی توانم کار دیگری انجام دهم...!

Prior to reading Mandela's autobiography, my knowledge of South African history was basically limited to the Weekly Reader newspaper articles I read in grade school and Trevor Noah's biography. Mandela led a fascinating life that he dedicated completely to the struggle for rights in his country. He acknowledged when he made mistakes and was keenly aware of the cost his family paid for his devotion to the cause. He was ultimately regarded as a hero and he won the Nobel Peace Prize - yet when the work was being done he was jailed as a criminal. One of the most thought provoking pieces for me in reading this was how often the difference between hero and criminal really comes down to which side of the story you are sitting on. It's a concept that is worthy of spending time reflecting on as we look at challenges in our current world - 20 years or 50 years from now - what will we think was justified based on the changes that were brought about as a result? How long is a country willing to suffer rather than consider another's perspective and experience? What is the cost of that? It's a big book and it took me a couple of weeks to read it, but I'm so glad I did. Not only did I learn so much, it also gave me pause to compare and contrast contemporary events with the struggles in South Afica.

Long Walk to Freedom is the first book I've read by the leader of a country containing instructions on how to overthrow a country.

Mandela is serious about this. He mentions that when his African National Congress decided to commit to violence, they read "works by and about Che Guevara, Mao Tse-tung, Fidel Castro" to figure out how to do it. The phrase "A freedom fighter must..." recurs. He means this to be read by freedom fighters. This book is many things, but maybe the most important thing is a manual for revolution.

It's also a defense of Mandela's legacy, and that part is interesting too. Mandela won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, which seemed odd to everyone since he has not advocated peace. "I called for nonviolent protest for as long as it was effective," he says. When it was ineffective, "I was candid and explained why I believed we had no choice but to turn to violence." He lays out the "four types of violent activities," which should be undertaken in order: "sabotage, guerrilla warfare, terrorism, and open revolution." The ANC never moved beyond sabotage, but he says clearly: "we were prepared to move on to the next stage: guerrilla warfare and terrorism." So maybe I shouldn't say defense. It's a clarification.

This sets us up for the most dramatic scene in the book, and one of the most dramatic in history: the Rivonia Trial in 1964, in which Mandela and several others were sentenced to life in prison for sabotage. This was a victory: death was on the table. Mandela chose not to defend himself; instead he delivered a statement about which his lawyers said, "If Mandela reads this in court they will take him out in back of the courthouse and string him up." Here's part of his statement:

I planned sabotage. I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness nor because I have any love of violence, I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation after many years of tyranny, exploitation, and oppression of my people by whites.

During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

You can actually hear part of this speech here - skip to 2:10 if you're in a hurry. It's an incredible thing to listen to.

I grew up while Mandela was in prison, and apartheid in South Africa was the first injustice I was aware of. My first experience with activism, in Amherst MA with the mighty activist Frances Crow, was running around town putting up posters with Mandela's face on them. Mandela screwed up my hair: in high school my mom wouldn't let me grow it long until I claimed that I wasn't cutting it until Mandela was freed, which she felt she couldn't argue with. They freed him like six months later and I was like aw, man. It seemed like a foolproof plan! I got to see him speak shortly afterwards in Boston on his freedom tour, but I didn't have a chance to tell him about my hair.

This is all to say that reading this book was a powerful experience for me. Mandela is one of history's true heroes of freedom. To be able to read his words is special and of immense value. I got actual chills at times, reading about how (for example) he refused to be freed if it meant compromising his movement. He was in jail for nearly 30 years. This isn't one of those books that makes you realize that the writer is just a person like you and me. Mandela was not like you and me. He was a titan.

أنهكتني يا مانديلا !!

إنها سيرة مناضل .. وسيرة رجل أحب أسرته وصارع بين شعوره بالتقصير نحوها وبقضية الحرية التي ولد بها ..

لا يسعني قول الكثير .. لم أكن أعرف مانديلا قبلا كما عرفته الان بعد قراءة سطوري

كنت أحسب نفسي عارفة بمعرفة أن مانديلا رجل سلام وقام بتحرير "دولة ما" فقط

الان أعرف من أنت يا مانديلا .. أي حياة عشتها .. وأي مناضل كنت .. وأي أسرة منحت لك ..

