A new film will tell the story of Nelson Mandela and the white Afrikaner who became his secretary and trusted right-hand man after the South African freedom fighter left prison and assumed the office of president, reports Deadline.
Good Morning, Mr Mandela will be just the latest biopic of the celebrated leader, who took office in 1994 and served a five-year term. It is based on Zelda la Grange’s memoir about rising from the role of typist for Mandela’s private secretary to Nelson’s private secretary during his presidency.
La Grange told the Observer’s John Carlin in 2008 that she burst into tears upon first meeting Mandela in 1994 out of a sense of guilt at how the Afrikaans people had treated the great man.
“I was scared of him, not knowing what to expect of him, whether he was going to dismiss me, humiliate me,” she said. “And instantly it was that feeling of guilt that all Afrikaners carry with them ...
“Because you could see he wasn’t 60, he was 75 at the time, and you could see he was old, and the thing that immediately crosses your mind is, ‘I sent this man to jail.’ My people sent this man to jail! I was part of this even though I couldn’t vote ... Then I started crying. And then he shook my hand and he held my hand.”
La Grange was later hand-picked by Mandela to attend overseas meetings, first as a symbol that the new South Africa was keen to work with people of all colours and creeds and later as a trusted aide who paid attention to detail and got things done. “We both had the same urgency,” she told Carlin when asked to explain her rapid rise in the role. “I also had that very Afrikaner thing of respect for the orders of the boss, respect for elderly people, a submissive role before the person in charge, and I was very happy with that because that was my upbringing.”
Good Morning, Mr Mandela joins the growing list of films about the joint winner of the 1993 Nobel peace prize, including the 2013 biopic Long Walk to Freedom, based on the president’s own memoir, and the drama 2009 Invictus, about his role in using the 1995 rugby World Cup to foster a sense of South African unity. British actor Idris Elba played Mandela in the former, and Morgan Freeman portrayed him in the latter, which was based on a book by Carlin.
Terrence Howard starred as the freedom fighter in the movie Winnie Mandela (2011), about Mandela’s controversial former wife and politician. Dennis Haysbert played the jailed African National Congress activist in Goodbye Bafana (2007), with Joseph Fiennes as a prison guard who supposedly befriended Mandela on Robben Island. Good Morning, Mr Mandela is being produced by Maven Pictures, which recently finished production on Andrea Arnold’s new film American Honey, starring Shia LaBeouf. Cast and crew have not been announced.
