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This film visits the genesis of Nelson Mandela, the world's most famous political prisoner. He became a legend built in his very own absence while jailed for 27 years. It is the story of a myth without a face, an international struggle against apartheid in South Africa, popularized by political and pop culture figures all over the world.
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00:00In May 1994, Nelson Mandela became South Africa's first black president.
00:13These scenes of black and white South Africans sharing in the euphoria seem miraculous.
00:20After three centuries of colonization and racist policies, which isolated it from the rest of the world,
00:25South Africa made its triumphant return to the Brotherhood of Nations.
00:30A miracle embodied by Nelson Mandela all on his own.
00:37His victory turned him into a global icon and made him a symbol of peace and freedom.
00:44But not everyone agrees with this image of reconciliation.
00:48A determined and radical revolutionary, Mandela was long seen as a threat by the great Western powers that adulate him today.
00:56So how did this image turn around and end up becoming confirmed?
01:02And how did Nelson Mandela himself, through his brilliant media stunts and symbolic acts, orchestrate his own legend?
01:09There were many Mandela's.
01:19You know, the media chose theirs, political movements chose theirs, the world chose theirs.
01:25The thing about Nelson Mandela is that it was not all spontaneous.
01:41All of it was soaked in the political message that he wanted to convey.
01:48The land of Science and itsinner history
02:06gets its símbolic Qui CEC.
02:06So you're not white, you're not white, you're not white, you're not white, you're not white, you're not white, you're not white.
02:19So it's for you to show the segregation, what's called to be separated?
02:36The policy of apartheid was the culmination of the racial segregation which had divided South African society since the arrival of the first European colonists in the 17th century.
02:49It was the fruit of a white minority, the Afrikaners, descendants of Dutch colonists who fought with the British for the country's riches.
03:01The battery of repressive laws implemented by the Afrikaner-backed National Party when it came to power in 1948 made racism a kind of state religion and brought segregation into the daily lives of all South Africans.
03:16Blacks, Indians and mixed-race people, in other words 80% of the population, were restricted to the townships, the ghettos outside the cities.
03:26What that ideology was set on doing was to represent black people as backward, as slow and as rural, you know, as of the country.
03:40Every African over 16 years of age must carry this document on his person at all times.
03:46Its stamped pages regulate every detail of his life.
03:50He is subject to arrest and criminal proceedings if he cannot produce it on demand, or if any part of it is not in order.
03:57Black workers in cities were only ever there because they were allowed, you know, by permission of the state, if you like, to carry a pass, but their home was always registered as being back in the rural areas.
04:14So, Mandela and others…
04:20Driven by his dreams of modernity, in the early 1940s Nelson Mandela left his rural home province to try his luck in the big city.
04:27He, who is already called by his tribal name Madiba, was fleeing an arranged marriage and a mapped out future in the royal court of his tribe.
04:35After studying law at the only university that admitted black students, he opened the country's first black law firm in Johannesburg with his friend Oliver Tambo.
04:45Charismatic and ambitious, he cultivated an image of a dandyish, yet combative justice seeker, who saw himself as an equal to white people.
04:54Mandela always made sure that he was being seen in the proper way, that he wanted people to see him.
05:02Here is a black man, in a white man's country, who's got the first time he's got the money and he's going to go and make this white tailor make his blazer.
05:12He showed, through the way he represented himself, that black people, men and women, were part of the city, were there to stay and contributed fully to its cultural and, by extension, its political life.
05:29As a committed member of the ANC, the African National Congress, the oldest organization for the rights of blacks, Mandela stood out for his audacity and plain talking.
05:42He swore an oath of loyalty to the movement, which, inspired by the actions of Gandhi, resisted with non-violence.
05:49But he began to see it as too passive to fight a regime that advocated apartheid.
05:55And he founded, along with Oliver Tambo and Walter Sislu, the Youth League of the ANC.
