‘Lost’ Nelson Mandela Court Recordings
‘Lost’ Nelson Mandela Court Recordings Retrieved By British Library
11th February 2001
Astonishing court
recordings of the last speech that Nelson Mandela made
before he was sentenced to life imprisonment can be heard
for the first time thanks to the intervention of the British
Library’s National Sound Archive. Nearly forty years after
it was made, and on the 11th anniversary of his release from
prison, Mandela’s impassioned and at times moving plea has
emerged from recordings whose existence remained largely
forgotten and unknown. Furthermore, the technological means
to render them audible had, it was feared, also disappeared.
Fortunately, the British Library had one of the last
surviving machines that enabled the speech to be retrieved
and after weeks of work is making them public. Speaking
from the dock on 20 April 1964 during the notorious ‘Rivonia
Trial’ in Pretoria’s Palace of Justice, Mandela gave a
spellbinding three-hour speech in his defence. Mandela
(‘Accused Number One’) was charged with acts of sabotage
designed to ‘ferment violent revolution’. His defiant
closing words that ‘the ideal of a free and democratic
society in which all persons will live together in harmony
and with equal opportunities… is an ideal for which I am
prepared to die’ sent shockwaves around the world and led to
worldwide condemnation of South Africa’s racial policies.
Mandela escaped the death penalty, but began a life sentence
at Robben Island prison in June 1964 from where he was not
released until 11 February 1990. The entire Rivonia Trial,
including Mandela’s famous speech, was recorded on
‘dictabelts’ but this method of sound recording has long
since disappeared and the belts, stored in the National
Archives of South Africa, have remained unheard until now.
Recently the National Sound Archive at the British Library
in London (which owns one of the few remaining dictabelt
machines in the world) has been able to retrieve the sound
and bring the recordings back to life.
Listen to an extract of the recording : http://www.bl.uk/information/pr2001/mandela3.ram
( 669K, RealAudio: http://www.real.com/player/index.html? )
Dr Rob Perks, the British Library’s Oral History
Curator commented: ‘It’s extremely rare and exciting when a
recording as internationally important as this comes to
light after so many years. We’re pleased to have the
opportunity to work with the National Archives of South
Africa (and the South African Broadcasting Corporation) to
make these remarkable recordings accessible to all of us for
the first time. Our technicians had to go to incredible
lengths to modify the surviving dictaphone equipment,
changing the running speed and varying the power supply,
just to get some sound at all. And the belts themselves were
subjected to a slightly unusual heating process before they
yielded their contents. Fortunately we are one the few
places in the world that has the professional expertise to
carry out this sort of tricky retrieval work What amazed us,
given the age and fragility of these dictabelts, is just how
good the sound quality is.’ A spokesperson for the South
African Broadcasting Corporation commented: ‘It is indeed a
historic moment: for the first time since the Rivonia Trials
took place (November 1963 to June 1964), the world will be
able to hear the moving speech that Nelson Rolihlahla
Mandela delivered as "Accused Number One". The Rivonia Trial
dictabelt collection (November 1963 to June 1964) is under
custodianship of the National Archives of South Africa. When
the SABC learnt that the Rivonia Trial dictabelt collection
was inaccessible, the SABC initiated the process to find
suitable dictabelt machines to ensure that this material
would become audible and accessible to South Africa and the
world. The SABC approached the British Library and a
valuable relationship between the British Library, the
National Archives of South Africa, the National Film, Video
and Sound Archives and the SABC was born. The result is
remarkable: for the very first time we can hear a young,
dynamic Nelson Mandela, pleading for a "free and democratic
society in which all persons will live together in harmony
and with equal opportunities". South Africa is indebted to
the British Library for the role it played in making this
precious material available to the world. It is of
historical significance that the National Archives of South
Africa, the National Film, Video and Sound Archives, the
British Library and the SABC Sound Archives could jointly
succeed in restoring this material.’ For further
information please contact: Greg Hayman
Press
Office
British Library
96 Euston Road
London
NW1
2DB
Tel: +44 (0)207 412 7116, 0787 960 1932 or Val
McBurney on telephone +44 (0)20 7412 7112
email greg.hayman@bl.uk The
SABC Sound Archives can be contacted at: Tel: +27 11 714
2771
email assmanni@sabc.co.za for inquiries.
NOTES FOR
EDITORS The Rivonia Trial, named after the suburb of
Johannesburg where sixteen leaders of the African National
Congress (ANC) were arrested in July 1963, began on 26
November 1963 and marked a turning point in South Africa’s
history and the struggle against apartheid. Mandela and
others were charged under the General Law Amendment
(Sabotage) Act and the Suppression of Communism Act with 221
acts of sabotage designed to ‘ferment violent revolution’.
They escaped the death penalty but were sentenced on 12 June
1964 to life imprisonment. Mandela was not released until 11
Feb 1990. The trial attracted huge international attention
at the time and led to worldwide condemnation of South
Africa’s racial policies. The UN Security Council condemned
the trial and demanded Mandela’s release. Anthony Sampson,
author of Mandela: The Authorised Biography, covered the
trial for The Observer newspaper and remembers that Mandela
‘showed himself to have far greater depth as well as courage
than had been expected…’ Sampson was also asked to read the
handwritten speech beforehand with an international audience
in mind: "that whole speech that he wrote himself for his
final address was extremely carefully worked out, and
extremely honest…it was clear that from the beginning
Mandela and his colleagues had seen it as a great
statement." The seven ‘dictabelt’ recordings featuring
Mandela’s speech are a type of audio recording, developed by
the Dictaphone company, which were mainly used in offices
between the 1940s and the 1960s. The short broad plastic
belts were capable of being flattened and posted but could
not be wiped and reused. It appears that the whole Rivonia
Trial was recorded on dictabelts in line with normal court
procedure at the time. It is hoped that the remaining trial
recordings will also be made accessible once funding is
found to recover the sound, because the process of recovery
by the British Library is time consuming and expensive. The
BL is grateful to Adrian Tuddenham for his technical
assistance. The South African Broadcasting Corporation Sound
(Radio) Archives was established in 1964 after a need was
identified and investigated by the SABC. The collection
focus mainly on South African material and includes sport,
news and actuality, music, dramas, interviews,
documentaries, political speeches, oral traditions (legends)
and broadcasts in all the official languages of South
Africa. The earliest material dates back to the turn of the
century with a recording by the Springbok rugby team’s ‘War
Cry’, whilst on tour in England. The SABC Sound Archives
holds a large acetate disk collection (21 000 discs), 11 000
78 r.p.m. discs (only South African labels) and 133 000
tapes. The SABC Sound Archive collection continues to grow
through daily broadcasts and exchange programmes with
related Audiovisual Archive services. In addition, private
donors and projects aimed at the acquisition of pre-1994
material extend the collection of the SABC Sound Archives.
The British Library National Sound Archive (NSA) is one of
the largest sound archives in the world. Opened in 1955 as
the British Institute of Recorded Sound, it became a
department of the British Library in 1983 and now holds
historic wax cylinders, over a million discs, 160,000 tapes,
and a growing number of videos. The collections come from
all over the world and cover the entire range of recorded
sound: from pop, jazz, classical and world music, to oral
history, drama and literature, dialect, language and
wildlife sounds. They include published and unpublished
recordings from the late nineteenth century to the present
day, including a wide variety of BBC broadcasts. Ends Press
and Public Relations
96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB Tel
+44 (0)20 7412 7111, Fax +44 (0)20 7412 7168, Email press-and-pr@bl.uk
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