Lucas Mangope - A Life

As the leader of the most ‘successful’ ethnic homeland of the apartheid era, Bophuthatswana, Lucas Mangope was a controversial figure. His legacy still divides opinion to this day. A complex and polarising figure, some consider him a tinpot dictator whose rule was part of an immoral system riddled with corruption and repression, while others laud the infrastructural development and public services his administration delivered.

Journalist Oupa Segalwe, who hails from the same village as Mangope, conducted wide-ranging research for almost a decade, enjoying unprecedented access to figures close to Mangope.

In Lucas Mangope: A Life, he incisively examines the public and private life of this traditional-leader-cum-elected politician, whose rise and fall coincided with the collapse of apartheid and that of the ill-advised homelands project. Segalwe compellingly traces how complex currents of self-enrichment, duty to his people, and serving the interests of all those he was indebted to played out.

A balanced account of the life and times of the enigmatic Mangope, this book also sheds light on the experiences of ordinary people in an often overlooked but influential region of South Africa during the homelands era.