The Meaning of Mandela

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A literary and intellectual celebration This lively, engaging and witty collection of lectures brings together the renowned African and African-American scholars - Cornel West, Henry Louis Gates Jr and Wole Soyinka - to reflect on the public meaning of the iconic Nelson Mandela. Any one of these authors would have been a pleasure to read in his own right, but to have all three of them enjoined in this common intellectual effort is an enlightening experience. In this one book you will find the profound philosophical and political interpretations of Cornel West, the storytelling genius and witticism of Henry Louis Gates Jr, and the wisdom of Africas grand man of letters and the first person of African descent to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, Wole Soyinka. Graced with a Foreword by former chairman of South Africas Truth and Reconciliation Commission and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, The Meaning of Mandela should be required reading in philosophy and politics departments, a feature in the boardroom and an essential part of your carry-on luggage.

Foreword
Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu

Introduction
Xolela Mangcu

1. WEB Du Bois, Encyclopedia Africana and Nelson Mandela
   Henry Louis Gates Jr
   
2. Nelson Mandela: Great exemplar of the grand democratic tradition
   Cornel West
   
3. Views from a palette of the cultural rainbow
   Wole Soyinka

Dr Xolela Mangcu was previously a Director of the Steve Biko Foundation and is a former Executive Director of the Society, Culture and Identity research programme of the HSRC. Dr Mangcu is currently a Visiting Fellow in the Public Intellectual Life Project of the University of the Witwatersrand.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is a literary critic, educator, scholar, writer, editor, and public intellectual. He currently serves as the W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities and Professor of English at Harvard University, where he is the Chair of the African and African American Studies and the Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research.

Cornel West is a prominent American scholar and public intellectual. Formerly at Harvard University, West is currently Professor of Religion at Princeton University.

Wole Soyinka is a Nigerian writer, considered by many to be Africa’s most distinguished playwright. He was the first person of African descent to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986. He has taught in the Universities of Lagos, Ibadan and Ife, and is currently the Elias Ghanem Professor of Creative Writing at the English Department of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.