What do I really have to say? :-) I read this before the first time I went to South Africa and fell in love with the country...hence two return trips! I had some amazing experiences during the pr days and one was a private tour of Robben Island with Ahmed Kathrada while in SA. He was imprisoned with and a close friend of Mandela's (one of eight sentenced to life imprisonment during the Rivonia Trial). Anyway, obviously it was amazing since he knew EVERYTHING about the time and place (he was there afterall), but reading this book before then allowed me to be much more knowledgeable about the politics of the time and more importantly, the life of such an extraodinary man. Though my anger did boil at times due to the injustice of what was happening, this book is 100% inspiration. I just could not put it down. I think it was like 800 pages or more, and I read it in two days, staying up all night! And to top it off, I met Mandela only a few days later at an event he hosted and it was one of very few times in my life that I was in complete awe!

در خیابان متوجه زن سفیدپوستی در جوی فاضلاب شدم که استخوان های باقی مانده از یک ماهی را می خورد. او فقیر و ظاهرا بی خانمان بود، اما جوان و زیبا بود. در حالی که من معمولا به گداهای آفریقایی پولی نمی دهم، اما احساس کردم باید به این زن کمک کنم. در آن لحظه من متوجه نیرنگ دیگر آپارتاید شدم که مشقت ها و رنج هایی را که هر روز گریبان گیر آفریقایی هاست، بعنوان واقعیتی پذیرفتنی جلوه می دهد. در آفریقای جنوبی فقیر بودن و سیاه بودن امری عادی است، اما فقیر بودن و سفید بودن تراژدی است.

I felt as if I’m listening to a grandfather who relates his personal stories. It was a long read but yet it worth all the time spent. He might not be a great writer yet his huge collection of life experiences make him a great story teller. He describes a horrific part of the human history in a way that gives reader goose bumps.
I believe it’s a book that should be read by every human being just to appreciate how gifted we are to enjoy freedom in many different ways. I was greatly moved by the fact that I myself wouldn’t have had the luxury to cast a vote if I was born in South Africa few decades ago simply because I’m a woman and my skin is brown.
For me the three highlights of the book were first, it’s ordinary men and women who make a huge difference in the world, If one follows his story closely it’s apparent that he was a pretty ordinary person who raised for the occasion. Secondly, one shouldn’t take the right to vote for granted, for many people have paid the price of right to vote of future generations with their own life, and thirdly, the leaders are usually over glorified. There were eight other people who were locked inside for the same time duration as Nelson Mandela, but many don’t even know their names.
In a nutshell I believe a man is not man until he reads “The long walk to freedom”

It was an interesting read. Sorry, that's a bit of an understatement and the dry tone in my head doesn't really translate. Mandela is a good, clear writer, but not creative or inventive. One can see the methodical planning that made him such an effective political leader and innovator, but as the author of a 625 page book, his style is a little stiff. The first half of the book is about his upbringing and path into politics. The problem I was having was that there was no way to tell from his formative years how or why he stood apart. Indeed, I would say that as a literary figure, he does not become a leader until after he has been imprisoned for several years, past when he was considered a leader by members of his organization and constituency. Almost as if he needed to be a leader in the eyes of others before he considered himself to be one or truly acted as one. Maybe it is the reality that one cannot lead until after there are people who will follow that lead. I am interested in how he became such a leader in the eyes of the people. What is it about someone that turns them from an ordinary person to a freedom fighter or revolutionary to a true leader, born up by the masses.

