“No one in my family had ever attended school ... On the first day of school my teacher, Miss Mdingane, gave each of us an English name. This was the custom among Africans in those days and was undoubtedly due to the British bias of our education. That day, Miss Mdingane told me that my new name was Nelson. Why this particular name, I have no idea.”
– Nelson Mandela’s “Long Walk to Freedom, Volume I: 1918-1962” (published 1994)
This is the second program that PBS’s “Frontline” made about Nelson Mandela
“The Long Walk of Nelson Mandela” is PBS’s longest program about Mandela’s life. At two hours long, this episode of “Frontline” is as in-depth as any treatment of his life that you’re likely to find for television. But there was another “Frontline” episode made about him in 1994, on the eve of the elections that first propelled him into power. This earlier program was only one hour long, and was simply titled “Mandela.” At that time, Mandela’s groundbreaking presidency had not yet happened, and he was just a candidate for the presidency. But “The Long Walk of Nelson Mandela” was made in 1999, when Mandela was about to leave office. He was scheduled to leave the presidency just one month after this program was released. Most of his presidency had already transpired, and so they were able to have slightly more hindsight about his pre-presidency life. But more importantly, this program is two hours long, and was thus able to go into slightly more depth than the one-hour program. This is the greatest strength of this documentary.
Nelson Mandela
Background on Mandela’s early life, and South Africa’s apartheid system
He was born Rolihlahla Mandela in 1918, into a South African tribe. His native language was Xhosa, rather than English. He was born into the royal family, but ran away from the tribe to avoid an arranged marriage that would have been forced upon him. Thus, he spent many of his young adult years in Johannesburg, the biggest city in South Africa. He was about 30 years old when South Africa instituted its infamous apartheid system in 1948. For those who don’t know, “apartheid” is just an Afrikaans word meaning “separateness” or “the state of being apart.” (Literally, one might translate “apartheid” as “apart-hood.”) The word is now used to describe a segregation system based on race. In some ways, it was similar to America’s “Jim Crow” system. But unlike Jim Crow, travel restrictions on non-white minorities (particularly blacks) were a major feature of the system. Under apartheid, people of color needed passports to travel to certain white areas, and there were certain other restrictions as well. I don’t have time to go into this topic with as much detail as I would like, but suffice it to say here that it was a terrible system. Moreover, it was one of the most infamous of the twentieth century.
Nelson Mandela in 1937
Mandela’s early campaigns against apartheid, and spending much of his life in prison
Nelson Mandela campaigned against apartheid from very early on in his life. When others burned their pass cards as an act of defiance, Nelson Mandela did the same to show solidarity with their movement. He was held in prison without charges after this incident, but was eventually acquitted – for this particular charge, at least. He participated in sabotage against the South African government, and was thus charged with treason in the Rivonia Trial. The government further charged that he had participated in a conspiracy to overthrow the government. Mandela denied this, but admitted to the lesser crime of sabotage. This documentary argues that the prosecution had documents linking Mandela to the conspiracy to overthrow the government. Perhaps partially because of this, he was convicted of treason, and sentenced to life imprisonment. He had narrowly escaped the death penalty, but would not escape many years of hard labor in the South African prison system. Political forces outside the prison would later end his hard labor years, but he still spent a quarter of a century behind bars. He continued to agitate for reform even during his imprisonment, and his name was a household name outside the prison’s walls, among the ordinary people of South Africa. This was despite the fact that the government had forbidden any mention of his name among these people.
Lime quarry on Robben Island where Mandela and other prisoners were forced to do hard labor
The end of apartheid, and the beginning of Nelson Mandela’s presidency
The documentary goes into his prison years in some detail. They were spent in three separate prisons – which were Robben Island, Pollsmoor Prison, and Victor Verster Prison. Each one represents a distinct period of his life. He was eventually released from prison, after negotiations with the South African government. At this time, apartheid was beginning to be dismantled. Segregation in the United States had ended in the 1960’s, but did not end in South Africa until the early 1990’s. This documentary goes into some detail about how apartheid finally came to an end in 1994. In that year, non-white South Africans were finally given the right to vote. This led to the first elections in which all South Africans were allowed to participate. People of color made up the vast majority of the electorate, most of whom favored Mandela. Thus, Mandela won in a landslide that year. He was the first black person to become the leader of South Africa. He was also the first “President of South Africa,” since that position was created in that same year. Before then, there had instead been a “State President of South Africa.” (More about that here, for anyone who is interested.) Suffice it to say here that his presidency involved many firsts, and was groundbreaking in a number of ways.
Mandela on a visit to Brazil in 1998
This documentary doesn’t really cover his presidency much, though …
But surprisingly, this documentary doesn’t go much into his presidency. About the only event that they mention for his presidency is his appearance at the 1995 Rugby World Cup (dramatized in the 2009 movie “Invictus”). South African rugby was then dominated by white players, and had been extremely unpopular among black South Africans. The significance of Mandela’s appearance here was to show that South Africa would not try to marginalize whites, as whites had earlier done with blacks. His support for the unpopular white South African team had great political significance, and was one of the major acts of his presidency. But again, there’s not much other stuff about his presidency in this film. Bear in mind that this was made while his presidency was still going on, and was scheduled to end only one month afterward. Obviously, they were thus unable to cover his post-presidency life. But suffice it to say here that he was a successful elder statesman until his death in 2013. He was also a symbol of much-needed reform. He was able to do what many others had thought impossible, by helping to end apartheid in South Africa.
Mandela on a visit to Australia in 2009
… and they don’t go into his Marxist views
Other aspects of Mandela’s legacy may be a bit more problematic. He had spent much of his life as a socialist, and had even been a communist in his earlier years. They don’t talk much about this in this documentary, but mention in passing that he had “entered into talks” with the South African Communist Party (or something to this effect). Thus, they don’t make clear that he was actually a communist at one point. Their focus is more on the race relations aspects of this story, and so they don’t talk much about his Marxist views here. This is something of a weakness in this documentary.
Nonetheless, this may still be the best English-language film about Nelson Mandela
Nonetheless, this may still be the best English-language documentary that has ever been made about Nelson Mandela – at the time that I write this, at least. They interview people who knew him, and some of these interviews could not be done today. Therefore, one feels inclined to overlook the rather pedestrian style of this documentary, which is more journalistic than historical. They could have done a much better job, but what they accomplished here was great. I highly recommend this program to anyone interested in Nelson Mandela, or in South African history more generally.
Footnote to this blog post:
The box for this DVD does not mention who the narrator is. Thus, for any curious about this, the narrator is Will Lyman. He is the exclusive narrator for PBS’s “Frontline,” of which this documentary is a part.
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