Mandela: The Authorised Biography
book by Anthony Sampson
Mandela: The Authorised Biography is a study of Nelson Mandela, the former President of South Africa, by the British journalist Anthony Sampson.
Sampson's book was published in 1999, five years after Mandela's autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom. The book was one of the first to examine such issues as Winnie Mandela's crimes, and State President Frederik Willem de Klerk's suspected attempts to use the security forces to derail peace talks.
De Klerk and the Third Force
Sampson said that de Klerk had exacerbated the violence in several ways. De Klerk was reportedly ignoring the violence of the Zulu-nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) when directed against ANC (and vice versa), in the hope of splitting anti-apartheid forces. De Klerk also permitted Inkatha supporters to carry "traditional weapons" in their rallies, with which they caused much injury. Sampson cited an occasion when the ANC tipped off the government that IFP was planning a violent protest: the police did nothing, and thirty people were killed.
Mandela had himself made these criticisms in Long Walk to Freedom, but Sampson also broached new topics. Sampson accused de Klerk of permitting his police and defence ministers to sponsor both Inkatha and secret pro-apartheid organisations that terrorised opposition movements, the Third Force. In 1991 de Klerk demoted those ministers, Adriaan Vlok and Magnus Malan respectively, and began an inquiry that Sampson described as a whitewash conducted by interested parties.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6747947. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1999 and 1991.
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