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Chapter 20
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
In September 1955, Mandela’s travel ban expires. He drives his car back to see several places in the veld near where he grew up. At one of his stops, a police sergeant detains him, but when Mandela gets him to admit that Mandela isn’t under arrest, he is forced to let Mandela go. Mandela returns to Qunu, where his mother still lives. He sees his sisters too, then goes on to Mqhekezweni, where Justice still lives. As Mandela travels around, he can’t help being paranoid wondering if a hitchhiker he picks up is secretly an undercover police officer. Still, a visit to Cape Town—where political action is rarer than in Johannesburg and so the activists have to show a lot of courage—helps rejuvenate Mandela when he sees the enthusiasm of a local ANC meeting.
Mandela’s suspicions that a hitchhiker may be an undercover officer reflects how the government is trying—and succeeding—to keep the opposition disorganized by making them paranoid and distrustful. Mandela’s visit to the place where he grew up emphasizes how the roots of his childhood continue to shape his adult life, but this trip also emphasizes how much Mandela’s life has changed and how he can’t go back to his old way of living. The enthusiasm Mandela sees at the ANC meeting shows how while his new life means giving up the old one, it also has positive sides.
Themes
