On July 7th 1991 Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s first black head of state. Nelson Mandela’s biographyLong Walk to Freedom tells Mandela’s extraordinary journey; he talks about his upbringing during South Africa’s Apartheid, his journey to University, his role in African National Congress (ANC – black rights group), his time in prison, for his role in the ANC, and finally his presidency (“Long Walk to Freedom”). Mandela’s story is not only remarkable but allows for distant audiences to understand the story of South Africa divided history. Mandela’s story allows for the collective experiences endured by the marginalized Black South African community to be documented, archived and added to public history to allow for distant audiences to understand the full story of South Africa’s apartheid.

 

In the beginning of Long Walk to Freedom Nelson Mandela talks about his upbringing in South Africa during the apartheid. He talks about his own experiences and incorporates stories about his father and experiences in his community. Mandela similar to our work with Mark Sakamoto’s Forgiveness – a family memoir that looks at stories of a Japanese Canadian family and a Canadian soldier during World War II- Mandela uses his own life experience to add to/articulate the collective memory – shared knowledge by a “culture of individuals” (Wertsch,319)- of the black South African community during the apartheid. Mandela through his own life experiences is able to create a platform that allows for the collective memory of the black community to be heard.  Long Walk to Freedom is a great text that would allow future students to further develop their studies regarding collective memory in autobiographies of marginalized groups.

 

Long Walk to Freedom would connect to our studies regarding archives and archival silence. During the apartheid the government used their authoritarian rule to silence the black South African community. As Rodney Carter points out, the actions of the elite to silence marginal groups denies the marginal groups to have their stories incorporated into the archives and thus these stories disappear from history (215). However Mandela, as a member of a marginal group during South Africa’s apartheid, voices these once silenced stories through the narration of his own life experiences. He is allowing the full story of this historical event to be heard. In next years ASTU course, if chosen, Long Walk to Freedom could be used to analyze what was documented during the South African apartheid – history-  and compared it to experiences presented by Mandela through his use of collective memory. This work would helping students to understand the reality of silences in history. Students could use the text to look at  ‘postcolonial archives’ – where voices of marginalized groups can be used to create national remembering- , and analyze how Mandela’s through his life narrative creates a ‘postcolonial archive’ that restores the collective memory in of the black community, allowing for all sides of the story regarding the apartheid are told (McEwan,741).

 

Nelson Mandela’s biography Long Walk to Freedom is a captivating story that would allow future ASTU students to develop their understanding about the use of collective memory in life narratives and the power they have to tell the stories of a group that was silenced. Long Walk to Freedom also can be used in the archival section of ASTU as an example of archival silences. Also Mandela’s biography can be used to analyze how collective memory is able to produce postcolonial archives and reconstruct history. Overall Long Walk to Freedom tells an incredible story of a remarkable leader show helped to heal a broken nation.

 

Works Cited

 

Carter, Rodney G.S. “Of Things Said and Unsaid: Power, Archival Silences, and Power in Silence.” Archivaria 61 (2006): 215-33.  Archivaria. Association of Canadian Archivists. <http://archivaria.ca/index.php/archivaria/article/view/12541>.

“Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela – Extended Summary” eNotes Publishing Ed. Scott Locklear. eNotes.com, Inc. eNotes.com 17 Mar, 2019 <http://www.enotes.com/topics/long-walk-to-freedom#summary-summary>

McEwan, Cheryl. “Building a Postcolonial Archive? Gender, Collective Memory and Citizenship in Post-Apartheid South Africa.” Journal of Southern African Studies, vol. 29, no. 3, 2003, pp. 739–757. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3557440.

Wertsch, James V.  & Henry L. Roediger III (2008) Collective memory: Conceptual foundations and theoretical approaches, MEMORY, 16:3, 318-326, DOI: 10.1080/09658210701801434