On 11 June 1964, Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment for sabotage and treason. At 1am the following morning, the forty-six-year-old was flown to Robben Island, off Cape Town. During the twenty-seven years of his incarceration, the prison authorities carefully recorded, duplicated and filed every piece of paper relating to Mandela. These prison files reveal the extent of the web of surveillance that existed in apartheid South Africa, the depth of paranoia surrounding Mandela, and the power that Prisoner 466/64 wielded in spite of his status as a prisoner.
'A Prisoner In The Garden' is an extraordinary visual journey containing previously unpublished images, documents, and diary and letter extracts (in Mandela's own fastidious handwriting), as well as some original notes for the writing of 'Long Walk To Freedom' and other archival material. It affords us a unique insight into the psychological, social and political world of Mandela's incarceration - his relationships with the warders, with his fellow prisoners, with his own internal world as well as with the world outside.
