Mandela: The Authorised Biography
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| Author | Anthony Sampson |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Annie Leibovitz |
| Country | South Africa |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Biography |
| Publisher | HarperCollins |
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Publication date
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1999 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 678 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 44484875 |
Mandela: The Authorised Biography is a study of Nelson Mandela, the former President of South Africa, by the late journalist Anthony Sampson.
Sampson's book was published in 1999, five years after Mandela's autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom. The book was one of the first to examine such issues as Winnie Mandela's crimes, and State President Frederik Willem de Klerk's suspected attempts to use the security forces to derail peace talks.
Sampson said that de Klerk had exacerbated the violence in several ways. De Klerk was reportedly ignoring the violence of the Zulu-nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) when directed against ANC (and vice versa), in the hope of splitting anti-apartheid forces. De Klerk also permitted Inkatha supporters to carry "traditional weapons" in their rallies, with which they caused much injury. Sampson cited an occasion when the ANC tipped off the government that IFP was planning a violent protest: the police did nothing, and thirty people were killed.
Mandela had himself made these criticisms in Long Walk to Freedom, but Sampson also broached new topics. Sampson accused de Klerk of permitting his police and defence ministers to sponsor both Inkatha and secret pro-apartheid organisations that terrorised opposition movements, the Third Force. In 1991 de Klerk demoted those ministers, Adriaan Vlok and Magnus Malan respectively, and began an inquiry that Sampson described as a whitewash conducted by interested parties. De Klerk denied this, and said that he had been unable to restrain the third force, even though he wanted to. In an interview in 2004, de Klerk said that his security forces had undermined him by conducting "undercover activities [...] in conflict with the policies which we were trying to advance". He said that the ANC also contained extremist elements that had tried to wreck the peace process.
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