Mandela: five correspondents' stories
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 7 December 2013
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Nelson Mandela: five correspondents who'll never forget how their own stories came to coincide with that of the great South African leader, who died on Thursday. Fergal Keane was our man in Johannesburg as Mr Mandela fought to keep his country back from the brink of civil war; John Simpson on the day he met a man who had 'become perhaps the most revered person on earth.' Milton Nkosi recalls the risks taken to keep the name of Nelson Mandela alive in the townships during his long years of imprisonment; Hamilton Wende on what it was like, as a white South African, growing up in a country where even talking of Mr Mandela could be dangerous and James Robbins on the long-awaited day when the man who went on to lead the country was freed from prison and appeared before a jubilant crowd in Cape Town. From Our Own Correspondent is produced by Tony Grant.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello this is from our own correspondent a download from BBC Radio and here with the latest edition is Kate Adi. |
| 0:07.0 | Hello, the skies are grey over Johannesburg this morning, the flag still fluttering at half-mast. This is a nation deep in moor. this |
| 0:13.0 | the flag still fluttering at half-mast. This is a nation deep in mourning |
| 0:15.0 | after the death of its most famous citizen. |
| 0:18.0 | Thousands of bunches of flowers have been left outside Nelson Mandela's |
| 0:22.0 | home where he died on Thursday. The tributes are |
| 0:25.1 | still coming in. President John Mahama of Ghana said he was the greatest African who |
| 0:30.6 | ever lived. President Assad of Syria, who's currently fighting a revolt |
| 0:35.3 | against his rule, said Nelson Mandela's life was an inspiration to freedom fighters |
| 0:40.9 | and a lesson to tyrants. In the correspondence world there are many |
| 0:45.6 | many stories about the former South African president. Fergelkeen was our man |
| 0:50.8 | there in the years before the historic election in 1994 which brought white |
| 0:55.7 | rule to an end. Those were violent times in the black townships. The future looked ominous. To know the man it is necessary to know the times. |
| 1:06.0 | South Africa 1991, a winter of foreboding. |
| 1:10.0 | Coming in from the airport, the radio was reporting another attack by unknown gunmen in a Soweto-Squater camp. |
| 1:17.0 | Within 24 hours I was standing in the same camp and watching as a woman struggled to cover a corpse with some pages of an old newspaper, a thick |
| 1:25.4 | rivulet of blood ran from the body into the little gullies that the rain had cut in |
| 1:29.9 | the dirt pathway. The wind rose and swept away the newspaper and threw dust over the body |
| 1:35.7 | and the woman. She struggled to cover it once more. He is my son, she told us. May 1991, black South Africans were dying in their hundreds, and many of |
| 1:46.9 | us observing the deepening crisis wondered if there could ever be a peaceful settlement. |
| 1:52.3 | And then came one of those moments upon which history turns. |
| 1:56.2 | It was a Saturday. |
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