Nelson Mandela: postcolonial thinker, postmodern icon, modern world leader

From his early years as an anti-apartheid lawyer and pugilist-revolutionary, to his recent post-presidential achievements in fighting global poverty and raising AIDS-awareness in his country, Nelson Mandela has succeeded not only in ceaselessly reinventing his ideas of social justice and broad-church political struggle, but also in shaping his society's understanding of itself, as well as the world's perception of Africa. This political and cultural achievement, the research project suggests, represents a form of 'theory-in-action', which has creatively mobilised, adapted, extended, and in some cases reanimated the core-concepts of what is now termed post colonialism: amongst others, active alongside passive resistance; rainbow or mixed identity; and a new or redefined humanism.

Context: Studies of Mandela to date, by Guiloineau, Meer, Sampson, Lodge, amongst others, tend without exception to approach his career in strictly biographical, chronological and empirical terms, in ways that often markedly coincide with his own self-representation as South African father of the nation. More sceptical accounts, which target his post-1994 neo­ liberalism, such as those by Alexander or Brutus, have likewise shown little interest in looking at his politics as an integrated ethical system. Recent work in postcolonial criticism has explored the relation between anti-colonial resistance and postcolonial thought. This study will extend the parameters of such debate.

Aims and objectives: Ironically, Mandela's political 'philosophy', influential though it has been, exists in fragmentary and inconclusive form: in speeches, interviews and communiques both pre-1964 and post-1990; in scattered prison writings; in his (ghosted) autobiography, 'Long Walk to Freedom'. While acknowledging that it is difficult to speak of 'Mandelaism', in contrast with Gandhism, the key task of the research will be to glean from these diverse and divergent statements and practical achievements the core precepts of his political morality. The objective will be to analyse his eclectic approach under a number of themed headings, derived both from his biography, and from postcolonial theory.

Potential applications and benefits: Mandela's contribution as a political leader, on both the national and the international stage, remains poorly understood as a post-independence set of ethics or philosophy-of-a-kind despite his wide influence and reputation. This book will address this oversight by suggesting that post colonialism's central critical concepts themselves demand modification in the light of Mandela's at once Africanist yet multiculturalist achievements.
The study will make the unprecedented case that it is precisely the absence of a coherent philosophy that has given Mandela his chameleon-like political flexibility and his versatility in manipulating media images (of his country, African society, etc.). Moreover, his eclecticism has allowed him to pursue innovative modes of postcolonial nation-building. On the one hand, Mandela has as a nationalist intercalated aspects of African tradition with colonial modernity by representing these as already modern and yet as unique and native (as in his rationalistic building of consensus). Yet, on the other hand, post-
1990, he has been concerned to seize hold of modern technologies in order, if anything, to outface those who would possessively claim these as western in origin. In recent years he has become for some- western world leaders as well as his own people- a screen on to which a range of different moral and political crusades has been projected. Yet throughout he has retained, and robustly asserted, the interlocking values of community ('Ubuntu'), comradeship and a 'unity of conscience'. In general, from the point of view of its British and its international readerships, the book will bring a fresh understanding of postcolonial leadership and independence, as well as of transnational and multicultural identity.