Long Walk To Freedom

At midnight 24th of June, 2014, I read the 625th page of Long Walk To Freedom (Nelson Mandela's autobiography)... Well roughly midnight... and I have to be up at six...

Anyways, Long Walk To Freedom (LWTF) chronicles the life of Nelson Mandela as he remembers it. Mandela's life is one of struggle, having come to age in the oppressive, racist apartheid system. From early adulthood Mandela fought for the freedom of not only his fellow Africans but all non-white peoples of South Africa.

The life of Nelson Mandela is an inspiring one. Having studied and become a lawyer he and his longtime friend and fellow freedom fighter Oliver Tambo opened the first black-owned law firm in South Africa. Mandela got into politics via the Africanist National Congress, although the government was white-only. The ANC fought for equality of all races in South Africa, which came with fierce retaliation from the federal government which wound up imprisoning Mandela for 27 years!

Mandela left prison in his seventies in the mid early 1990s, emerging into a different, yet far too similar South Africa than the one he left prior to his incarceration. Mandela's life was filled with struggle and tragedy but he did eventually end apartheid and the white minority's rule of the nation (no spoilers there).

Although at times it does feel like Mandela's memory of his life was rose tinted and favored him, it is not as bad as it could have been in those respects and it is obvious that people had kept this book from sounding too dreamy that in regards to Mandela. Overall the book is great and it would be impossible to shorten it from its 625 page format without omitting valuable details of Mandela's life. The final few pages of the book are also a fantastic, poetic and resonant end to an amazing story. This book is definitely a must read and hopefully you don't have to read it in two weeks like I just did.

This concludes my first mini-series: Our Crazy World. Although I didn't plan on it there is an underlying theme to this whole series and I would encourage you to figure it out, I will reveal the answer next Monday (a holiday for me), after which I will take an intermission to read some of the books I have and travel back to Manitoba where I normally reside before I start any more mini series. There will be a second 'Our Crazy World' and I am open to suggestions for it.

Thank you for reading.

-Horace