I was also comparing the regime of South Africa to those in South America. The ANC and other groups in South Africa had certain advantages which made their form of protest -- the slow-downs, the rallies -- successful and possible, and ironically, the advantages stemmed from the control exercised by the colonial rulers and the legacy of British Imperialism. Mandela could, at times, invoke certain rules of law, and demand that the protesters were treated fairly under the laws. Whatever the laws at the time were (except the very last years where it seems the government learned that if they wanted to get serious about suppressing the people, they could not be hampered by the rule of law), the government would obey them. In contrast, in the South American dictatorships, headed not by imperial forces, there was no rule of law. People simply disappeared. The revolutionaries could not appeal to the court system for justice because the government did not have laws that even nominally protected dissenting voices. One thing Mandela said over and over again was the oppressing party dictated the terms of the struggle. Those who were challenging the government's policies had to respond in the manner in which they were treated. In India, the government allowed protest and dissent, which in turn meant that Ghandi could demonstrate by walking though the country and preaching nonviolence as a means of rejecting colonial rule. In contrast, in South America, a protester could not more begin to speak against the government before being shot, imprisoned or tortured, with no chance of appealing to a higher power for protection. Maybe that is why there were more rebels in countries trying to overturn the dictatorships than there were revolutionaries in the Western understanding of the term.

At the end of the book, when the power was really going to shift and Mandela, in his 80s, was elected president, I actually became more agitated. At what price was his freedom? And what would the people who fought so hard, who died, paying the ultimate price, think? Those who died, would they think their sacrifices worth while, especially because in the end it was through peaceful negotiation and compromise. With the transition away from apartheid being so moderate and their sacrifice being so extreme. Maybe it was the disconnect that struck me so forcefully, that Mandela himself never talks about being tortured or injured in the struggle. Throughout he remains the great statesmen who is untouched by the violence. Those who were tortured, hanged, beaten, or shot, by contrast seem like a corollary, unrelated to the final pressures that forced the government's position to the negotiation table.

Every time I was blessed to visit South Africa, I kept seeing this in bookshops still being placed as a number one must-read in the non-fiction section even though the initial print was released in 1994. Now of course this suggestion might look biased from the outside, however it made me realize that it is the perfect opportunity to get me started on the path of knowing more about Mandela.

You might probably know by now that it is a very long read, however this comes across as a book where the flow of the writing keeps you going. There are so many references to politics, geography, African culture, that one would eventually need to put time in researching the references. Once you tend to overlook a couple of elements, they will eventually get back to you in further chapters and you might not fully connect the dots.

One of the numerous interesting points made in the book is that of the penitentiary system in a given country.

It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones - and South Africa treated its imprisoned African citizen like animals.

Seeing how many points this book touches, like previously mentioned, I would not have guessed how fast the initial draft was written.

I wrote rapidly, completing a draft in four months. I did not hesitate over choosing a word or phrase. I covered the period from my birth through Rivonia Trial, and ended with some notes about Robben Island.

Reading along you would get from a very frustrating or alarming description of events to a humorous one, Mandela demonstrating that he was not just a relentless freedom fighter, but a jocular person as well.

I would tell audiences, "On election day, look down your ballot and when you see the face of a young and handsome man, mark an X."

Altogether this is a must read, and I really hope that more and more people will find an interest in going through this book. One of the ending quotes, can easily be one of the most powerful that I have ever heard coming out from a fellow human being.

It was this desire for the freedom of my people to live their lives with dignity and self-respect that animated my life, that transformed a frightened young man into a bold one, that drove a law-abiding attorney to become a criminal, that turned a family-loving husband into a man without a home, that forced a life-loving man to live like a monk.

If you are not a prolific reader, the size and weight of this volume may look daunting. After reading the first two or three chapters, you will be tempted to give up. DON'T!!! It's just about to get really good.

This autobiography chronicles Mandela's life, first as the son of a tribal chief, then as an educated Black man under Apartheid--a dangerous thing to be--and then the journey, both outward and inward, from attorney to the leader of a revolution. You will read about his time on Riecher's Island, the notorious prison, and the various experiences he had in the courtroom and in captivity. He tells of the cunning ways those who were jailed for political reasons created to communicate and to an extent, continue to lead from inside prison. And he breaks up the horror with an occasional vignette of a surprisingly kindly jailor or other authority figure who does small, decent things when no one is looking.

If you are interested in the history of South Africa and the defeat of Apartheid, this is a must-read. If you ever, as I did, had a "Free Nelson Mandela" poster in your living room...read this, and celebrate.