美国国家公共电台 NPR Nelson Mandela's Prison Letters: 'One Day I Will Be Back At Home'

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AILSA CHANG, HOST:

Former South African President Nelson Mandela would have been 100 years old tomorrow. He died in 2013, and a new book is marking his centennial. It's called "The Prison Letters Of Nelson Mandela." These deeply personal letters were compiled¹ by Sahm Venter, who talked about them with NPR's Greg Myre. They were colleagues at The Associated Press in South Africa back in 1990 when Mandela was released².

GREG MYRE, BYLINE³: Nelson Mandela never liked to talk about personal things. When you'd ask him about that, he'd always steer⁴ the conversation somewhere else. What did you learn about him with these letters?

SAHM VENTER: There were so many things that happened in prison that were devastating⁵ to him, you know, the separation from his children, the death of his mother, the death of his son. So I don't think he could be guarded.

MYRE: So Mandela had two daughters with Winnie Mandela, and they were just ages 3 and 1 when he went to prison. They weren't even allowed to see him until they were 16 years old. So the only way he could really be a parent was through his letters.

VENTER: Yeah, that's right. He had to try and be a father by remote control. And I guess when they were really small, they had little bits read to them, and then when they were older, they were allowed to write letters and receive them. Zindzi, his youngest daughter, told me the first time she saw him standing⁶ up - she visited him from the age of 16 and later on when they were allowed a contact visit when - she couldn't believe how tall he was because all of the time that she was able to visit him, he was sitting down.

MYRE: Wow. I'd like you to read one of the letters he wrote to his daughters, and this was from 1969, so they were maybe 10, 11 years old.

VENTER: (Reading) Zindzi says her heart is sore because I'm not at home and wants to know when I will come back. I do not know, my darlings, when I will return. Nobody knows when it will be, not even the judge who said I should be kept here. But I am certain that one day I will be back at home to live in happiness with you until the end of my days.

MYRE: Wow. And it would still be another 20 years before he was released from prison. Sahm, you work at the Mandela Foundation⁷, so you have access to his documents, but these very private letters were scattered⁸ all over the place. How did you track them down?

VENTER: Well, there's a large number of letters at the National Archive, which received them after the transition⁹ from apartheid. They kept boxes and boxes of his entire prison record.

MYRE: What was your most surprising find in these letters?

VENTER: There was a letter in one of the prison boxes which was folded up and still in its envelope, and it was a beautiful letter written to his daughters Zindzi, probably it was for her 18th birthday or 19th birthday. And her birthday is in December, and there was - it was clearly never sent. And there was a note with it from prison officials saying the prisoner does not have permission to send a letter with a Christmas card. So they just didn't send it. And I actually contacted Zindzi and told her about it. She had no idea about it. So all these years later, she got - she actually got her letter.

MYRE: Sahm, several years after Mandela got out of prison, he went back to Robben Island where he'd been held for so many years. And you went with him and got to talk to him. What did he tell you on that visit?

VENTER: I was just fascinated¹⁰ by the fact that every afternoon at 3:30, they would lock the doors, the gates, and the prisoners would be in those single cells until about 5:30 the next morning. So I asked him, what did he do when he was locked away like this every day? And he said, I read, and I wrote letters. So he spent a lot of time and effort on those letters. They were beautifully written, full of detail, and essentially¹¹ he poured his heart into them.

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CHANG: That's Sahm Venter in Johannesburg, South Africa, speaking with NPR's Greg Myre. She's the editor of the new book "The Prison Letters Of Nelson Mandela." It's being released to mark the 100th anniversary¹² of Mandela's birth.