Mandela, a devout party man, was reluctant to criticise Mbeki in public but made clear his displeasure at the president’s Aids “denialism” and, it has been claimed, held sensitive conversations outdoors because he believed Mbeki had bugged his home. Mbeki ruled from 1999 until he was deposed by his own party, the African National Congress (ANC), in 2008. He talks about the political considerations and he does say that, in assessing those factors, he favours Cyril Ramaphosa.” “It does reflect on the decision around succession,” said Verne Harris, director: research and archive at the Nelson Mandela Foundation, which is editing the book. It will also detonate a political grenade by confirming his choice of successor: not his deputy Thabo Mbeki, who got the job, but Cyril Ramaphosa, who subsequently disappeared from politics for a decade. The book is likely to tackle Mandela’s regrets over failing to tackle the growing HIV/ Aids crisis, his painful divorce from Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and why he opted to stand down after a single term, still cited as an example that many African leaders would do well to follow. It was the time of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a new constitution and globetrotting diplomacy with leaders ranging from Bill Clinton to Muammar Gaddafi. The second volume of autobiography will focus primarily on how one of the 20th century’s political giants set about building a multiracial democracy out of the ashes of racial apartheid. Pan Macmillan announced on Tuesday that it has acquired the UK and Commonwealth rights to the book which, as yet untitled, will hit shelves next year. More than 20 years later, the world will finally get an answer with the posthumous publication of a sequel based on a little known manuscript that Mandela wrote by hand but never completed, chronicling his time as South Africa’s first black president.
Which begs the question: what really happened next?
But after 115 chapters and 751 pages, charting his rise from herd boy to prisoner to president, the narrative slides to halt in 1994. So ends Nelson’s Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom, one of the best selling political memoirs of all time.
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