Rick Stengel shakes hands with Mr Mandela, as Ahmed Kathrada, Verne Harris and Minister Pallo Jordan look on.
(Image: Nelson Mandela Foundation)Nov 28, 2008 – Mr Nelson Mandela witnessed the handover of two valuable collections related to his contribution to the anti-apartheid struggle today.
At the ceremony at his office in Houghton, Johannesburg, the Rivonia Trial records were returned to the state and 100 hours of recorded conversations were given to the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory.
The Oppenheimer Family returned to the custody of the state records of the Rivonia Trial of 1963-64 in which Mr Mandela and seven others were sentenced to life imprisonment. The family acquired these records from Dr Percy Yutar, who was the prosecutor in the trial.
Included in the records is the transcript of the trial, photographs, a range of other documents and the diary Mr Mandela kept when he left South Africa secretly at the beginning of 1962 to undergo military training and to garner support for the banned African National Congress.
South African businessman Nicky Oppenheimer and Minister Pallo Jordan.
(Image: Nelson Mandela Foundation)Also included is Mr Mandela’s famous four-hour speech which he delivered from the dock of the Palace of Justice in Pretoria on April 20 1964 at the start of the defence case. It was at the end of this speech that he said:
“During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”
The Nelson Mandela Foundation Centre of Memory and Dialogue received a rich collection of tape-recorded conversations with Mr Mandela in the mid-1990s. These conversations between him and his comrade Ahmed Kathrada and between him and American author Richard Stengel were conducted to assist the publication of his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom.