ABSTRACT

This chapter compares and contrasts the prisoner-to-president careers of Czechoslovak playwright and dissident Václav Havel and African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela. Transformational and charismatic leaders during moments of regime transition, their personal histories and differing receptions at home and abroad after assuming power are analysed, as well as the underlying constraints and opportunities they faced. While both Havel and Mandela are considered ‘heroes’ in global politics and are often compared with one another, the chapter argues that their trajectories indicate the actual inside/outside, contingent and constructed nature of international politics. Very specific and rare circumstances (the ‘negotiated’ fall of communism and end of Apartheid) combined with their own ‘skill sets’ demonstrate the disproportional impact of heroic leaders. Finally, the chapter explores how their post-transition legitimacy as leaders was either enhanced or weakened by a combination of domestic factors: the imperatives of state-building, governance, ideology, and the injustices of the past. Their subsequent actions within the post-heroic realm of normalised foreign policy serves to illustrate the complex interplay between the politics of personal heroism and the herculean tasks of establishing new political orders.