As Mandela’s Book Unites Obama Family

Daily Independent (Lagos)

Yemi Adebisi

26 June 2011

Lagos — The U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama, recently paid a visit to former South African President, Nelson Mandela, kicking off her symbolic trip to Africa by meeting one of the continent’s most revered leaders during which time a copy of Nelson Mandela by Himself: The Authorized Quotations Book, the latest book of the great African leader, was presented to her.

As gathered online, Obama, accompanied by her two daughters, Malia, 12, and Sasha, 10, and her mother, Marian Robinson, visited the 92-year-old anti-apartheid icon at his home in Johannesburg’s Houghton suburb.

The meeting, which included Obama’s niece and nephew, Leslie Robinson, 15, and Avery Robinson, 19, who are also travelling with her, lasted about 20 minutes. The book has been described as “the first wholly accurate and authorised record of Nelson Mandela’s most inspiring and historically important quotations.” In its recent reaction to the publication, Pan Macmillan, the publisher of the book said “it is the definitive book of quotations from one of the great leaders of our time.”

The collection contains no fewer than 2000 quotations from Mandela’s vast speeches, correspondence and audio recordings, spanning over 60 years. “Mandela’s inspirational quotations are organised into over 300 categories for easy reference, including such aspects as what defines greatness in ‘Character’, ‘Courage’ and ‘Optimism’, while we learn from the great man the essence of democracy, freedom and struggle in the categories ‘Democracy’, ‘History’, ‘Racism’, ‘Reconciliation’ and ‘Unity’.”

Mandela has not been seen in public since he was hospitalised at the beginning of the year, suffering from a respiratory disease.

The former President, retired from public services seven years ago, precisely in June 2004 before his 86th birthday, telling his adoring compatriots: “Don’t call me, I’ll call you.” Since then he has rarely appeared in public and when he did, he appeared increasingly frail.

Mandela met President Obama in Washington in 2005, when he was a Senator. A picture of the two men is kept in Mandela’s office, according to a White House aide.

Earlier Mrs. Obama visited the foundation offices, viewing a display of archival items including Mandela’s prison desk calendars and notebooks.

Mandela’s wife, Graca Machel, took the Obama family round. The U.S. first lady who arrived in South Africa last Monday met Nompumelelo Zuma, one of President Jacob Zuma’s wives, in the capital Pretoria.

The visit by Mrs. Obama to South Africa and Botswana is her second official solo journey abroad with a goal of advancing U.S. policies on education, health, and democracy.

Released from prison in 1990, Mandela, author of Long Walk to Freedom, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 and was inaugurated as the first democratically elected President of South Africa in 1994.

He is also the author of the international bestsellers Conversations with Myself.

Mandela, who wore one of his trademark shirts, richly patterned and buttoned at the neck, as captured through the lens of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, showed a healthy-looking man sitting on a couch next to Mrs. Obama. He held a pen and appeared ready to sign an advance copy of his latest book.

Mrs. Obama came to Africa partly to promote her own causes and partly because her husband, whose father was Kenyan, is unlikely to make another trip to his ancestral homeland before his term ends in a year and a half.

It would be recalled that the anti-apartheid hero, hailed Obama as a “new voice of hope” for the world and compared his inauguration as U.S. president to South Africa’s historic transition to democracy when he (Obama) was sworn-in, in 2009.

In a letter handed to Obama before the ceremony, the former South African leader had congratulated the new President on what he called a “truly historic” moment for the United States and the world.

“We are in some ways reminded today of the excitement and enthusiasm in our own country at the time of our transition to democracy,” said Mandela adding that, “people, not only in our country but around the world, were inspired to believe that through common human effort, injustice can be overcome and that together a better life for all can be achieved.”

Mandela, who led South Africans in the fight against white rule and has become a global icon for freedom, said Obama’s election to office had “inspired people as few other events in recent times have done.”

His words: “You, Mister President, have brought a new voice of hope that these problems can be addressed and that we can in fact change the world and make of it a better place.”

Mandela said he shared in a special “excitement and pride” felt by Africans because of the ties linking Obama – whose father was a black Kenyan – to the continent.

“You will always be in our affection as a young man who dared to dream and to pursue that dream,” Mandela wrote. “We wish you well.”

Mandela, who will mark his 93rd birthday on July 18 is one of the few African leaders that loves books. He is a great writer and reader. Long Walk to Freedom, his best selling book is his moving and exhilarating autobiography, a book destined to take its place among the finest memoirs of history’s greatest figures. Here for the first time, he tells the extraordinary story of his life – an epic of struggle, setback, renewed hope, and ultimate triumph, which has, until now, been virtually unknown to most of the world.

The foster son of a Thembu chief, Mandela was raised in the traditional, tribal culture of his ancestors, but at an early age learned the modern, inescapable reality of what came to be called apartheid, one of the most powerful and effective systems of oppression ever conceived. In classically elegant and engrossing prose, he tells of his early years as an impoverished student and law clerk in Johannesburg, of his slow political awakening, and of his pivotal role in the rebirth of a stagnant ANC and the formation of its Youth League in the 1950s. He describes the struggle to reconcile his political activity with his devotion to his family, the anguished breakup of his first marriage, and the painful separations from his children.

He brings vividly to life the escalating political warfare in the 50s between the ANC and the government, culminating in his dramatic escapades as an underground leader and the notorious Rivonia Trial of 1964, at which he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

To millions of people around the world, Mandela stands, as no other living figure does, for the triumph of dignity and hope over despair and hatred, of self-discipline and love over persecution and evil. Long Walk to Freedom embodies that spirit in a book for all time.

Another memorable book written by Mandela, Conversations with Myself was published on October 11, 2010 and launched on Saturday October 30, 2010.

Conversations with Myself includes two compilations of his speeches, letters, and articles which were issued in London, one in 1965 and another in 1978, both with subsequent editions. The personal archive includes his interviews, conversations, unpublished manuscripts smuggled out of jail, notebooks, diaries, letters, meeting notes, travel journals, jottings on calendars. There are many reproductions of his careful handwriting, often signed “NR Mandela, 466/64” (his prison number). The book leads off with a foreword from President Obama, quite the marketing coup.

Most of the materials are excerpted. Sometimes it is comical, with a letter being reduced to just a fragmentary sentence or two.

It was however gathered that Mandela had nothing to do with the book. The archivists met with publishers and then approached him, as they wrote in the introduction. “Mandela was briefed and gave his blessing, but indicated his wish not to be involved.”

Born July 18, 1918, Mandela served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, and was the first South African President to be elected in a fully representative democratic election.

Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist, and the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC). In 1962 he was arrested and convicted of sabotage and other charges, and sentenced to life in prison. Mandela served 27 years in prison, spending many of these years on Robben Island. Following his release from prison on February 11 1990, Mandela led his party in the negotiations that led to multi-racial democracy in 1994. As President from 1994 to 1999, he frequently gave priority to reconciliation.

In South Africa, Mandela is often known as Madiba, his Xhosa clan name; or as Tata. He has received more than 250 awards over four decades, including the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize.

He has been described by critics as one of the great moral and political leaders in the universe: “an international hero whose lifelong dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South Africa won him the Nobel Peace Prize and the presidency of his country.”

Since his triumphant release in 1990 from more than a quarter-century of imprisonment, Mandela has been at the center of the most compelling and inspiring political drama in the world. As President of the ANC and head of South Africa’s antiapartheid movement, he was instrumental in moving the nation toward multiracial government and majority rule. He is revered everywhere as a vital force in the fight for human rights and racial equality.

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