Nelson Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (Class 10 excerpt)
Quick answer: Nelson Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, Class 10 First Flight: summary of the inauguration excerpt, 10 May 1994, twin obligations, courage, and exam answers.
On 10 May 1994 a man who spent twenty-seven years in prison stands in the amphitheatre of the Union Buildings in Pretoria and takes the oath as the first President of a democratic South Africa. The second chapter of Class 10 First Flight is an excerpt from Mandela's 1994 autobiography.
The excerpt in brief
Dignitaries from many nations gather for what Mandela calls the largest assembly of world leaders ever held on South African soil. Thabo Mbeki and F.W. de Klerk are sworn in as deputies, and Mandela pledges to uphold the constitution, promising the country will never again suffer the oppression of one group by another. Jets fly over in salute; not long before, those generals would have arrested him. Two anthems are sung, each community singing the song it once despised.
The rest is reflection. Mandela names the men the system produced in resistance, Tambo, Sisulu, Luthuli, Dadoo, Fischer, Sobukwe, the country's greatest wealth. No one is born hating; courage is mastery of fear, not its absence. Every man has twin obligations, to family and to people, which a black South African could not honour together. His idea of freedom grew from a boy's running in the fields to the knowledge that his people's freedom and his own were one, and that the oppressor too must be freed.
The people
Themes and meaning
Exams ask for freedom, courage, the twin obligations and hatred as learned, all stated plainly. The sharper observation is the anthem detail: two peoples singing songs they despised a year earlier, without knowing the words. Mandela places that image before the reflections, showing reconciliation as awkward and unfinished rather than triumphant.
The craft of political memoir
The excerpt moves from event to meaning, and the turn is the flyover, when the generals' salute makes the change of power physical. Mandela then reflects through a ladder of definitions of freedom, each wider than the last, so the argument has the shape of a life. Define one word at three ages and the reader sees the person grow.
For the exam
Summary in 100 words: On 10 May 1994 Nelson Mandela is inaugurated as South Africa's first democratic President before leaders from around the world. Deputies Mbeki and de Klerk are sworn in, jets salute the new government, and two anthems are sung. Mandela reflects on decades of racial oppression and honours the comrades who resisted it, calling them the nation's greatest wealth. He argues that hatred is taught and that courage means conquering fear. He describes the twin obligations to family and people that apartheid made impossible to meet, and explains how his hunger for freedom grew into the struggle for his people's, and the oppressor's.
What writers can take from this
- Give the date and place; the inauguration is a factual anchor for most questions.
- Explain the two anthems as a symbol of unfinished reconciliation.
- Keep the twin obligations answer concrete: family on one side, people on the other, apartheid between.
- Memoirists: define your key word at three ages of your life.
- Move from a single physical event to reflection, never the other way round.
Try it yourself
Write a memoir passage that begins with one public ceremony described in physical detail and ends with the narrator defining a single word three times, at three ages, so that the definitions tell the story of a life.
Questions
What are the twin obligations Mandela refers to?
Obligations to one's family, parents, wife and children, and obligations to one's people, community and country. Under apartheid a black man who tried to fulfil the second was punished and isolated from the first.
What does Mandela say about courage in Long Walk to Freedom?
He learned that courage is not the absence of fear but the triumph over it. The brave man is not the one who feels no fear but the one who conquers it.
Why were two national anthems sung at the inauguration?
The old Afrikaans anthem and the African anthem were both sung to mark the union of the two communities. Mandela notes that each group would soon learn the words of the anthem it had once despised.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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