Mandela: Echoes of an Era by Alf Kumalo
Text by Es’kia Mphahlele
Everyone under the age of 45 — in Pretoria, Cape Town, Winburg or Vereeniging; in Kent, England, Orange County, California or in Tokyo, Japan — everyone knows too little about Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela.
He was born 72 years ago in Qunu, Transkei. He walked to freedom this month. Upon leaving prison, he was faced with all the sophisticated media wizardry that frantic journalists and photographers had assembled.
While they, we and people all over the world, waited. In ignorance. His incarceration silenced him. His writings and books about him and his ideas, as well as any work in which he or his banned compatriots were quoted, have not been legally available to readers in South Africa for close on three decades. Suddenly, this has changed.
The vacuum of information and knowledge has filled, rapidly, with thousands of words, many of which fall strangely on the eye and ear. Many of us, simply, do not know who he is, what he has done and said in the past and why.
There is a great deal of knowledge to be gained — very quickly — if we are to make informed decisions, develop our own opinions and contribute, logically, to the exciting times in which we live.
Publishers began panting for Mr Mandela’s (apparently phantom) autobiography at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 1989. Books to help fill the void of information are going to appear on our shelves, some with unseemly haste.
Exclusive Communiqué, and our booksellers, will inform you of worthwhile publications, as and when these become available. There are many titles already in stock which can help. I would like to draw your attention to two books which will be available from our bookshelves around mid March.
Alf Kumalo, an experienced, senior photographer with The Star newspaper and someone well known to Mr Mandela, and Es’kia Mphahlele have compiled a photographic essay entitled Mandela: Echoes of an Era. This large format paperback is at the printers right now.
The Foreword is by Walter Sisulu and the book is as up to date as the Soccer City rally, held recently in Soweto to mark Mr Mandela ‘s triumphant return to his Johannesburg home.
Penguin Books (South Africa) are to be congratulated on producing this invaluable record of our stirring times with the professionalism and skill evident in the manuscript I have read. The text is most accessible and the photographs present a panoramic history which will inform every reader. The book will cost a mere R49.99.
No Easy Walk To Freedom, a collection of Mr Mandela ‘s articles speeches and letters “from underground”, as well as the transcripts from the trials, vividly illustrates the magnetic attractions of the man prior to his imprisonment. This title is presently being rejacketed by Heinemann S.A. who hope to succeed in acquiring an updated Preface.
However useful this may be, the present Preface by Ruth First is, historically, significant. This title has been banned in South Africa for many years.
The following titles will be available shortly and are worth watching out for. Mary Benson’s A Far Cry and Nelson Mandela; Winnie Mandela’s A Part of my Soul; Donald Woods’ autobiographical Asking for Trouble as well as his articles, entitled South African Despatches, and Nadine Gordimer’s The Essential Gesture, a collection of interviews with political figures who, until now, have been banned.
In a sense, we all need to heed Mr Mandela’s call to go back to school!