South Africa: Who Was Nelson Mandela by Meg Belviso
Synopsis: (from amazon) As a child he dreamt of changing South Africa; as a man he changed the world. Nelson Mandela spent his life battling apartheid and championing a peaceful revolution. He spent twenty-seven years in prison and emerged as the inspiring leader of the new South Africa. He became the country’s first black president and went on to live his dream of change. This is an important and exciting addition to the Who Was…? series.
Thoughts: I had thought I’d read a book about South Africa for my Readings Around the World, but I guess the last few books I read about South Africa were before I started trying to read my way around the planet, so this is sort of late, since I read this book in April.
I bought this book for Tesfa for Easter because Supermom made me feel bad about not having any presents for Tesfa (Supermom is someone I know, not an amalgam of great parents or something). I felt bad, but not bad enough to go anywhere other than the grocery store where I was already going. The previous week, the grocery store had a huge stack of Roald Dahls, but they vanished and the only children’s books not involving hypersexualized Bratz or Monster High dolls were either this one about Nelson Mandela or a book about Pokémon. Easy choice.
I’m sure this whole series of Who Was books skirts some sort of copyright or trademark issues – I don’t think it was authorized by the estate of Nelson Mandela (which reminds me of an episode of Made In Canada when Alan wants to make a movie about a conman but the lies the conman told so that it would still be fiction and he wouldn’t have to buy the rights). I’m also pretty sure this book was published to capitalize on the emotion following Mandela’s death in December.
All that being said: it’s a good book. Obviously aimed at the younger crowd, and Tesfa at five may have been a bit too young to grasp some of the more salient points other than that apartheid means separating people based on skin colour and if your skin was dark, you were treated poorly. But she was interested in reading it and seeing what happened. The book didn’t seem to sugar-coat the situation. People were shot at. There were riots. Nelson Mandela wasn’t readily available for his family.
Most importantly, unlike many books that discuss race relations in terms of the benevolent white savior (The Help, To Kill A Mockingbird), Nelson Mandela and his black South African compatriots are the focus of this book. It’s probably sad that I have to be excited when a book about a POC is actually about said POC.
Random fact: Nelson Mandela’s birthday was the same day as my birthday (is? I don’t know the correct verb tense when comparing the dead to the living).
Rating: 4.5/5
Previous Readings Around the World.