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"Alan Paton: A Biography"

By Peter F. Alexander

Oxford University Press, 510 pp.; $35

"Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela"

By Nelson Mandela

Little, Brown, 558 pp.; $24.95

Two striking incidents from these estimable books intimate the depth—but also the ironies—of Christian faith in modern South Africa. Alan Paton (1903-88) won worldwide renown when in 1948 he published "Cry, the Beloved Country," an intensely powerful novel of interracial antagonism, murder, despair, and (at the end) forgiveness. When in the 1950s and 1960s he helped guide South Africa's Liberal Party as a voice for nonviolent, multiracial reform, he was subjected to serious harassment from the South African government even as he won the support of many reformers inside and outside of his country.

Before he became widely known through his writing and political activities, however, Paton had served as the superintendent of a juvenile prison for nonwhites at Deipkloof, south Johannesburg. As a humane and largely successful administrator, Paton tried to promote inner direction, as well as outward conformity, in his charges. To that end, in 1935 or 1936 he introduced a daily half-hour of Bible study. Not long thereafter one of the boys was accused of stealing fish from a nearby store. When Paton asked his black staff for advice, they urged him to use corporal punishment to get at the truth. But after only a few cuts of the cane, the lad sprang up and accused Paton of "crucifying me." He then called the African warder who was accusing him "Judas," the black vice-principal "Herod," and Paton "Pontius Pilate." Paton was deeply moved, apologized profusely, and let the boy go. Later the same afternoon, Paton went searching for the lad to offer his apologies again, but when he found the boy, he was eating a hunk of a stolen fish.

About 20 years later, Nelson Mandela (b. 1918) was on the road. A few years earlier he had qualified as a lawyer and had established, with his partner Oliver Tambo, the first African legal office in the city of Johannesburg. Increasingly, however, Mandela was drawn toward political activism through the work of the African National Congress (ANC), a multiracial organization that had already been in existence for nearly half a century. Now, in the fall of 1955, Mandela was traveling through Natal and the Cape Province to encourage local ANC units to resist the policies of the Nationalist government, which had come to power in 1948 and had immediately begun transforming South Africa's hereditary racist conventions into full-scale, legal apartheid.

When Mandela arrived in Cape Town, he was welcomed into the home of Walter Teka, pastor of a Wesleyan church. Mandela's guides for much of his stay were Johnson Ngwevela and Greenwood Ngotyana, who were Communists as well as members of the ANC. The first Sunday of Mandela's visit he arose with the expectation of making another foray into the countryside, but he was surprised to learn that all ANC business was called off. Why? The Communists Ngwevela and Ngotyana were also ardent Wesleyans who kept the Sabbath strictly. As Mandela sums up the episode: "I protested, but to no avail. Communism and Christianity, at least in Africa, were not mutually exclusive."

These incidents illustrate the treasures to be found in the two books, which tell us not only about Paton and Mandela, but also about the volatile mix of religion and society in an intensely Christian, but also intensely divided, region of the world. The biography by Peter Alexander (an Australian academic who knew Paton personally) is not as powerful as the best of Paton's own autobiographical writing (especially the first volume of his autobiography, "Towards the Mountain," 1980). But partially because Alexander shares the modern fixation on sex and the details of private life, this account is more complete than anything Paton wrote about himself. Moreover, Alexander's interest in Paton's private life does not undermine his ability to make persuasive positive judgments about both Paton's writing and his politics.

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July 17 1995, Vol. 39, No. 8