06:00The trio carried out action after action and, in 1952, organized the first big civil disobedience campaign in South Africa.
06:08It proved a revelation for Mandela, who became aware of his power to unite people around him.
06:14A turning point was the defiance campaign of the early 50s, when he first began to speak to a range of people, not just members of the African National Congress,
06:27but, you know, members of other political parties, other race groups.
06:33And he saw that he had something that could bring people on the side.
06:43It was through that interaction with audiences that he saw that he began to understand the power of his own presence as a symbol.
06:55The success of the defiance campaign, thanks to which the ANC grew from a few thousand to more than a hundred thousand members,
07:06brought a new legitimacy to the organization and the belief that a common front could bring down apartheid.
07:12So it decided to form an alliance with the other big opposition force, the South African Communist Party, mostly made up of whites.
07:21In the Freedom Charter, which they drew up together, they put forward a different vision for South Africa,
07:27with no distinctions of color or race, and made the slogan, One Man, One Voice, the path to follow to reach democracy.
07:34It was a masterstroke by the ANC and a founding act for Mandela, who would turn this multiracial and democratic ideal into his main priority.
07:42And that opening statement captured the imagination.
07:49It made it possible for everyone, irrespective of your color, it made it possible even for a white person to feel part of it.
07:57So it opened that space. And for this, this implanting of consciously raising this, the vision of a non-racial South Africa.
08:09The South African government saw the Freedom Charter as a declaration of war.
08:18Along with all the signatories of the Charter, Mandela was arrested and charged with belonging to a communist organization
08:24and plotting against the state, a label the regime would continuously brandish to demonize the ANC throughout the years of the Cold War.
08:32The alliance with the white communists caused divisions within Mandela's camp.
08:37Some militants demanded an exclusively black South Africa and broke away from the ANC.
08:43Attacked on two fronts, by the whites in power and those calling for black dominance, Mandela was more determined than ever to defend the ideals of the ANC,
08:51of which he had become one of the best known and most popular faces.
08:55Throughout his career, Mandela's political ideal was that of the early ANC, that of a multiracial, democratic society.
09:07However, the way of fulfilling it, in the eyes of Mandela and the Youth League, was much more radical than that which had predominated until then, that of passive resistance.
09:20Demonstrations against the South African government's strict apartheid policies flare into shocking violence.
09:33At Sharpsville, an industrial township, thousands gather outside of police stations.
09:38The crowd refused to disperse and began stoning the police, who opened fire into the crowd from behind a wire fence.
09:45In two days of demonstrations that began here, between 50 and 100 were killed, and hundreds injured.
09:52Worldwide protests were raised, including a condemnation of the violence by the United States State Department.
10:01The Sharpsville massacre came as a turning point.
10:04For the first time, the government openly repressed the opposition with bloody violence.
10:09The 69 dead, most of whom were shot in the back, and the hundreds of wounded, alerted the international community.
10:16The ANC was banned, its members arrested or forced into exile.
10:21Its leaders decided to send Oliver Tambo to Britain to continue the struggle, and asked Mandela to go underground.
10:28To mark this upheaval, for the first time, Mandela called on the media.
10:35Journalists immortalized him, burning his passport, the symbol of apartheid, and the deprivation of liberty of his people.
10:41An idea began to germinate in Mandela's mind in the 1950s, that the fight against apartheid was not only a war of ideas, but also a media war, a war of images, a war of symbols.
10:56There's the famous photo of Mandela burning his passport.
11:01That's a prefabricated image, not in the sense that it was faked, but one that was planned with the media.
11:12The international community praised the non-violent traditions of the ANC by awarding its leader, Albert Le Tulli, with the Nobel Peace Prize.
11:20But in Mandela's eyes, this strategy had outgrown its worth.
11:25To get his message across, he decided to appeal to the British media.
11:28Now, if Dr. Vervoort's government doesn't give you the kind of concessions that you want sometime soon, is there any likelihood of violence?
