MANDELA

“When Mandela goes it will be a moment when all South Africans put away their political differences, will take hands, and will together honour maybe the biggest-known South African that has ever lived ” – F.W. de Klerk, BBC Interview, April 2012.

The former founding-president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, a truly great political leader who arguably and almost certainly made the world a better place – better racially, morally and politically (a far from perfect world, but certainly a better world in consequence). But this is not just a book about Nelson Mandela. It is also about Jacob Zuma, the current President of South Africa, in whose hands we find the precious Mandela legacy from here on, so there is as much if not more about Zuma in these pages as there is about Mandela, with the editorial content divided between the two, as well as relevant others in passing who are all part of their history and their story. This is a general-interest book about them all and about South Africa under Mandela and Zuma. The guiding principle in this book – as in any other books of historical and/or political biography for that matter – is to seek truth in the unexpected detail of the lives of Nelson Mandela and President Zuma, additional to or rather than telling people what they and the world already know about them because they have read or heard it already in the media, and to this end there are unexpected details, new ideas and in-depth observations in these pages about the respective character developments and psychologies of Nelson Mandela and President Zuma. Skyhorse will publish AFTER MANDELA in Fall 2014, but instantly if Mr. Mandela's health fails. This is designed to be a fast, factual book to celebrate the life of an iconic figure — not an in-depth, academic biography worthy of a Pulitzer. It is all any average reader will want to know about Nelson Mandela. Bob Crew is a former Times and Financial Times journalist in London who has been a regular visitor to different parts of South Africa for the past decade where he has many friends and contacts. He is a friend of South Africa whose people of all races he knows well and in whose English-language literature he is well read. A graduate of the University of London – BA (Hons), MA – Bob Crew is the author of books of non-fiction and poetry, including Gurkha Warriors, in interview with HRH Prince Charles, the Colonel in Chief of the Royal Gurkha Rifles in Britain, and The Beheading and Other True Stories, about his time in the desert kingdom of Saudi Arabia, as The Times correspondent in that country.