Doing Life with Mandela book launched at Con Hill

Add as a preferred source on Google

Nelson Mandela’s former prison warder, Christo Brand launched his book, Doing Life with Mandela at an event hosted by the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation at Constitution Hill.

The book captures the unlikely yet enduring friendship which Brand, a young warder on Robben Island, struck up with the elderly Mandela.

The launch saw former prison warders and their prisoners share the same platform. Warders Johan Visser, Wayne Hill and Brand, as well as prisoners Ahmed Kathrada, Laloo ‘Isu’ Chiba and Shirish Nanabhai all ‘served time’ on Robben Island.

Very young back then, the warders explained how the elderly prisoners instilled a sense of humanity in them. They spoke about being indoctrinated by the apartheid regime, and how their perceptions were slowly broken down by their dignified captives.

“I was 19 years old when I came face to face with Nelson Mandela. He was 60. Until that day I [had] never heard of him or his African National Congress. I was his prison warder on Robben Island, and he changed my life forever,” says Brand in his book.

Doing Life with Mandela also provides insight into prison psychology and how the apartheid regime used it to try to break the liberation movement and how – due to the strong will of prisoners, as well as the anti-apartheid movement outside – it failed. Imprisonment in fact, became a symbol of resilience against apartheid.

Kathrada, who was jailed for 26 years, highlighted the courage of colleagues who were tortured, and others such as Vuyisile Mini, who were hanged because of their refusal to give information about fellow comrades.

He also spoke about his first encounter with a child after years in prison. “The first time in 20 years that I saw a child was when Christo allowed my lawyer to bring his child into Pollsmoor Prison. The child had refused to wait in the car. I was so overwhelmed, I could not talk law,” Kathrada said.