11:38There are many people who feel that it is useless and futile for us to continue talking peace and non-violence against a government whose reply is only savage attacks on an unarmed and defenseless people.
11:54And I think the time has come for us to consider, in the light of our experiences in this stay at home, whether the methods which we have applied so far are adequate.
12:05The leadership of the ANC criticised him and said, you have no right to make that statement.
12:11That's your view, but you have to come and discuss it here before you make that statement.
12:17And he said, I accept your criticism.
12:20But by that time, his thinking had changed so much that he was convinced that it's necessary to go to armed form of struggle.
12:27That he now began to lobby comrades quietly, one by one, which way to go.
12:35Mandela managed to convince the ANC leadership to abandon non-violence in favour of more paramilitary tactics.
12:42The activist lawyer donned a new suit of clothes, that of the guerrilla fighter.
12:47He founded Nkontoe Sizwe, the spear of the nation, the secret armed wing of the ANC, which carried out its first actions of sabotage.
12:55There is no question that his idea of the way the armed struggle would develop was a process, and that in that process he was prepared to entertain not just sabotage, but open guerrilla warfare, and including, as he says in his own words, terrorism, if the situation required it.
13:16Would an armed struggle create the conditions for liberation, or would it create conditions of violence and counter-violence?
13:26The kind of the Gandhian and neo-Gandhian ideas started disappearing from the historical page in the 1960s.
13:32You had China, you had the Cuban Revolution, you had all kinds of heroic, peasant, guerrilla, armed movements happening all over the world.
13:46To create his army, Mandela smuggled himself out of South Africa to seek political, military and financial help from possible allies.
14:00At a time of decolonization and independence, he crisscrossed a continent in both effervescence and turmoil.
14:06The Algerians of the National Liberation Front welcomed him in Morocco, and it was in Hali Selassie's Ethiopia that he began his military training.
14:15But the leaders of the new African states had doubts in the ANC and its capacities for defending the place of blacks in South Africa.
14:22Listening to him, he said, we agree with you. But on the other hand, we're not sure who you are. So that's how he was received. But all of this, instead of Mandela making it a grievance, he made it a source of strength.
14:43He said, how do we change the image of our struggle? Let the ANC be seen to be the leader.
14:54A few days after his return to South Africa in August of 1962, Mandela was arrested on his way to meet with ANC leaders.
15:02His two years on the run had turned Mandela into a popular hero, a role which he meticulously cultivated.
15:08Underground, he was playing with a particular image, and arguably it's the reason he was captured so quickly.
15:17To be effective as an underground operative, you need to be as invisible as possible.
15:26And I think Madiba found it very difficult to do that.
15:32Inside his prison cell, Mandela was preparing a new masterstroke.
15:42He knew his trial would be given big media coverage, so he seized the opportunity to present himself to African leaders, who still doubted the organization as the only face of the ANC.
15:53So his first trial, he goes in there, and he shocks everybody else wearing the African costume, the beads, African beads, and walks in there, and he makes the statement, I'm a black man in a white man's court.
16:10He knows he's going to be found guilty. But again, he's tailoring it so that there is an inspiration to people.
16:16Two months later, all the leaders of the armed wing of the ANC were arrested at their headquarters in Rivonia, in the suburbs of Johannesburg, as part of a massive police roundup.
16:39This time, South African intelligence had found proof of a plot aiming to overthrow the government in a guerrilla-led revolution.
16:50The accused, including Mandela, faced the prospect of the death penalty.
16:54The trial became the focus of unprecedented media attention in South Africa and in Great Britain, where exiled ANC members mobilized to drive up support for the accused.
17:04With his back to the wall, Mandela was intent on turning the trial into a resounding platform.
17:10To widespread surprise, he refused to take the stand, and opted to make a single declaration, which he addressed as much to his people as to the entire world.
