Kiwi helps world pay tribute to Mandela

Nelson Mandela has what Africans call 'ubuntu' - humanity.

They heard Nelson Mandela before they saw him. Now 88, the first president of a free South Africa has dodgy knees and is fairly deaf so he was talking loudly to his assistant as he came along the hall.

He rounded the corner, stopped short and yelled: "Who let these criminals into the building?"

But his eyes lit up. The "criminals" were Mac Maharaj and Ahmed Kathrada, two of Mandela's closest friends, men he had spent years in prison with on Robben Island off the coast of Cape Town.

With the former political prisoners that day a few months ago was a New Zealander, Geoff Blackwell, who was presenting Mandela with a book likely to be the African leader's last authorised biography.

The large, glossy book, filled with photographic reminders of South Africa's apartheid past, features interviews with friends, family and world leaders from British Prime Minister Tony Blair to former American President Bill Clinton.

The book traces Mandela's life through his tribal upbringing, trials for treason and sabotage, and life today.

Scattered among the text are excerpts of letters written during his 27-year incarceration on Robben Island. What emerges is an incredible dignity amid the indignities of the era, such as the time Mandela was arrested and sent to Robben Island before the notorious "Rivonia Trial" that put him there for life. Warders took turns urinating on him and other prisoners on the boat.

While political leaders, such as Clinton, speak about Mandela, what makes the book stand out is the stories from the many lesser known people who lived through the struggle.

Mandela approved the list of interviewees and opened doors for Blackwell's team of researchers and writers.

And though Mandela opened doors, he was not intimately involved in the book, written to complement his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, which was partly written on scraps of paper on Robben Island.

Having had his own "fleeting moment" with Mandela, Blackwell says it is easy to see why people love him. A lot of jokes were cracked in that half hour and Mandela was self-effacing and generous. Blackwell was charmed.

The project took more than three years and tears were shed at what these men endured. The Aucklander speaks with warmth of not just Mandela but those who he got to know - Bishop Desmond Tutu, Kathrada and Maharaj especially.

Blackwell is the man behind M.I.L.K, Moments of Intimacy, Laughter and Kinship, a best-selling series of photographic images selected from the work of 174,000 photographers from 164 countries.

His parents started publishing company Moa, now Moa Beckett Hodder, and he went on to found PQ Blackwell. Two years ago, he published the first authorised portrait of Diana, Princess of Wales, and it was out of that project that the Mandela book came about.

The trustees of the Diana memorial fund were connected with the Nelson Mandela Foundation and, in Blackwell's words, "we got lucky" by winning the Mandela biography.

In the early days of the project, Blackwell travelled to Robben Island with Kathrada, listening to stories of life there, visiting the cells, getting a sense of what they went through.

"Utterly humbling," he says of the visit and the stories.

Kathrada told how when first arrested he was locked up in a pitch-black room the size of a toilet cubicle in a Johannesburg prison, given two buckets, that were emptied once a day, and fed once a day.

Periodically, a guard would torment him with stories about how his comrades had talked and were going to be released whereas he would be hanged in a few days. He resisted - they all did.

On Robben Island, Kathrada pointed out the cells - Madiba [Mandela] there, Walter Sisulu over there, himself across the corridor - and recalled how they would talk at nights when the lights went out.

Long Walk to Freedom had been started in prison and the scraps of paper buried in cocoa tins in the courtyard but wardens found the tins, resulting in study privileges being taken away - for four years.

For Blackwell, one project flows into another. Next to come is a collection of books titled Ubuntu, a word heard often in relation to Mandela - used in a similar way to mana but with a different meaning.

"Ubuntu relates to someone's humanity, their innate understanding that the world around them or us is a reflection of who we are - if you diminish somebody you diminish yourself, if you love somebody you love yourself, a non-religious kind of concept about humanity."

The ubuntu collection will be about humanitarians of the 20th century - Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King and Tutu.

But now, Blackwell is just looking forward to meeting Mandela once again next week when Mandela: The Authorised Portrait will be launched at Mandela House in Johannesburg with the subject present along with President Thabo Mbeki and others involved in the struggle against apartheid.