Radio War Nerd #289 — The ANC Insurgency Against Apartheid South Africa (Patreon)

Guest: Steve Davis, historian 

Recorded: July 23, 2021

Nelson Mandela became a living legend after his release from prison in 1990, when he led South Africa from apartheid to black majority rule. Mandela's image transformed as well, from leftist African guerrilla leader, to avuncular racial strife healer. Historian Steve Davis joins us to recover the history of the African National Congress's insurgency from 1960-1990, and to discuss the rhetoric of key texts that have defined the insurgency, the ANC, and Mandela.

Steve Davis is associate professor of history at the University of Kentucky. 

Buy Steve's book "The ANC's War Against Apartheid: Umkhonto we Sizwe and the Liberation of South Africa".

Read Steve's article on Nelson Mandela's American-ghost-written autobiography: "Struggle History and Self-Help: The Parallel Lives of Nelson Mandela in Conventional and Figurative Biography".

Check out the Bitter Aloe Project website ( www.bitteraloeproject.com ) — which uses machine learning models to extract names of individuals, locations and organizations from a huge listing of human rights violations in apartheid-era South Africa.

Total time: 1:47:33

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here.