At least one generation of intellectuals had stood against apartheid and reflected on Mandela as a political figure of freedom and liberation. Mandela never produced anything equivalent to the political writings of a Gramsci, Fanon, or Césaire. Because of the media and the global support for the struggles he led, Mandela acquired a resonance with effects across the globe. His career, with all its changes, posed challenges for thinking about politics.

Editor’s Note from Paul Bové

Preface by Anthony Bogues

Mbu ya Ũrambu: Mbaara ya Cuito Cuanavale / The Cry of Hypocrisy: The Battle of Cuito Cuanavale by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

Discomforts by Hortense Spillers

The Mandela Enigma by Wlad Godzich

Mandela, Charisma, and Compromise by Joe Cleary

Nelson Mandela on Nightline; or, How Palestine Matters by Colin Dayan

Or, The Whale by Jim Merod

Malaysian Mandela by Masturah Alatas

Mandela, Tunisia, and I by Mohamed-Salah Omri

Nelson Mandela by Ruth Y. Y. Hung

Mandela Memories: An African Prometheus by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

Nelson Mandela: Decolonization, Apartheid, and the Politics of Moral Force by Anthony Bogues

Mandela’s Wholeness, Perhaps Infinite by Dawn Lundy Martin

[untitled] by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Mandela’s Gift by Sobia Saleem