This account of Mandela´s years in power, compiled from his own notes, reveals why he was irreplaceableSix months after the 1994 election that brought the ANC to power, I was interviewing Ahmed Kathrada, then President Mandela´s parliamentary counsellor, when I heard the door behind me open. A look must have been exchanged because Kathrada stopped mid-flow to ask if I wouldn´t mind stepping out for a moment. As I was leaving, I heard the new arrival say: `He´s done it again.`I knew that `he` must be Nelson Mandela and I had a good idea what he must have done. That evening´s news soon confirmed it: Mandela had gone off-piste again. Never the most riveting of speakers, he would, every now and then, galvanise his country´s attention by breaking away from the monotonously good stuff his speech writers had compiled to speak from the heart. I had taken this as an endearingly maverick but spur-of-the moment act by an otherwise disciplined man who always insisted that he served the collective. But reading Dare Not Linger, which the writer Mandla Langa (who, in the interests of full disclosure, is a friend of mine) has compiled from Mandela´s handwritten notes and from interviews, I learned that Mandela did this deliberately. It was his way of breaking away from a consensus with which he disagreed: he went along with the majority decisions of his cabinet but could not resist making his real point of view public. Related: Nelson Mandela: An ideal for which I am prepared to die Related: Nelson Mandela: a life in pictures Continue reading...
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