Nelson Mandela, the first democratic president of South Africa (1994–1999), secured a catalytic and at times confounding place in world history. He was neither an enthralling orator, an imposing Great Man, nor a formidable intellectual. Yet his birthday, July 18, has been marked by the United Nations as “Nelson Mandela International Day.” He is the only former head of state in contemporary times to enjoy such transnational iconic status. Here, I claim that his unique place in history can be explained by how closely he resembles a philosopher king.
The “ philosopher king ” or “philosopher ruler” is a western philosophy concept that originates in the following claim by Greek philosopher Socrates, found in his mentee Plato’s book The Republic: “The human race will have no respite from evils until those who are really philosophers acquire political power or until, through some divine dispensation, those who rule and have political authority in the cities become real philosophers.”
South African philosopher Mabogo Percy More adds that a philosopher is not only a scholar of the subject, but also “an individual who has the capacity to make an original contribution to the development of philosophical thought and to the world of ideas irrespective of his [her] training in the discipline.”
Although the concept referred to state rule by the monarchy or aristocracy when The Republic was written (between 380 and 375 BCE), in contemporary democratic politics the term is not used literally. It has come to refer to heads of state such as presidents, prime ministers, and chancellors, as well as the remaining monarchs. It simultaneously captures the Janusian contradiction of an ideal form of rational and ethical leadership (the philosophical element) and a caution of autocratic leadership (the king, ruler, or political element).
Africa’s first post-independence heads of state, also referred to as “ Africa’s Founding Fathers ,” were conferred this mantle because they were not only political leaders but also thought leaders. Political scholar Vusi Gumede asserts that a “thought leader is someone who possesses the right kind of knowledge needed to challenge an existing paradigm in order to advance new thinking and to inspire others as well.” They challenged Western imperialist and colonial paradigms.
Despite their flaws, Africa’s Founding Fathers became beacons of inspiration for their people during the euphoric era of independence and decolonization. Collectively, as Africa’s philosopher kings, they formulated or promoted theories and concepts, delivered eloquent speeches, and wrote influential works pertaining to African communalism, African nationalism, African socialism, Afrocentrism, Négritude, Nkrumaism, Consciencism, and Ujamaa.
South Africa is a unique outlier in this landscape. After the colonial settlement of the Dutch from the 17th century—predating the European Scramble for Africa (1880–1914)—together with Britain’s colonial stake in the late 19th century, the country endured a further four decades of white minority, Afrikaner nationalist, and apartheid (separate development) rule. Thus, South Africa’s liberation was only realized in 1994.
Hence, Mandela became the last 20th-century post-independence leader on the continent to assume office. The delayed independence of South Africa provided Mandela with a unique vantage point to observe the successes and failures of other African leaders over four decades. Mandela read and studied widely throughout his 27-year prison term . He had the opportunity to contemplate, in solitude and together with fellow imprisoned comrades, the state of a nation and continent in crisis. Those reflections, the letters he wrote, and the meetings he held while still in prison refined his philosophy and politics.
His brand of philosophical leadership can be distinguished from that of his African (and global) peers by the absence of ideological purism and the presence of ideological pragmatism. This is his original and philosophical contribution to the world of ideas. Whereas purism leaves no room for the dialectical tensions inherent in human existence, pragmatism navigates gray areas, straddles contradictions, embraces paradoxes, and facilitates synthesis of equal and competing interests.
Arguably, this cultivated in him a range of ideal attributes that the philosopher king should possess:
For they are lovers of the knowledge of the eternal and of all truth; they are haters of falsehood …