Mandela

Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s Liberator as Prisoner and President, Dies at 95

Mandela, My Countryman by Nadine Gordimer

interview with Neville Alexander

John Burns:

The day following his release, when Mr. Mandela met hundreds of reporters for his first news conference in nearly 30 years in the terraced garden of Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s residence in Bishopscourt, in the lee of Table Mountain, his message of reconciliation found its most powerful expression...

But it was an act of particular kindness that remains lodged most powerfully in the memory. As the news conference unfolded, a white reporter stepped forward and identified himself as Clarence Keyter, the chief political correspondent of the Afrikaans-language service of the state-run broadcasting monopoly, SABC. As he asked his question, Mr. Keyter seemed deeply apprehensive — perhaps not surprising, considering that the SABC had served unswervingly, for decades, as the legitimizing voice of apartheid.

Sensing Mr. Keyter’s unease, Mr. Mandela rose from his seat, walked forward a dozen paces, shook the reporter’s hand and thanked him, saying that in his last years in prison, when he had been given a radio, he had relied on Mr. Keyter’s reports to learn “what was going on in my country.” Mr. Keyter, stunned, had tears welling in his eyes. The rest of us knew then, if we didn’t before, that in Mr. Mandela, the country had a man who was capable — if anybody was — of healing the historical wounds that had made South Africa so tragic for so long.