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Chapter 113
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
Mandela casts the first vote of his life on April 27th. This day is the second of the four days of voting, and Mandela votes at a high school near where John Dube, first president of the ANC, is buried. A reporter asks him who he’s voting for, and he jokes that he took a long time thinking about it. When the votes are counted, the ANC has 62.6 percent, just shy of the two-thirds they need to make a constitution without votes from other parties. Mandela is actually happy that now more parties than the ANC will play a role in the constitution. On May 2nd, de Klerk gives his concession speech.
Mandela casting his first vote is a culmination of all the causes he has struggled for throughout his life. His joking with a reporter suggests that he is in good spirits and willing to celebrate the occasion, even though his work is far from over. Mandela’s happiness about the ANC not having enough to make the constitution on their own shows that even in victory, he holds on to his principle of trying to unify different groups of people. Similar to how Mandela worried that the ANC group he formed in prison was all Xhosa members, Mandela doesn’t want to open himself up to the criticism that he and his allies are only looking out for their own interests.
Themes
