The Nelson Mandela Foundation has revealed that it plans to publish a sequel to Long Walk to Freedom in 2015.
In his introduction to Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Nelson Mandela Memorial Lecture on Monday, Njabulo Ndebele said Mandela had been working on the project, provisionally entitled “The Presidential Years”, from 1998 till 2002, when he “ran out of steam”.
Madiba passed away last December aged 95.
The foundation has released the first two hand-written pages of the book. On the first, Mandela writes a list of the people who were to be given the first 10 chapters of the manuscript: John Samuels, Cyril Ramaphosa, Mac Maharaj, Joel Netshitenzhe and Jacob Zuma.
On the second page, dated 16 October, 1998, Mandela writes:
“Men and women, all over the world, right down the centuries, come and go.
“Some leave nothing behind, not even their names. It would seem that they never existed at all.
“Others do leave something behind: the haunting memory of the evil deeds they committed against other people; gross violations of human rights, not only limited to oppression and exploitation of ethnic minorities or vice versa, but who even resort to genocide in order to maintain their horrendous policies.
“The moral decay of some communities in various parts of the world reveals itself, among others, in the use of the name of God to justify the maintenance of actions which are condemned by the entire world as crimes against humanity.
“Among the multitude of those who have throughout history committed themselves to the struggle for justice in all it implications, are some who have commanded [...]”
From Ndebele’s speech:
[T]onight is significant for two other reasons. Firstly, it coincides with the 20th anniversary of the publication of that seminal work Long Walk to Freedom. Not only has it become one of the world’s all-time bestsellers, it is also arguably our post-apartheid South Africa’s founding narrative. Later this week the Foundation will be placing online a feature about the writing of Long Walk, which began in 1976, and the text’s long journey to publication in 1994.
It is not widely known that Madiba intended to write a sequel to Long Walk. Indeed, in 1998 he started the manuscript of a work he provisionally titled “The Presidential Years” and kept working on it sporadically until 2002, when he finally ran out of steam. Here in the Centre of Memory’s archive we have versions of ten chapters from that work.
I want to announce tonight that the Foundation has embarked on a project to see the completion of The Presidential Years as an authorised account of Madiba’s presidency. The work on the manuscript is painstaking and calls for the most rigorous collaborative work. We aim to publish the work in 2015.
Long Walk to Freedom, which was originally published in 1994, covers Mandela’s early life and 27 years in prison, It sold millions of copies and was turned into a Hollywood film starring Idris Elba last year.
Book details
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EAN: 9780349106533
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EAN: 9781447275541
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EAN: 9781478926863
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EAN: 9780316323543
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