The man who forgave his jailers - excerpts from a book on South African statesman Nelson Mandela

Interview, Sept, 1999 by Anthony Sampson

After three decades in prison - his spirit unbroken - Nelson Mandela led South Africa to end apartheid, creating the free and egalitarian society he'd always dreamed of. His is an epic life, but the myth cannot eclipse the man himself, whose human gifts of dignity and forgiveness saved a nation. In his new book, Mandela: The Authorized Biography, excerpted here, Anthony Sampson gives an intimate portrait of this exceptional citizen of the world

Just before Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life, in June 1964, he gave a four-hour speech from the prisoner's dock in the Pretoria courtroom, by all accounts the most moving of his political career. He concluded it with these words: "During my lifetime . . . I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony with equal opportunities, it is an ideal which I hope to live for and achieve," he said. "But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."

These convictions were unshakable, as he proved to the world during the almost three decades he spent as a political prisoner. Mandela, who was born the son of a Xhosa chieftain in the Transkei, one of the poorest regions in South Africa, rose to leadership in the African National Congress (ANC) and dedicated his life to fighting white sovereignty and the system of apartheid. Sentenced at the age of forty-six (he'd already been in jail on separate charges for two years at the time) he was not released until he was seventy-one.

In an electrifying turn of events, Mandela was elected president of South Africa in 1994, taking the first steps toward healing a country long torn apart by its legacy of oppression. He passed the torch to his successor, Thabo Mbeki, earlier this year, but will always be remembered as the extraordinary man who was able to bring vision, integrity, and ultimately forgiveness to a country in desperate need of all three.

This month British journalist Anthony Sampson, who has known Mandela since 1951, publishes Mandela: The Authorized Biography (Knopf). In the passage excerpted here, Mandela, who had just been convicted for "sabotage" at the Rivonia trial (named after the Johannesburg suburb where the ANC leaders plotted their antiapartheid strategy), began his long incarceration along with six other political prisoners, at the Robben Island jail.

Mandela's life sentence was a more serious test of his resilience than his two previous years in jail. He was now cut off from the world in his prime, at the age of forty-six, with no end in sight. He had never been an ascetic like Gandhi or Lenin: in his letters he would constantly hark back to the delights of Soweto or the Transkei; to the food, the landscape, the women, the music. Now all the bright scenery and characters would contract into the single bare stage of his cell and the communal courtyard.

But there was a powerful consolation: he was not alone. With him were some of his closest friends, who could reinforce each other's morale and purpose, and develop a greater depth and self-awareness. At an age when most politicians tend to forget their earlier idealism in the pursuit of power, Mandela was compelled to think more deeply about his principles and ideas. In the microcosm of prison, stripped of all political trappings - platforms, megaphones, newspapers, crowds, well-tailored suits - and confined with his colleagues every day, he was able, as he put it, to stand back from himself, to see himself as others saw him. He learned to control his temper and strong will, to empathize and persuade, and to extend his influence and authority, not just over the other prisoners, but over the warders.

Between the black prisoners and their white guards, the balance of influence was constantly shifting inside the closed world. But gradually the prisoners, with much stronger motivation and cohesion than the warders, established their influence, with Mandela as their leader. There were many parallels with other twentieth-century political prisoners - with Gandhi in India, or the IRA in Northern Ireland's H-blocks - but the letters, prison records, and recollections of the Robben Islanders over the next twenty years provide a unique record of the psycho-politics of a jail where the prisoners could ultimately dominate their guards.

The seven prisoners stayed for a few days in Pretoria Local, still buoyant after escaping the death sentence. At 1 a.m. on June 12, 1964, they were told to pack their belongings, because they were going immediately to Robben Island. The other six were put in handcuffs and leg-irons like slaves; but Mandela was not manacled. They were herded into a police van and driven to the military airport. They were flown in an old, unheated military Dakota, landing just after dawn on a cold, windy island airstrip, surrounded by armed guards.

Robben Island had become a more inhuman place since Mandela had been there two years before. It had been prepared to receive many more long-term prisoners, and reorganized on strict apartheid principles, with the warders, all white, determined to impose their racial supremacy. There had been some brutal "carry-ons" - as the warders called their assaults. They had recently beaten up the political prisoners, leaving one ANC activist, Andrew Magondo, with serious wounds.