The Headman, the Regent and the ‘Long Walk to Freedom’

This posthumously published article was completed by Philip Bonner (d.2017) in 2010 as a longer paper commissioned by the Nelson Mandela Foundation. To our knowledge, it has not been published, and we have edited it, with permission, into a suitable form for a journal article. This has involved shortening, reducing some of the extended historiographical discussion and cutting some of the informal writing. Bonner was initially asked to investigate possible discrepancies between passages in the early sections of Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, A Long Walk to Freedom, and the archival records that have survived. He found valuable information about Mandela’s father, Gadla Henry Mandela, and Mandela’s guardian, Jongintaba or David Dalindyebo. These flesh out considerably the material in existing published sources, including Long Walk, about the political context of Mandela’s childhood and youth. Bonner tries to resolve some chronological problems in family memory, as reported in Long Walk, and to explain certain stories in this text. He explores in detail the context of Gadla Henry Mandela’s dismissal as headman and the decline of family fortunes, and Jongintaba’s appointment as regent of the Thembu. In the process, Bonner makes important general arguments about the significance of land and succession disputes in Transkeian politics at this time (c.1920–1940), as well as the frequency and character of regencies in southern African kingdoms. He also touches on the language of witchcraft in local politics. The article adds to knowledge about Thembu politics during Mandela’s youth, analyses the oral memory reported in Long Walk and contributes to the historiography both of Mandela and of Transkeian society.