17:19His speech, which completely embodied his ideal for South Africa, would go down in history and inspire a new generation of militants.
17:26I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination.
17:41I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities.
18:01It is an ideal for which I hope to live and to see realized.
18:14But, my Lord, if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.
18:22Mrs. Mandela, what are your feelings today after the life sentence passed on your husband?
18:40Well, I am slightly relieved. It could have been far worse than this.
18:44In fact, my people and I expected eight sentences for all the accused.
18:49As a result of this life sentence on your husband and his friends, have you lost hope?
18:57I shall never lose hope, and my people shall never lose hope.
19:01In fact, we expect that the work will go on.
19:05Please keep your tickets for your return.
19:19Thanks to last minute international pressure, Nelson Mandela escaped the death penalty.
19:24His masterstroke made him the incontestable leader of the ANC.
19:27And it was bathed in the glory of a martyr that he arrived at the maximum security prison on Robben Island.
19:34By putting him and his comrades behind bars for life, the South African government nonetheless sentenced him to a symbolic death.
19:41Across the country, anyone who dared publish his image or pronounce his name was arrested.
19:45But it was Mandela's absence, his invisibility for more than 27 years, that would elevate him to a mythical status.
19:52It was just impossible to imagine how a government could ban the image of a person, or the voice of a person.
20:04But in reality, Mandela was the symbol of the same kind of attempt to destroy the humanity.
20:24Because that was saying he doesn't exist.
20:27He's irrelevant.
20:30But the people of South Africa were irrelevant to the government of South Africa.
20:37The majority of the people of South Africa were just irrelevant.
20:41What was important was white comfort and prosperity.
20:54South Africa prospered in the 1960s and sent out an image of a white paradise.
20:59The great power shared in its natural wealth, notably its golden diamonds, implicitly backing a regime that had become a hefty ally against the Soviet bloc.
21:08In the name of the fight against the Red Peril, the West turned its back on Nelson Mandela's fate.
21:13A number of governments in the West worked hard to defend the apartheid regime.
21:21At times, France and the United States, for example, openly encouraged the regime.
21:26In the context of the Cold War, Nelson Mandela was no longer seen as simply the leader of black nationalism, but as the embodiment of the opposing camp, that of the communists.
21:40And then it started gaining more ground in the 1970s with a very, very serious mobilization of a kind of a right in Europe and the US that comes into actual power with Thatcher and with Reagan and others who really crystallized the idea that this is terrorism and Mandela is a terrorist.
22:05Feeling obliged to prove to the international press that the prisoners were not being ill-treated, the South African government authorized occasional visits by reporters to Robben Island.
22:19Mandela wanted to keep control of his image and refused to be photographed as a prisoner.
22:23But he did agree to pose alongside Walter Sisulu to show that the ANC still existed and was active.
22:31But there was no audible outlet for the organization inside South Africa.
22:36Only Winnie Mandela, despite the regime's determination, managed to visit him and keep her husband's name and ideals alive beyond the prison walls.
22:43As wife and as a political player, she is the person who keeps the ANC abroad in touch with the lives and the thinking of the prisoners on Robben Island.
23:02And, of course, as the ANC in exile becomes hungry for a leader figure, you know, a charismatic leader figure, to rally its forces, she becomes a sort of replacement leader figure.
23:18Will there be one man, one vote?
23:20Certainly.
23:22That is inevitable.
23:24There will be one man, one vote in this country, and there will be a majority government in this country.
23:34But that majority government will accommodate everybody.
23:38Led by?
23:40Mandela.
23:45In the early 1970s, Xi, who for many would become the mother of the nation, welcomed a new generation of activists, determined to resume the fight with open arms.
23:54This new guard began a series of peaceful protests in Soweto against a law which would make Afrikaans the official language for education in schools.
24:03Police opposition turned to police brutality when they opened fire on a group of high school student protesters.
24:09It was the spark that caused the gunpowder keg to explode, resulting in hundreds of deaths.
