Look at the past

Jet, Oct 11, 2004

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Caption: LOOK AT THE PAST: Former South African President Nelson Mandela looks at some of his personal letters he wrote in prison at the launch of the Nelson Mandela Center of Memory and Commemoration in Johannesburg, South Africa. The new center, an archive of his papers and records, holds two notebooks in which Mandela, 86, wrote drafts of prison letters between February 1969 and April 1971. Donald Card, a retired police officer who helped jail the former prisoner, recently returned the items to him after more than three decades. Mandela was allowed to write and receive only one 500-word letter every six months. Since letters were heavily censored by prison officials, Mandela drafted most of his correspondence in notebooks before putting them on paper to be mailed.