Nelson Mandela looks at his newly-released book, Conversations With Myself, October 2010

On October 12th, 2010, for the very first time, Nelson Mandela’s hidden archives will be published in a new book, Conversations With Myself. 

The collection of notes from prison and deeply personal diaries expose the private man behind the icon we fondly call Madiba.  

Letters penned in jail by Nelson Mandela reveal his anguish at being separated from his family, and readers will feel the intensity of the pain he was going through in prison. 

The anti-apartheid icon wrote of his heartache at learning of the death of his 24-year old son in a car crash in 1969. He was not allowed to attend the funeral. 

Nelson Mandela pushed for the archives to be opened and published in a new book. Aside from sharing his sorrow and suffering, we also see Nelson Mandela as a human being, as he urges the world not to view him as a saint. 

“One issue that deeply worried me in prison was the false image I unwittingly projected to the outside world; of being regarded as a saint,” said the Nobel Peace Prize winner, aged 92.

“I never was one, even on the basis of the earthly definition of a saint as a sinner who keeps trying. As a young man, I combined all the weaknesses, errors and indiscretions of a country boy, whose range of vision and experience was influenced mainly by events in the area in which I grew up and the colleges to which I was sent,” he wrote.

“I relied on arrogance to hide my weaknesses,” he added. 

Per this BBC video, “The real man, flawed and human, is actually far more remarkable, far more inspiring than the cliché of some untouchable saint”.