We are greatly saddened by the passing of Nelson Mandela. His courage, his brilliance, and his never-ending fight for freedom for the people of South African will live on in the memory of everyone who’s lives he touched.
Journalist and filmmaker Danny Schechter has known Mandela for forty years, both as a fellow activist in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and as a documentarian who has made six films about Mandela’s life. Danny’s new book, Madiba A to Z: The Many Faces of Nelson Mandela, reveals anecdotes from Mandela’s life and legacy, as well as the many problems still facing South Africa today.
Check out Danny speaking on Democracy Now: “Filmmaker Danny Schechter: The Anti-Apartheid Movement Behind Mandela Can’t Be Forgotten” and on RT America.
You can also read his reaction to Mandela’s death on Al Jazeera, “Remembering Mandela: On media, politics and death” and hear an interview on WBUR’s Here and Now, “The Music Of Liberation: Steven Van Zandt And Danny Schechter On ‘Sun City’”
Madiba A to Z reveals sides of Nelson Mandela that are not often discussed and angles of the anti-apartheid movement that most choose to brush under the table in order to focus on the happy-ending version of the story. As Schechter reports in the book, according to Mandela’s successor as president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, “the fundamental problems of South Africa, poverty, inequality, have remained unchanged since 1994.” This is partly because, as Schechter writes, “six months before the 1994 elections, when South Africa was being governed jointly by the ANC and the National Party under a Transitional Executive Council (TEC), there were secret negotiations about the economic future.” There are many rarely spoken of revelations in Madiba A to Z, a book about Mandela’s brilliance, his courage, his tremendous impact in saving his country and its people of all races, but one that also shows how far South Africa still has to go.
