Saint Or Comrade: Representations of Nelson Mandela in Film
‘Magic Negro’, Saint or Comrade: Representations of Nelson Mandela in Film Roger Bromley “In the late 1980s, Nelson Mandela stood alone against the apartheid state.” This comment taken from the DVD Box set cover of Nelson Mandela: From Freedom to History summarises the approach taken by many of the cinematic and televisual representations of Mandela. Linked with this is a statement by the CEO of Marriott which speaks of Mandela as “an individual who changed the arc of history through his or her singular contribution, not as a function of the era or the movement but because of what they did alone.” Together, these descriptions attempt to appropriate Mandela for a sanitised version of western individualism which sees him variously as a liberal icon, saintly hero, or the celebrity one-off “magic negro”, in Okwongo’s damning phrase taken from his magisterial valedictory piece “Mandela will never, ever be your minstrel” (Okwongo 2013). In the process, Mandela’s role in the anti-apartheid struggle is de-contextualised, mystified, and effectively depoliticised, a cardboard cut- out severed from his era and the ‘movement’, displaced from the militancy of his early revolutionary commitment and long-term embeddedness in a complex political community, which existed both in South Africa itself and in exile overseas. It is well known that there were elements of choreography, scripting and performance in the public persona of Mandela, the product of a deliberately crafted strategy developed by the ANC leadership abroad in conjunction with the man himself. How far this is Saggi/Ensayos/Essais/Essays 40 N. 12 – 11/2014 reflected in the various filmic versions of his life will be one of the issues addressed.
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