24:13The massacre of Soweto's teenagers showed the true face of apartheid to international public opinion.
24:28It was also a major turning point for the ANC.
24:31With this new input of thousands of repressed youngsters, the organization rose like a phoenix from the ashes.
24:36At the time, its president, Oliver Tambo, was in London.
24:40There, he adopted a new strategy which would change the balance of power in the course of the struggle.
24:44So it's an interplay of these things that led the conscious decision in 78 that the way to get the international campaign to really move is to link it consciously with the name of Mandela.
25:01The time has come for us to call upon the entire international community to devise new ways of bringing pressure upon the South African regime and its allies to secure the release of Nelson Mandela and all other political prisoners in South Africa.
25:21Oliver Tambo decided at some point it must no longer be all political prisoners, it must be Nelson Mandela and all the political prisoners.
25:34I'm sure he was aware that the ANC was using him in that way, they sought his permission, he gave it.
25:45He was a cog there in that, you know, he was part of the plan, but he never, you know, it is the ANC that shot him up.
25:58Ah!
26:25In the early 80s, the slogan, Free Nelson Mandela,
26:28would become a refrain for an entire anti-racist generation across the globe.
26:35Hand in hand with the ANC, the anti-apartheid movement gradually convinced all forces in civilian society to join the international crusade.
26:43The goals? To free Mandela and then South Africa from the yoke of apartheid.
26:50Two goals which merged into a single image, that of a relatively unknown man who, within just a few years,
26:56would become the most famous political prisoner in the world.
26:59So, it moved away from a celebration of a collective leadership in the ANC, in the liberation movement, towards individualizing it.
27:13And that had a very positive effect in the West especially, in creating an iconic figure like that, because it also could get into a discourse of rights as opposed to power.
27:30There's something about the struggle of black against white and of black gaining the upper hand in a country that is set up as a Western democracy that appeals.
27:47So, it's something about an anti-colonial struggle, but on modern terms.
27:54Performers, militants and the thousands and thousands of citizens who joined the campaign for Mandela's freedom transformed his image forever.
28:12Their slogans and writings gradually emptied it of all revolutionary substance, turning it into an icon for human rights,
28:19for a universal struggle that each movement or individual could appropriate.
28:25The myth was taking shape.
28:31No one knew what Mandela looked like anymore. He'd aged, of course, but no one knew how.
28:37There used to be mock-up images, you know, the same as you see on crime shows, you know, about how he might look today.
28:43But he was essentially a man without a face, a kind of ghost.
28:47It brought him to the forefront of public attention and, in a sense, it protected him.
28:56It said to these apartheid jailers, you can't do what you want with him.
29:04He is known across the world. The whole world is watching.
29:08It was at this medical centre in Cape Town that the world caught what's said to be the first glimpse of Nelson Mandela in nearly a quarter of a century.
29:16And as journalists mobbed the lift waiting for him to appear, a camera trained on the hospital's security monitor,
29:22captured what Mrs Mandela confirms is the first picture of her husband in 24 years.
29:27Mandela, later identified by his wife as the dark figure on the left, was looking fit and obviously in command of his surroundings.
29:35His escort waited politely for him to enter the examination room.
29:44The media rushed to finally snatch a glimpse of the face behind the icon, with no idea of the real reason for Mandela's hospitalisation.
29:53The South African government had announced that it was due to his fragile state of health that he was transferred from Robben Island to a softer prison.
30:00But in the greatest secrecy, and unbeknownst even to his comrades in the ANC, Mandela had agreed to negotiate with the apartheid regime.
30:09When Mandela started talks, at first in private, with various bigwigs in the apartheid regime,
30:18you might have imagined that the regime was banking on the fact that he was an exhausted, sick, fragile man who they could easily use as a puppet.
30:28So doubts about Mandela's integrity started to spread, not only among certain members of the regime, but also among ANC ranks who were asking, what is he up to?
