Madiba Is Dead, but Audio Is Forever

• A lost recording of the 1964 trial that resulted in Mandela’s life sentence
• A secret tape of a visit between Mandela and his family on Robben Island, saved for more than two decades by a prison guard
• Marching songs of guerrilla soldiers
• Government propaganda films
• Pirate radio broadcasts from the African National Congress
• First-person accounts from former ANC activists, National Party politicians, army generals, Robben Island prisoners, and ordinary witnesses to history. A range of voices from Desmond Tutu to former President F.W. de Klerk to Nelson Mandela himself

No, this isn’t a producer’s list of source materials for the imminent movie adaptation of Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela’s autobiography. It’s a partial list of the audio and other recordings featured in Radio Diaries’ Mandela: An Audio History, which aired in five parts on NPR ten years ago and is online at radiodiaries.org.

This is how to spend a part of this evening.

• 6 December 2013