The Black Pimpernel

by Zukiswa Wanner

Published 6 May 2021
In March 1961, after giving a brief speech at a conference, Nelson Mandela vanished.

For the next eighteen months he was an outlaw, living under assumed identities and in various disguises (sometimes as a chauffeur, sometimes a gardener) as the South African police and secret services, helped by MI5 and the CIA, sought him in vain. His mission? To undergo military training and set up armed resistance to apartheid.