30:42Facing increasingly strong international pressure, the apartheid regime offered to free him if he gave up armed struggle.
30:53To silence his doubters and quelled rumours that he was betraying the cause, Mandela decided to make a public response, banking on the strength of his new aura.
31:02It was his own daughter, Zinzi, who announced before an electrified crowd his refusal to leave prison.
31:10My father says, I cannot and will not give any undertaking at a time when I and you, the people, are not free.
31:20Your freedom and mine cannot be separated.
31:29I will return.
31:35When Zinzi spoke at the big rally in Soweto, that was the first time that the outside world had heard Mandela's words, if not spoken in his voice.
31:45It was, if you like, the first sign that there was, for the new generations, that there was a real person there who, though now much older, still identified absolutely with their passions and their freedom.
32:00And even though the Thatcher's and the Regans didn't support us, we could go to that base and try and eat away there.
32:09It is in that circumstance that this man grew up, and he grew up before the digital age, but in the age where a live concert could be transmitted around the world.
32:20Led by the leading artists of the 1980s, 600 million TV viewers in 67 countries tuned in to celebrate the 70th birthday of a man that nobody had seen or heard for almost 25 years.
32:36The massive success of the Wembley birthday tribute was a consecration of the cult status to which civilian society had elevated Nelson Mandela.
32:43And even though a number of governments continued to view him as a pariah, it became harder and harder to turn a blind eye to the apartheid regime.
32:52It turned the tide and began to put so much pressure on Western governments who were all the time reluctant to support the liberation struggle.
33:04Abandoned by its Western allies who no longer faced a threat from the Communist bloc as it dissolved with the end of the Cold War in 1989, the South African government also lost control of the townships.
33:22The possibility of a bloody civil war forced it to adopt reforms which had become inevitable.
33:27For the regime, negotiating the end of apartheid with Nelson Mandela seemed to be the only way of avoiding slipping into the abyss.
33:37He, who had until then been considered a dangerous terrorist, was suddenly greeted as a man of providence.
33:43You join us at the Victorfestar prison where the excitement is running high.
33:59The helicopters circling above, the first cars coming out.
34:03There's Mr. Mandela, Mr. Nelson Mandela, a free man taking his first steps into a new South Africa.
34:22That is the man who the world has been waiting to see, his first public appearance in nearly three decades.
34:3472 years old, walking strongly, step by step, further into freedom.
34:45His walk into freedom is a supremely choreographed moment, a beautiful mise-en-scene.
34:57You know, he's been reading the newspapers, he's been thinking about how his image is being transmitted.
35:04He walks, you know, in some sense, in quite a vulnerable way into the arms of the waiting public and the international media.
35:22Images of Nelson Mandela's release from prison walking fist-raised towards his people captivated the world.
35:28The fight for a democratic and reconciled South Africa was far from over.
35:33But the power of the myth surrounding Mandela nonetheless placed him in a position of strength.
35:38And although the man who discovered these euphoric crowds come to greet him on the street seemed weakened by his years behind bars,
35:46Mandela would capitalize on his image of a liberator to negotiate the end of apartheid and impose his ideal.
35:58Canada!
35:59Canada!
36:00Canada!
36:01Canada!
36:02Canada!
36:03Canada!
36:04Canada!
36:05Canada!
36:06Canada!
36:07Canada!
36:08Today, the majority of South Africans, black and white, recognize that apartheid has no future.
36:17Mandela's release was seen as a cathartic moment where the wrong would be righted, where something would happen,
36:27that was almost metaphysically there.
36:32So, at that level, it was an expectation
36:36of mythological kind of different kind of reconciliation.
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37:29A few years after being freed, Mandela embarked on a triumphant world tour.
37:34He thanked his fellow combatants like Fidel Castro
37:37and sought to charm Western governments
37:39so they would maintain their pressure on the apartheid regime.
