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Chapter 16
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Long Walk to Freedom, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Racism and Division
Negotiation, Democracy, and Progress
Nonviolent Protest vs. Violent Protest
The Value of Optimism
Summary
Analysis
The Nationalist government begins evacuating Africans and forcing them to live in new neighborhoods. The ANC gets involved with trying to stop these removal efforts. At one meeting on the subject, Mandela crosses a line he hasn’t crossed before, saying that it might be necessary to use violence to stop apartheid. He believes that, while nonviolent resistance worked for Gandhi, his enemies were from a faraway country and acted more rationally than the Nationalists. But Mandela’s bold speeches sometimes get him in trouble with fellow ANC members.
Mandela’s views on violence as a political tool are nuanced and evolve over the course of his life. Crucially, Mandela never depicts himself as seeking violence as a first solution. In many ways, the first part of Mandela’s autobiography is an argument that builds to the point of why violence may be necessary for political change in South Africa. Sometimes, he suggests here, it’s necessary to turn to violence to make a point if nonviolent protest clearly isn’t working.
Themes
