ABSTRACT
The innumerable interviews and records of contacts, however brief, conducted with Rolihlahla Nelson Mandela (1918–) during his time as President of South Africa (1994–99), and in the active years following, never failed to recognise that he radiated a special quality: an ability to inspire undivided attention and devotion in whomsoever he was speaking to, something that his fans and followers soon came to call Madiba magic. The alliterative coinage, based on the honorific or clan name ‘madiba’ which Mandela, as an elder statesman, was pleased to acquire, captured a range of related meanings – memorable and powerful charm, indefinable aura, an ability to lead and inspire; in short, a powerful effect of ‘charisma’ such as the Oxford English Dictionary might define it (that is, a quality of ‘special grace’, of being endowed with a ‘god-like aura’). Indeed, the term appeared to recognise in him, as did those who used it, an epitome of the charismatic leadership that had been famously pinpointed by Max Weber early in the twentieth century; almost as if Mandela were a walking embodiment of that quality of individual personality that Weber famously identified as a central plank of social authority.