37:44Welcomed as a redeeming hero by those who until recently had turned their backs on him,
37:49Mandela skillfully used his new moral stature to totally change his image.
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40:07He was not congratulating the people for their resilience
40:11and for carrying out a very unequal civil war in that area.
40:15He just told them to throw their guns into the sea.
40:18Now that created an uproar of discontent.
40:23So he was a bit of a puzzling figure at that moment.
40:30Can there be reconciliation with these people who were killing us until yesterday?
40:37Reconciliation seemed all the more impossible with the civil war that was ravaging the country.
40:43No longer a matter of blacks against whites, but all against all.
40:48Frederick de Klerk, leader of the South African government,
40:51was accused by Mandela of orchestrating violence to fan the flames of hatred.
40:55Like in Boipatong, where the black extremists murdered black civilians with the complicity of the authorities.
41:00Faced with this intolerable escalation in violence, Mandela dusted off his old image as a warlord.
41:09We are men of peace, but when we are provoked, we can fight back.
41:18We will fight back! We will fight back! We will fight back!
41:21Mandela came to us in the leadership and he said, comrades, I've had enough.
41:25We go back to the trenches. And a whole lot of us say, oh, no, no, no, no.
41:35We don't go back to the trenches. Let's keep talking.
41:42Was he being genuine or was he being mischievous?
41:47In 1992, the media turned on Winnie Mandela, who was accused of being an accomplice to the murder
41:53of a young activist who is believed to have betrayed the cause.
41:56Fully involved in the race for power, Nelson Mandela decided to make public his separation
42:02from the woman who was casting a shadow over him.
42:04All of those messages were counter to the message that the ANC was keen to project around Mandela.
42:14His advisers had been saying to him for some months already, you know, you have to separate yourself
42:20from Winnie. She's becoming damaging to the brand, you know, to the Mandela brand.
42:30As negotiations reached a standstill, the assassination of Chris Hani, former leader of the armed wing of the ANC,
42:37and one of Mandela's closest allies for the past years, left the country on the brink of disaster.
42:43The news inflamed the youth in the townships who had just lost one of their idols.
42:48In the face of silence from the white government, Mandela attempted a power grab and ordered a state funeral.
42:54By holding up this former combatant as a martyr for peace,
42:58he put his presidential credentials on display and for the first time spotlighted the symbolic unity of the nation.
43:04He would turn the tragedy of Chris Hani's assassination into a nationwide tribute to a hero,
43:15to all South Africans, not just to the youth of the townships or to the ANC.
43:23Listening to the radio or watching on TV, every man and woman in the country could think,
43:28I feel the same emotion as all other South Africans, whatever their colour, whatever their politics,
43:37whatever their religion, whatever side they've been on during the fight.
43:40Mandela's power grab accelerated talks.
43:54He and de Klerk, jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in December 1993,
43:59came to an agreement on forming a government of national unity.
44:03A few months later, the country's first non-racial elections were held.
44:08Images of whites and blacks standing in the same endless line to vote were seen around the world
44:13and consecrated the country's resurrection.
44:16At the cost of making a host of compromises, Mandela had managed to avoid a bloodbath.
44:21But at 76 years old, he was inheriting a deeply traumatized society which needed reinventing.
44:27He would come to embody all on his own the new nation of his dreams.
44:42Nelson Mandela seduced us in the 90s into thinking we could do things very quickly.
44:49Mahdibo used his symbolic power in support of what was called the Reconciliation Project.
44:54You know, those big symbolic gestures like the 95 Rugby World Cup and wearing the Springbok jersey.
45:04It's defining the South Africa of his dreams.
45:10The victory of the national rugby team in a sport long reserved for white South Africans
45:14was moreover a victory for Mandela.
45:17By wearing the shirt that so symbolized the apartheid years,
45:20he sent out an image of a nation united through sports.
