Letters from prison

The last third of the 20th century is fruitful in historical figures, understood as leaders capable of transcending economic barriers and embodying the great currents of political change – for good or bad – of which they are representatives but also propellers. Think of Gorbachev in Perestroika or Che Guevara during the generalization of guerrilla warfare in Latin America and Africa. Or in Reagan and Thatcher, who in the 1980s represented the neoliberalism and moral rearmament that currently claim young politicians of the same ideological spectrum. Falling from many myths with the Wall in 1989, some leaders represented those optimistic years that stretch from the end of the Cold War to 11S and the beginning of the war on terror.

In this parenthesis Fortunately, the South African Nelson Mandela (Mvezo, 1918) is distinguished, always present in the collective imagination in the form of a figure worldwide respected, almost flawless. The nickname Madiba as he was known in his country, was referring to the name of his clan, and by that name he has been acclaimed in all the international forums where he has been going since. he left prison in 1990 until, almost, the year of his death, in 2013. He spent 27 years in prison and showed no grudges during his captivity or after his release, which facilitated national reconciliation after the apartheid regime . Achievements that crowned him as a kind of moral conscience of the post-Cold War era and worth the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.

A year later, he was elected President of Africa South by the African National Congress (ANC)), post that only exercised until 1999 by his resignation to reelection. Another gesture that may seem strange in our time as strong leaders seeking to perpetuate power, especially in institutionally weak countries. He was also secretary-general of the Non-Aligned Country Movement between 1998 and 2002. Thanks to films like Invictus by Clint Eastwood, the younger generations inherited the feeling that it was a special man, endowed with almost parochial goodness in front of which he even had to be on his guard

Mandela's public attitude was so strangely generous in the face of reconciliation between the powerful white minority and privileged, and the black majority, discriminated and despised, which in some way makes it seem that nothing of what happened was so terrible. However, there are the novels of his compatriot J.M. Coetzee to attest to the harshness of apartheid . We remember Mandela, martyr of the said regime, instead of his wide smiles grandfather affable in the stadiums. Paradoxes of Magnanimity

Manuscripts, Mandela's Letters Show Gross, Heartbreaking and Detached Emotions

Faced with an apparently hagiographic story, one wonders if Mandela was so good and so virtuous. And in the face of this suspicion, nothing better than going to documents. That's why it's so interesting to save Mandela's correspondence from South African journalist Sham Venter, whom Malpaso publishes in a volume that includes 255 letters. They were written by hand, and after being transcribed with few grammatical corrections, they show raw, heartbreaking and detached emotions . Sometimes, even, they look like homilies in their references to forgiveness and love, and if they had not done all that they preached in prison, we would have the certainty to be in front of a fake.

The correspondence begins with his initial imprisonment at Robben Island, and continues with the letters he wrote in Pollsmoor's maximum security prison, and finally, in 1988, in Victor's prison Verster, where he held conversations with officials who eventually His captivity lasted from 1962 to 1990. He had been imprisoned as a convicted law student after the 1963 Rivonia process accused of sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow the government.

The evidence against him was overwhelming, and that is that Mandela had already explained it a decade before the ANC "had any other choice than to find it. to adopt the armed struggle ". In 1961, he co-founded the Umkhonto we Sizwe (19459005), an armed branch of the ANC inspired by the July 26 Movement of Fidel Castro. He began organizing training and training of cadres based on techniques imported from the manuals of Che and traveled the country pretending to be a driver and under the nickname "black pimpernel", with reference to a character from the novel The Scarlet Pimpernel by Orczy.

Many of these facts are told by Mandela himself in his memoirs, The long road to freedom a project that should have convinced him and whose reading has always left the same suspicion. supernatural incorruptibility, even though did contrition over political violence or the behavior of their family at times. But the careful reading of his correspondence eventually confirms the essence of life and the image of the world's leading Mandela became over the years.

One might think that since the prisoner knew that his letters were Lu and censored, Madiba only fed his future character. But that is a lot to suppose, because it implies that the prisoner had, in addition to a disproportionate ambition, the certainty of the consequences of the cold war during the worst years of the cold war, which even the most refined badysts did not know. not foresee. In advance.

Therefore, these letters with your family, colleagues, ministers and other South African and global personalities, even in their tone differences, specific requests for books or samples of affection, show a truth which never ceases to amaze: that the idealized Mandela, whose own postmodern and ironic nature is almost suspicious by generational instinct, is very similar to the former and smiling ex-clone to whom three decades of A racist regime could not break neither the spirit nor the health It died 95 years after a world vigil that ended with a mbad burial during which world leaders, in true representation of widespread gratitude, have rejected no more as one more, but as someone of the better. These letters, in their heartbreaking nudity, help us understand that it was done in all justice.