Dr Kathryn Bates is a graduate of archaeology and history. She has excavated across the world as an archaeologist, and tutored medieval history at Leicester University. She joined the administrative team at Oxford Open Learning twelve years ago. Alongside her distance learning work, Dr Bates is a bestselling novelist, and an itinerant creative writing tutor for primary school children.
Be you an old or new student, be assured that The Oxford Open Learning Trust will continue to work with you to help you achieve your goals. My Courses. No courses. Apply Now. Which Olympics? A Quiet Weekend in August. He and seven of his colleagues were sentenced to life in prison. He was a surprise speaker at the conference, where he called for a democratic South Africa. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities.
It is an ideal which I hope to live for and achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die. Nelson Mandela, at the Rivonia Trial, Mandela meeting with Algerian freedom fighters, Morocco, While underground, he travelled extensively to meet other African leaders and groups fighting for liberation.
Robben Island, South Africa, Prisoners were isolated from the outside world, but could see Cape Town, with its Table Mountain, mere kilometers in the distance.
Mandela and his compatriots were sent to a maximum security prison on Robben Island in There were no white prisoners on Robben Island. Mandela spent 18 of 27 years of imprisonment there, held with the other political prisoners who were kept in a separate section.
Mandela mending clothes at Robben Island, He is wearing shorts because black prisoners were not permitted to wear long pants.
Mandela and his fellow political prisoners challenged this rule and it was eventually changed. On Robben Island, prisoners faced harsh conditions meant to break their resolve. Black men were forced to wear shorts and sandals, even in winter, while other prisoners could wear pants and shoes. Political prisoners faced the worst conditions of all. Condemned to hard labour, Mandela and his fellow activists spent more than a decade breaking rocks in a lime quarry.
Some prisoners were assaulted and tortured by guards. Contact with the outside world was almost completely severed. He was denied permission to attend the funeral of his mother, who passed away in , and one of his sons, who died in a car accident in It would be 21 years before he could hold his wife, Winnie Mandela, again.
His two young daughters, Zeni and Zindzi, had to wait until the age of 16 to see him. Glass walls separated prisoners from visitors.
They talked on phones as guards listened to every word. Letters were heavily censored, with words blacked out if they were not strictly personal. After prisoners found ways to read blackened content, censors began cutting out large portions of letters, reducing them to shreds.
Mandela has clearly lost weight since the s; both his face and his body are leaner than when he was a sturdily built boxer decades ago.
At 71, his face is creased with two thick lines that frame his strong, confident smile. But he said further steps - including the lifting of the state of emergency and release of all political prisoners - must be taken before talks can begin.
The ANC shares these demands. Mandela was the last well-known political prisoner in South Africa. Six of his ANC colleagues who had been imprisoned for more than 25 years, including Walter Sisulu, were released in October. In the mids, Mandela rejected offers to go free in exchange for a renunciation of violence.
When Nelson Mandela reflected on his Robben Island experiences on returning there in he said: "Wounds that can't be seen are more painful than those that can be seen and cured by a doctor.
One of the saddest moments of my life in prison was the death of my mother. The next shattering experience was the death of my eldest son in a car accident. Nelson Mandela's letters from prison to his second wife Winnie are poignant in the way they show the price paid for his total immersion in the anti-apartheid struggle, as is her account of this period.
Left to raise their children alone, Winnie once described the impact of taking them to see him in prison: "Taking them at that age to their father - their father of that stature - was so traumatic. It was one of the most painful moments actually. And I could see the strain on my children both before their visit and for quite some time after they had some contact with their father.
War of attrition. By the time Nelson Mandela was moved to Pollsmoor prison on the mainland, he was the world's most famous but perhaps least recognisable political prisoner. No contemporary photograph of him had been seen for years. The late anti-apartheid activist Amina Cachalia, who had known him well before he went into prison, visited him.
She told me she had taken a small camera into the prison with her, and as they had lunch she reached for her bag and said she was going to take a picture of him. He held her by the arm and shook his head. She said Nelson Mandela was afraid they would confiscate the camera and terminate the visit. Amina Cachalia laughed at the thought of the impact her photograph would have had.
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