Google and the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory (NMCM) have launched archive.nelsonmandela.org which is freely accessible to the public.
The archives include never-seen sequel manuscripts to Mandela’s “Long Walk to Freedom” autobiography.
We should never allow ourselves to forget the struggles for such basic rights as racial equality and take racial harmony for granted.
When I was a youth, everybody knew who Nelson Mandela was and Apartheid was a must-study topic for the General Paper exam in school.
Who is Nelson Mandela?
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born in 1918 and was the first South African president (1994-1999) to be elected in a fully representative democratic election.
Before his presidency, Mandela was a militant anti-apartheid activist leader. In 1962 he was arrested and convicted of sabotage and other charges, and sentenced to life in prison.
Mandela served 27 years in prison. He was released from prison in 1990, and led the movement in the negotiations that led to democracy in 1994.
I wonder how many of the current generation remember or know about the tumultuous struggles in South Africa to fight for what many in the rest of the world take for granted – racial equality.
Even today in Singapore, you have people posting insensitive remarks about other races and nationalities over Twitter.
And in the US, the Trayvon Martin shooting is still brewing over.
In order to keep the memories of Nelson Mandela alive, Google gave a US$1.25m grant to Johannesburg-based NMCM last year.
The aim was to preserve and digitize thousands of archival documents, photographs and videos about Mr Mandela.
The new online multimedia archive includes Mr Mandela’s correspondence with family, comrades and friends, diaries written during his 27 years of imprisonment, and notes he made while leading the negotiations that ended apartheid in South Africa.
Search and browse the archives to explore different parts of Mr Mandela’s life and work in depth:
Start by looking at his Early Life, and take a peek into his personal memories of the time he was incarcerated during the Prison Years.
Read the handwritten notes on his desk calendars, which show, for example, that he met President F.W. De Klerk for the first time on December 13, 1989 for two and a half hours in prison; the Warrants of Committal issued by the Supreme Court which sent him to prison; the earliest known photo of Nelson Mandela’s prison cell on Robben Island circa 1971; and a personal letter written from prison in 1963 to his daughters, Zeni and Zindzi, after their mother was arrested, complete with transcript.
What was Apartheid
Apartheid was the official policy of the National Party, which came to power in 1948 in South Africa. It was the practice of official racial segregation.
Under apartheid everyone in South Africa had to be classified according to a particular racial group.
This determined where someone could be born, where they could live, where they could go to school, where they could work, where they could be treated if they were sick and where they could be buried when they died.
Only white people could vote and they had the best opportunities and the most money spent on their facilities.
Apartheid made others live in poverty.
Black South Africans’ lives were strictly controlled.
Many thousands of people died in the struggle to end apartheid.
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