page 2012/41-4 - Nelson Mandela's Warders (page 4) [Nelson Mandela's Warders_004.jpg]

Identity area

Reference code

ZA COM NMFP-2012/41-2012/41-4

Title

Nelson Mandela's Warders (page 4) [Nelson Mandela's Warders_004.jpg]

Date(s)

  • 2011 (Creation)

Level of description

page

Extent and medium

1 digital image
1054 KB

Context area

Name of creator

()

Biographical history

Archival history

Immediate source of acquisition or transfer

Verne Harris

Content and structure area

Scope and content

Page 4 of Nelson Mandela's Warders

Appraisal, destruction and scheduling

Accruals

System of arrangement

Conditions of access and use area

Conditions governing access

Access by permission of the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory

Conditions governing reproduction

Language of material

  • English

Script of material

Language and script notes

Physical characteristics and technical requirements

Finding aids

Allied materials area

Existence and location of originals

Existence and location of copies

Related units of description

Related descriptions

Notes area

Note

again. Swart tells a different story from the one told by Warrant Officer James Gregory. In fact he tells a contradictory story. If Major Marais would talk, his testimony would, in all likelihood, lend more weight to Swart’s account. But Major Marais won’t talk ...

In his 1994 interview with Benjamin Pogrund, Gregory established the way he was going to project himself. The article began with a handwritten card Mandela gave Gregory: ‘The wonderful hours we spent together during the last two decades end today. But you will always be in my thoughts...’ Pogrund’s article continued: Later that hot summer’s day in the Cape, as the moment came for Mandela to walk out of Victor Verster prison, near Paarl, ‘We shook hands and then he embraced me,’ Gregory recalls. ‘He said, “Goodbye, I’ll see you again.” I wasn’t crying, neither was he, but he had tears in his eyes and so did I.’

In many respects the Pogrund article was a template for Gregory’s book: it set out the relationship between prisoner and jailer as open and friendly: ‘When he was alone I used to go and sit with him in his cell for hours at a time,’ says Gregory. ‘We spoke about everything – his family, my family. But never politics, and never trying to convince me of his views.’ Despite the exclusion of politics from their conversation, Gregory told Pogrund, and wrote in his autobiography, that Mandela explained to him the formation and struggle of the African National Congress. Whether this contradiction should be ascribed to a lapse of memory or a semantic difference in the meaning of the word politics is a matter for conjecture. In the Pogrund article Gregory also positioned himself as the senior warder in charge of the Rivonians (as they were referred to) and mentioned a gangster’s threat (one of many alluded to) to kill Mandela. Both these themes are prominent in Gregory’s book.

Alternative identifier(s)

Access points

Subject access points

Place access points

Name access points

Genre access points

Description control area

Description identifier

Institution identifier

Rules and/or conventions used

Status

Level of detail

Dates of creation revision deletion

Language(s)

Script(s)

Sources

Accession area

Related subjects

Related people and organizations

Related genres

Related places