Exploring Mandela: Politics, Upbringing and Prison Life

As the first democratic president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela has no shortage of documentation about his life, and politics. Lodge, goes a different route on Nelson Mandela and uses his upbringing and roots to explain why Mandela was the way he was. By going a different route and using his upbringing and roots that opens room for bias, one of the major weaknesses of the book was its heavy focus on Mandela’s political influences, by examining everything by his political influences, Lodge, misses information that could be more relevant and interesting to his successes. With that being said, the book does have some positive aspects, Lodge, does an excellent job describing Mandela’s time in prison.
To begin, he explains Mandela’s ties to

The time spent in prison was a very critical time in his life, and this is where majority of the contributions made by Mandela were created. Lodge describes in great detail the conditions of the prisons, the meetings, the treatment Mandela received compared to a normal prisoner, what was going on with the people dealing with apartheid and the people working to end apartheid (ANC and co.), and finally, the type of lifestyle that he enjoyed while in prison. The first half of chapter six reveals that at the start of his prison time, he was classified as a category D prisoners and was given no extra attention, “Category D inmates such as Mandela and other inmates were supposedly at the base of the prison hierarchy, allowed only two visits and two letters a year, (only from close family members), unable to receive money or make purchases, and ineligible for study rights.” (119) The quote describes how Mandela was seen at first, at the bottom and regarded with some suspicion. Shortly after, conditions change for Mandela. He was granted many special privileges such as: office space to work, visitors to come in and help him plan, extra excursions, and was able to meet with high ranking government officials (Coetsee and Botha). “He enjoyed several other excursion of this kind, trips that Mandela found instructive … They included a protracted search for ‘blue Pantene’ a hair tonic that Mandela had convinced himself he needed … “ (159) Lodge provided copious amount of detail regarding many other prison related