A court recording of former president Nelson Mandela’s last speech before he was sentenced to life imprisonment will on Sunday be released in Britain for the first time since 1964, The Sunday Independent newspaper reports.
The British Library will issue the recording on compact discs to mark the anniversary of Mandela’s release from Robben Island on February 11, 1990.
A recording of the three-hour speech had been stored on dictabelt tapes in the South African National Archives since the 1964 Rivonia Trial. The British Library had a dictabelt machine and offered its services.
Already serving a five-year sentence for illegally leaving South Africa, Mandela was charged in 1963 along with 15 other African National Congress leaders for sabotage and attempted overthrow of the government.
On April 20, 1964, the young Mandela said at the close of the Rivonia Trial: “I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities.
“It is an ideal for which I hope to live for and to see realised,” he told the court. “But my Lord, if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”