The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela

The first, and only, authorized and authenticated collection of correspondence spanning the 27 years Nelson Mandela was held as a political prisoner.

While incarcerated in South Africa in four prisons as a sentenced prisoner between 1962 and 1990, Mandela wrote hundreds of letters to loved ones, followers, prison authorities, and government officials documenting his plight as the most prominent political prisoner of the twentieth century. Here, the letters many of them never before seen by the public have been assembled from the collections held by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, the South African National Archives, and the Mandela family, amongst others, together with a foreword by Zamaswazi Dlamini-Mandela, granddaughter of Nelson Mandela. With accompanying facsimiles of some of the actual letters with generous annotations, the book provides a personal and intimate portrait of the lawyer and political activist as husband, parent, friend, and political prisoner, reflecting on everything from the trajectory of the anti-apartheid movement to the death of his beloved son, Thembi, in Cape Town in 1969. Quietly impassioned and (despite occasional heavy censorship) eloquent, they reveal both the extraordinary compassion of a father and the unbending will of a man who refused to compromise his ethical values in the face of the most extraordinary human punishment and psychological abuse. The volume covers every aspect of life behind bars for the future South African leader, whose voice the apartheid government attempted to stifle at every possible opportunity. The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela form a new autobiographical vision. Images throughout

“"These messages to family, friends, comrades, elected officials and prison administrators reveal a Mandela as vulnerable as any other human.... Mr. Mandela's prison letters underscore isolation's other violence: every incarcerated human is stripped of family. Separating a person from his kin is the ultimate expression of state power. I can't help seeing, in the image of Mr. Mandela's daughter begging for her father's return, the children weeping at our southern border. Considering the solace and strength he took from these folded sheets of paper, it's a marvel his captors allowed him any mail at all.... Mr. Mandela's letters tell a story beyond their own words."”

"Madiba's words give us a compass in a sea of change. Firm ground amidst swirling currents." -- Barack Obama

Nelson Mandela (1918—2013) was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, politician, and philanthropist, who served as the first democratically-elected President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. Mandela established the Nelson Mandela Foundation as his post-presidential office in 1999. It is a not-for-profit organization which has, since 2004, been transformed into an archive and trusted voice on his life and times. It carries out its mandate to promote Mandela’s vision and work by convening dialogues and creating platforms for engagement around critical issues to promote social justice. Sahm Venter is a former Associated Press reporter (who covered and was witness to Mandela’s release from prison in 1990) and a longtime researcher. She has co-edited several previous books, including Notes to the Future: Words of Wisdom with Sello Hatang and Doug Abrams); 491 Days: Prisoner Number 1323/69 by Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, with Swati Dlamini; and Something to Write Home About: Reflections from the Heart of History, with Claude Colart; and co-wrote Conversations with a Gentle Soul with the late anti-apartheid struggle hero, Ahmed Kathrada. Zamaswazi Dlamini-Mandela was born in 1979 in Welkom, South Africa, close to the town of Brandfort to which her grandmother, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was banished by the apartheid regime. She works as a business developer and is a public speaker and a self-described serial entrepreneur. In 2017 she launched her luxury fashion range Swati by Roi Kaskara. She is the granddaughter of Nelson Mandela and Nomzamo Nobandla Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

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