45:25Press was charmed by Mandela's ability to reconcile the irreconcilable,
45:32to not go yin or yang and go yin and yang,
45:37and to give confidence in a whole range of activities.
45:41The way he dressed, the way he behaved, the way he tried to solve issues,
45:49the way he was ready and open to speak to ordinary people.
45:53All these things were part of a charm that they started defining as the Madiba magic.
45:59Now a glamorous global icon, President Mandela displayed a new kind of leadership.
46:09Somewhere between a man of state and an international celebrity,
46:12he personified the success story of a newly attractive and pacified country.
46:18Mandela's story has become the creation myth of South Africa.
46:21His autobiography is akin to the country's gospel,
46:24and the prison on Robben Island is now a pilgrimage site where Mandela takes center stage.
46:54He was aware that his story had become a rallying story for the country.
47:13That white, black, poor, rich, influential, obscure,
47:19everybody could buy into this story in some sense.
47:22They could all go to Robben Island, World Heritage Site, you know.
47:27They could all stand at that door, that grill, and look in, look at the blankets,
47:36look at the tin plate for food, and imagine they were Mandela.
47:45I reconcile, kiss, make up, run around, shake hands, everything can go on.
47:49No, they haven't understood what it meant.
47:52It wasn't basically whites accepting blacks into humanity.
47:56It was blacks being generous enough to give an opportunity for whites to appear non-racist
48:04and reconstruct a country together.
48:07And that started failing very quickly.
48:10Despite Mandela's efforts to build and embody his rainbow nation,
48:18the myth spread a thin veil over the fragile reality of the reconciliation.
48:25The national unity displayed at the beginning of his presidency soon crumbled,
48:29and the government reneged on its most daring reforms.
48:32Mandela decided not to stand for a second term, and after five years of testing power,
48:39the deep wounds inherited from apartheid remained unhealed.
48:45At the end, you know, he is judged positively because he did not stick to power.
48:50So he started becoming kind of Mandela, the social worker, desperately trying to patch
48:57the things that could not be achieved through existing hardcore policies.
49:03So, you know, he receded slowly, but the brand kind of remained.
49:13The Mandela brand still prospers in South Africa.
49:16South Africans continue to cling on to a myth strengthened further by the lack of any successors.
49:23But the rainbow nation that everybody wanted to believe in is today poisoned by violence,
49:28inequalities and corruption.
49:32The betrayal of Mandela's heirs, who kept the ANC in power by brandishing the portrait of the
49:37founding father of the nation, is stirring up hatred among new generations who had never even
49:43known apartheid.
50:03Our apartheid past is still very much alive in our country.
50:07The extent to which still today white South Africans are privileged
50:11and have access to a fundamental power is deeply disturbing.
50:15And the extent to which black South Africans, the great majority of black South Africans are still
50:22part of an underclass.
50:24And was that a weakness on the part of the ANC, inappropriate strategies?
50:33Was it the weakness of a particular leader, Nelson Mandela?
50:37We need to, I think, ask those different questions.
50:48Looking back at Nelson Mandela's funeral confirms just how much his myth, despite showing cracks inside
50:53South Africa today, remains untarnished in the rest of the world.
50:58Even after his death, his icon still manages to reconcile the irreconcilable,
51:02reflected by Barack Obama and Raul Castro, and to turn the admiration of his former enemies,
51:07who in turn, keep the myth alive to ease their consciences.
51:13It's tempting, I think, to remember Nelson Mandela as an icon,
51:18smiling and serene, detached from the tawdry affairs of lesser men.
51:23But Madiba himself strongly resisted such a lifeless portrait.
51:35Instead, Madiba insisted on sharing with us his doubts and his fears,
51:43his miscalculations, along with his victories.
51:45I am not a saint, he said, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.
51:54I am not a saint, he said, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.
52:03I am not a saint, he said, I am not a saint.
52:26You are the only one who wants to be a saint, but...
52:28Transcription by CastingWords
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