long walk to freedom: the autography of Nelson Mandela

 






long walk to freedom: the autography of Nelson Mandela


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Introduction
	A biography is the history of the lifetime of a person. It simply explains the relevant facts of someone’s life such as work, education, relationships and death. While explaining these facts, it explains the person’s experience during these events. The biography will highlight the person’s different aspects in life such as analysis of the individual’s personality, as well as, give every intimate detail the subject may have experienced in their lifetime. Autobiography, on the other hand, is a biography written by the person in the book. Biography and autobiographies usually are nonfictional, but some may use fiction to portray a person’s life. This paper is going to focus on the Autobiography of one of celebrated leaders worldwide.
	The subject of review in this paper is the Autobiography of Nelson Mandela the former president of South Africa. The book is an Autobiography called long walk to freedom: the autography of Nelson Mandela written by Nelson Mandela. This autobiography was first written in 1994 and was published by the Little Brown Publishers in Boston U.S.A. as mentioned above an autobiography is about the author, therefore, the subject of review or the leader is Nelson Mandela (Mandela, 1994). Nelson Mandela was born in 18th July 1918 in South Africa and was the president of this country from 1994 to 1999. Mandela is well known for his antiapartheid activity, and he is the confounder of the African National Congress (ANC).
	Nelson Mandela is one of the leaders looked up to today. Some of the leadership styles shown in this book portray styles Mandela used in making South Africa one of the most developed countries in Africa. The book portrays Mandela has a legend because of his courage fortitude and vision for his country. Examples of Mandela’s leadership styles shown in this book the style of leading from the back, quitting is leading, leading with the knowledge that nothing is black or white, and being humble about one’s strengths and honest about flaws (Mandela, 1994).  In the book, Mandela shows leading from behind as a style where the leader listens to his subjects, without insisting on what they should d. In other words, Mandela believed that a leader should try to make a consensus with the people. Mandela perceives, listening to what the subjects want, an act of leadership. He rationalized this by saying leader should not enter a debate too soon. Leading with the knowledge nothing is black or white believes that nothing is right or wrong. This is what Mandela believed, in other words, the leader is not always right. He believed that the act of making a decision is complex, due to many complicating and competing factors. From this, one could gather the statement that nothing is as effortless as it appears, and leaders should know that they do not own all the answers or have the best answers. Quitting is leading explains the knowledge of abandoning something that is not working; this could be a failed idea, relationship or goal. When Mandela stepped down from office, he demonstrated that a leader does not need to be a president forever. There are many privileges that come with being a leader and many leaders tend to forget the do not own the country. The stepping down of Mandela illustrates a man of extraordinarily courageous. The book also depicts Mandela as a humble leader. This involves a leader who knows he is human and that human is to error. Mandela was willing to accept his flaws and work hard at eradicating them. Some of Nelson Mandela’s characteristics given in the book portray him as a man of honour, integrity, ethical, inspirational, born a leader, problem solver, effective communicator and a man who did not what to give up a fight (Mandela, 1994). The fact that Mandela is one of the most celebrated leaders shows that his leadership skills earned him a level of recognition in the world. 
	Nelson Mandela just like any other leader, has been seen to poses both positive and negative characters that affected the governance of South Africa during his period in office, as well as after the reign. The book shows that his leadership skills have been of positive influence to South Africa, Africa and the world. One of the positive impacts of Mandela in South Africa was his fight against apartheid. After His discharge from jail, he struggled to fight against apartheid. After his win against apartheid, Mandela led to the change in the political set up of South Africa to democracy after attaining the presidency. Mandela also embraced the Apartheid rulers, the white South Africans, by overlooking the evil days of apartheid (Mandela, 1994). Absolving one’s enemy is a step to the right direction, and by doing, Mandela proved to have one of the values all leaders today should own. Some of Mandela’s weaknesses are seen in his marriage in which he married a w