Mandela & Mbeki: The Hero and the Outsider presents a comparative historical study of the narrative of Mandela and Mbeki and its grip on the South African imagination. A persistent theme among historical narratives of South African presidential politics was that Mandela is a `hero’, and that his style embodied an inclusive approach. His former deputy and successor, on the other side, was regarded a little harshly as a `prince’. This book is concerned with the historical contexts in which these two narratives were centred, and takes the reader on a journey of what South African history could look like when Mandela, a character of legend, is cast in the role of an introverted ruler, and Mbeki as manifesting the sense of an outsider. Mbeki had a reputation for being `an opinionated foreigner’ in his country’s present politics of avant-gardism and universalism.

The author presents a picture of the period 1912–2008 and organises his account around a number of themes of current interest: the `invention’ of traditions and modern nations, Black Consciousness, the ANC, the PAC, the working class, and the middle class. He writes a stimulating account with a great deal of interesting detail, taking the debate about his two protagonists beyond the `orthodox’ platform to which it had been taken in the mid-1990s. Lucky Mathebe sets out to demonstrate, on the one hand, that Mandela’s legend amounts to a great deal more than the surge of his charisma, and that his Republicans’ avant-gardism did much to make him the leader he became. On the other hand, he demonstrates that Mbeki was a pragmatist and a `hyphenate’ leader, both by custom and by principle, and was historically programmed by his exile past into the primordialist he became.