Project
Nelson Mandela – About Tolerance and Leadership (a biography)
The project will involve the final editing and fine-tuning of the main body of the book Nelson Mandela – Tolerance and Leadership.
Project
The First Generation of Independent African Leaders and the Making of the African Nation-State
This research project examines the first generation of independent African leaders and how they went about constructing new African nation-states: forging a sense of nationhood out of disparate African ethnic groups brought together within artificial colonial boundaries through colonial rule; imagining the new nation through culture, religion, and the arts; choosing or defining a development model in a world divided into opposing camps of East and West by the Cold War; and the excitement of new sub-disciplines like development economics and its promise to transform former tropical colonies.

Publication
The was, the is and the might-have-been: Political leadership in post-apartheid South Africa
Bill Nasson. 2008. The was, the is and the might-have-been: Political leadership in post-apartheid South Africa. Journal of African History,...
Project
We Don't Need Another Hero
In a 2008, post-Polokwane missive to ANC president, Jacob Zuma, declaring his refusal to campaign for the African National Congress (ANC) in the upcoming 2009 general election, recently-deposed South African President Thabo Mbeki famously declared:… I find it strange in the extreme that today cadres of our movement attach the label of a cult of personality to me, and indeed publicly declare a determination to kill to defend your own cause, the personal interests of the personality, Jacob Zuma!

Project
“We Don’t Need Another Hero”
In a 2008, post-Polokwane missive to ANC president, Jacob Zuma, declaring his refusal to campaign for the African National Congress (ANC) in the upcoming 2009 general election, recently-deposed South African President Thabo Mbeki famously declared:… I find it strange in the extreme that today cadres of our movement attach the label of a cult of personality to me, and indeed publicly declare a determination to kill to defend your own cause, the personal interests of the personality, Jacob Zuma!

