Prisoner 913 : the release of Nelson Mandela / Riaan de Villiers and Jan-Ad Stemmet.

"When, in 2013, historian Jan-Ad Stemmet opened a box at the Archive for Contemporary Affairs (ARCA) at the University of the Free State, he realised he had found a collection of apartheid-era documents that would rewrite the story of Nelson Mandela's release. This box - and many others - contained a vast set of files about Mandela's last eight years in prison, assembled by then justice and prisons minister Kobie Coetsee. Coetsee had promised Stemmet the material 13 years earlier, only to die suddenly two days later. In Prisoner 913, Stemmet and co-author Riaan de Villiers bring some of the most compelling secrets to light. Among others, it reveals that the covert collaboration between Mandela and the last NP government went way further than is generally known, and included an attempt by Mandela to broker a deal between the apartheid regime and the ANC in exile prior to his release. It also reveals that F.W. de Klerk made Mandela an offer that, if accepted, would have fundamentally changed the latter's role in the South African transition. Prisoner 913 casts new - often startling - light on the hidden dynamics behind one of the most important events in South Africa's political history."--Page 4 of cover.