Conversations with Myself Read Free Page A

for a different life and a larger destiny. He never cut himself off completely from the place or the tradition but his life choices and the policies of his organisation, the African National Congress, introduced profound tensions in the way he related to them. This was expressed at a deeply personal level in his relationship with Matanzima. Mandela liked and respected him but they parted ways on the question of cooperation with the apartheid state. While in prison, Mandela wanted to receive a visit from Matanzima but bowed to the wishes of his fellow prisoners, who felt that such a visit would be too compromising politically. Much later, in the final months of his imprisonment, Mandela did finally receive him.
    After his release from prison, Mandela built a home in Qunu. When he stays there, he is visited and consulted by traditional leaders. He followed with interest his grandson’s appointment to the chieftainship of Mvezo. In 2007 he founded the Nelson Mandela Institute for Education and Rural Development at the University of Fort Hare.



 
    ‘I shall stick to our vow: never, never under any circumstances, to say anything unbecoming of the other…The trouble, of course, is that most successful men are prone to some form of vanity. There comes a stage in their lives when they consider it permissible to be egotistic and to brag to the public at large about their unique achievements. What a sweet euphemism for self-praise the English language has evolved! Autobiography…’
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    Excerpt from a letter to Fatima Meer, dated 1 March 1971 .

 
    1. FROM A LETTER TO FATIMA MEER, DATED 1 MARCH 1971 1
    I shall stick to our vow: never, never under any circumstances, to say anything unbecoming of the other…The trouble, of course, is that most successful men are prone to some form of vanity. There comes a stage in their lives when they consider it permissible to be egotistic and to brag to the public at large about their unique achievements. What a sweet euphemism for self-praise the English language has evolved! Autobiography, they choose to call it, where the shortcomings of others are frequently exploited to highlight the praiseworthy accomplishments of the author. I am doubtful if I will ever sit down to sketch my background. I have neither the achievements of which I could boast nor the skill to do it. If I lived on cane spirit every day of my life, I still would not have had the courage to attempt it. I sometimes believe that through me Creation intended to give the world the example of a mediocre man in the proper sense of the term. Nothing could tempt me to advertise myself. Had I been in a position to write an autobiography, its publication would have been delayed until our bones had been laid, and perhaps I might have dropped hints not compatible with my vow. The dead have no worries, and if the truth and nothing but the whole truth about them emerged, [and] the image I have helped to maintain through my perpetual silence was ruined, that would be the affair of posterity, not ours…I’m one of those who possess scraps of superficial information on a variety of subjects, but who lacks depth and expert knowledge on the one thing in which I ought to have specialised, namely the history of my country and people.
    2. FROM A LETTER TO JOY MOSIELOA, DATED 17 FEBRUARY 1986
    When a man commits himself to the type of life he has lived for 45 years, even though he may well have been aware from the outset of all the attendant hazards, the actual course of events and the precise manner in which they would influence his life could never have been clearly foreseeable in every respect. If I had been able to foresee all that has since happened, I would certainly have made the same decision, so I believe at least. But that decision would certainly have been far more daunting, and some of the tragedies which subsequently followed would have melted