The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

ooklet was organised as a chronological account with photographs based on Mandela’s
childhood and early years, followed by images of the 1950s grouped around the themes of
defiance and the Treason Trial. Photographs from the phase of underground politics and
armed struggle were followed by images from the Rivonia trial and subsequent
incarceration on Robben Island. The photographic narrative then centred on uMkhonto
we Sizwe campaigns in the 1960s, resistance inside South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s
and repression by the apartheid state. The publication culminated in a sequence of images
reflecting the commemoration of Mandela’s life and work, campaigns for his release, and
events held overseas in solidarity with anti‐apartheid struggles in South Africa and anti‐
colonial struggles in Namibia. 186
The Mayibuye Centre distributed this photographic booklet and its exhibition version in
the 1990s after IDAF’s relocation to South Africa and the incorporation into the Centre of
its resources, archival holdings and publishing interests. Under these new conditions, and
after the release of Nelson Mandela, as well as his election as president, these pictorial
biographies took on new life and were incorporated into a new vision. During 1996 and
1997, they were sold at the Mayibuye Centre’s Robben Island Exhibition and Information
Centre located near the entrance to the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront alongside other
Mandela auto/biographical materials. 187 These included The Struggle is my Life, based on
Mandela’s assembled speeches and writings alongside historical documents and accounts
by fellow prisoners of Mandela in prison. Originally published in 1978 by IDAF to
celebrate Mandela’s 60th birthday, this new edition commemorated Mandela’s 76th
birthday and the new era of South African history, marked by Mandela’s election as
See Alf Kumalo, Mandela: Echoes of an Era (Text by Es’kia Mphahlele), London: Penguin, 1988. Another
70th birthday biographical text is the Free Nelson Mandela Festival Concert Book, London: Penguin, 1970.
186 This publication was also produced as a portable exhibition of photographs on 14 poster‐size sheets
for schools, libraries and community centres. See Nelson Mandela – His Life in the Struggle: Portable
Exhibition of Photographs (London: IDAF, 1988).
187 The temporary Robben Island Exhibition and Information Centre (which closed in early 1997) was
seen as the first practical step by the Mayibuye Centre’s ‘Gateway Project’ initiative in the direction of
the development of a fully fledged museum of apartheid at the Waterfront, which would provide an
embarkation point for visitors to Robben Island.
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