Mandela

Posted: December 6th, 2013 | Author: Michael Goldstein | | No Comments »

If you want to invest a few moments today to think of Nelson Mandela, I recommend to you my friend Joe Richman, who produces radio for National Public Radio.

Joe writes:

“I am prepared to die.” Those are the last 5 words of the speech, and they are well known today. Less well known are the 10,693 other words in the speech. It lasted four hours.

An audio recording of the speech was made by a court stenographer on a dictabelt, a plastic recording that was never intended to preserve history. The recording was lost and forgotten for almost 4 decades, until it was discovered in the basement archive of the South African Broadcasting Corporation.

I know that basement well.

It may sound odd, but I spent many happy weeks there in 2003 surrounded by stacks of reel-to-reel tapes, searching for sound to tell the history of apartheid for our series, Mandela: An Audio History. I remember one day, trying to listen to a reel of tape that was in bad shape and had no label. I kept splicing the tape back together so it would play. Soon I realized I was listening to a raw recording of the prosecutor’s opening statement at Mandela’s trial. It had never been broadcast before.

Most people – even those who had been on trial – didn’t know the tape existed. Many of the trial recordings had been erased decades earlier by the apartheid government. It was thrilling to hear the actual words. But it wasn’t until somebody in the courtroom coughed that I could really hear the echo and dimensions of the room, the stillness of the afternoon, the hushed anticipation of the trial. The cough put me in that courtroom.

Joe and his team produced a 5-part radio series on Mandela, and it’s a terrific work of journalism. You can explore it here www.mandelahistory.org