Book reveals new, surprising nuggets about Nelson Mandela’s last years in jail
GAVIN EVANS TWENTY years ago the South African academic Jan-Ad Stemmet met the apartheid era justice minister Kobie Coetsee, who announced he had transcripts of 13,000 pages of recordings of Nelson Mandela’s time in prison. These transcripts of the anti-apartheid struggle icon contained, he said, “bombs, atom bombs” that would blow everything up. The pair began to discuss a book deal but only two days in the 69-year-old Coetsee died of a heart attack and the moment passed. Then, 14 years on, this trove of documents reemerged in an archive at the University of the Free State, where Stemmet taught…