Nelson Mandela’s prison letters are not housed under one roof, and compiling this book has taken almost ten years. These letters have been drawn from various collections: Mandela’s prison files held by the National Archives and Records Service of South Africa, the Himan Bernadt Collection, and the collections of Meyer de Waal, Morabo Morojele, Fatima Meer, Michael Dingake, Amina Cachalia, Peter Wellman, and Ray Carter. Letters are also taken from the Donald Card Collection, named for the former security policemen who in 2004 returned to Mandela the hardcover notebooks in which he copied his letters before he handed them in for posting. Both the Himan Bernadt Collection and the Donald Card Collection are held by the Nelson Mandela Foundation. The books were taken from his cell in 1971, and he complains about this in a letter to authorities on 4 April 1971. For a list of where the individual letters are housed, see page 600.
The National Archives and Records Service of South Africa houses by far the majority of Mandela’s prison letters. Encased alongside other official paperwork in string-tied bundles assembled in cardboard folders, they fill some fifty-nine boxes. The letters represent the Prisons Department’s record of letters he wrote and received. In some cases the originals remain as evidence that they were never sent.
Since most of these letters are copies of the originals, their legibility depends on the way in which they were photocopied, the paper used, and how the ink has faded over time. Some letters are missing words that have been left off the sides during photocopying by prison officials or sliced out of the paper during censoring. In the case of some of the letters, we will never know exactly what Mandela wrote.
Heartbreakingly, a long and loving letter to his youngest daughter, Zindziswa, still neatly folded in its plain white envelope, was found in his prison archives nineteen years after his release from prison. It was accompanied by a note from a prison official who wrote that Mandela was not allowed to send a letter with a Christmas card. Written on 9 December 1979, it is a beautiful reaching out from a father longing for his daughter. She was supposed to have received it in time for her nineteenth birthday from the father she lost when she was a baby of twenty months. Such was the arbitrary and cruel control over correspondence.
The letters in this selection have been reproduced in their entirety apart from in several cases where we have omitted information in the interests of privacy. To avoid repetition, we have also omitted Mandela’s address from nearly all of the letters – the book is divided into sections according to the four different prisons and two different hospitals he was housed in.
We have reproduced the text exactly as Mandela wrote it apart from correcting the odd misspelt word or name (of which there are, typically, very few), very occasionally adding or removing punctuation for ease of reading, or removing superscript in numbers that appear in dates. We have retained his various styles of writing dates and his abbreviations. One cannot know precisely why he frequently wrote ‘yr’ for ‘year’ and ‘chdn’ for ‘children’, but it may have been to keep the letters to the set limit of one and a half pages after prison censors stopped counting the number of words. When discussing books, Mandela usually formatted their titles in quotation marks. In instances where he hasn’t, we have formatted these in italics as per standard editorial conventions. Mandela often used square brackets instead of parentheses. However, to avoid confusing his original text with editorial interpolations, we have replaced his square brackets with parentheses unless otherwise noted.
We have retained the underlining that appears under certain words and passages in particular letters. Usually these were made by prison censors suspicious of individuals or events being discussed. Sometimes Mandela underlined passages. We’ve noted where underlining appears to be the censors’ work, where it appears to be Mandela’s own, and where it is too hard to tell. Mandela often wrote letters in Afrikaans and isiXhosa, the language he grew up speaking, and we have noted which of these letters have been translated into English for inclusion in this publication. Some letters were also typed by prison officials and we have also noted these instances.
Mandela signed off his letters in various ways depending on who the recipient was. In official correspondence he includes his signature, ‘NR Mandela’, the ‘R’ representing his given name, Rolihlahla. In letters to his wife, Winnie Mandela, and certain family members he often signs off as Dalibunga, the name given to him after he underwent the traditional initiation into manhood at the age of sixteen. To others he is Nelson or Nel, the name given to him at his first school by his teacher, Miss Mdingane, according to the custom at the time where African children were given an English name. To his children he is Tata, ‘father’ in isiXhosa, and to his grandchildren, he is Khulu, ‘granddad’ in isiXhosa.
It has not been possible to identify every individual mentioned but, where available, enlightening detail about individuals, locations, and events referred to in the letters has been included in the footnotes. An extensive glossary at the end of the book includes additional information about many of the individuals and events frequently referred to by Mandela.
To avoid readers having to keep track of the host of individuals Mandela refers to, many of whom are often known by more than one name, such as Winnie Mandela, or who are mentioned in letters many years apart, we have treated each letter as its own entity. Therefore, the first time an individual is mentioned in a letter, we have included a footnote explaining who they are despite the same reference appearing in earlier or subsequent letters. We have also applied this approach to the referencing of events and places. Although in some cases this may seem repetitive, we decided it was the most reader-friendly approach, particularly for the reader who chooses to dip in and out of this book which we hope you do, many times.