The Decolonial Mandela: Peace, Justice, and the Politics of Life by Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (review)

The Decolonial Mandela explores how the popular idea of Nelson Mandela embodies what the author terms decolonial humanism, a theory of life embracing "pluriversality." It aims to move beyond the injustices and violence of racialized Western imperialism by creating a world that would "enable both 'perpetrators' and 'victims' to be reborn as new beings inhabiting a new society underpinned by a paradigm of peace" (xiii). As the seminal figure in South Africa's transformation from a country verging on civil war into a functional democratic state, Mandela represents this ideal. His legacy continues to shape South Africa's struggle to become a rainbow nation. The Decolonial Mandela attempts to trace decolonial humanism's ideological lineage as exemplified by Mandela and raises questions about how societies confront the aftermath of colonialism and approach the future.

Ndlovu-Gatsheni begins with an extended essay mapping his theory of decolonial humanism, distinguishing between a Western colonial ethos of war defined by a will to power and a Global South philosophy of peace defined by a will to live. This provides a conceptual lens for exploring Mandela's life and influences, his approach to post-apartheid reconciliation, and thorny questions of justice entangled in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Ndlovu-Gatsheni makes an important intervention into South African historiography by placing apartheid within the framework of Western imperialism and challenging the pervasive exceptionalism in South Africanist literature. The book's most incisive contribution is its potential to raise the question of the degree to which it is possible for postcolonial societies to move forward without reproducing cultures of violence. The book is pitched at a very high level and assumes a familiarity with anti-colonial, post-colonial, and post-modern scholarship as well as South African history and society. It is suitable for advanced graduate students and scholars interested in post-imperial and post-conflict transitions.

Despite these interventions, The Decolonial Mandela is problematic. The book is not unified but feels split between a theoretical discussion of decolonial humanism and an investigation of Mandela. The author uses overly complicated language, and frequently fails to define terms at all or does so only dozens of pages after introducing them. For example, he repeatedly employs the phrase "ontological density," but only defines this as "human dignity and self-respect" on page sixty-nine. Likewise, he argues early on that Mandela exemplifies a third wave of humanism but does not identify the preceding two waves until page forty-three. These problems are compounded by repetitive litanies of modifiers, such as referring to "the modernity/imperial/colonial/apartheid paradigm of war" (27). Finally, the author relies heavily on extended quotes by other scholars. The result is an extremely cumbersome read.

Ndlovu-Gatsheni is not a historian and this book is not a history; however, the analysis is willfully ahistorical. The author unambiguously begins historical time in 1492, which he cites as a convention in decolonial scholarship (45). Consequently, a seamless and teleological narrative of the maritime revolution, transatlantic slave trade, and new imperialism presents Western modernity as cut from whole cloth. This monolithically homogenizes Europeans into a united front, ignoring the critical role of intra-European competition in fueling their global expansion, and draws a Manichean dichotomy between Europeans and the rest of the world. Ironically, this reproduces the imperialist accounts of the triumph of Western civilization and racial divisions that this book castigates, reinscribing the totality of European power and denying agency to non-European historical actors. Ndlovu-Gatsheni effectively recreates the same victim/perpetrator paradigm that he argues decolonial humanism should abolish.

In this vein, the book periodically devolves into an anti-Western polemic that undermines an important plea for breaking cycles of violence. For example, Ndlovu-Gatsheni attempts to downplay Mandela's self-admitted admiration for the British parliamentary system by stating, "The important point is that democracy must not be...