Sue Blaine
1 November 2005
Johannesburg — EVERY self-respecting comic book has to have a superhero, and Nelson Mandela is the champion of the Madiba Legacy Series.
The first of the series, launched by Mandela last week, traces his story from his birth in Eastern Cape on July 18, 1918 to the start of his adult life in Johannesburg.
"You know you are famous the day you become a comic character," he said at the launch.
"We humans tend to exaggerate when talking about ourselves, so I will leave the exaggeration to the historians."
Nic Buchanan, MD and creative director at Umlando Wezithombe, which produces the comic, and the Nelson Mandela Foundation began a collaboration in April.
The foundation found SA's low literacy levels -- according to Census 2001, 4,5-million of SA's 44-million citizens have no schooling -- and the prohibitive prices of books meant many people do not have access to the Mandela story.
"There are huge, systemic barriers (to the foundation's web-based archive on Mandela) in SA. Only a tiny, tiny elite is reaching it. So I started looking at more imaginative ways," says Verne Harris, the foundation's Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory project manager.
The comics will be translated into all official languages. Newspapers and schools will help distribute one million copies of the first one, free of charge.
Harris says a comic Buchanan had produced on lawyer-turned-human rights activist Mahatma Gandhi sparked his interest.
"It hit me between the eyes. It was precisely the type of comic I'd had in mind," he says.
Buchanan says that the medium is perfect for giving teenagers a powerful message in an easy format.
"I was so inspired by comics as a kid, and I got bitten by the history bug after finding it incredibly boring at school. I found it more fascinating than fiction," he says.
His company is working with the Steve Biko Foundation on a comic on the black consciousness leader's short life.
The Trevor Huddleston Memorial Centre is helping to prepare a comic on the Anglican priest's contribution to the struggle against apartheid and there will be others on the Mapungubwe civilisation and Second World War hero Job Maseko.
Mapungubwe, in Limpopo, was the centre of the largest kingdom in sub-Saharan Africa during the Iron Age, a sophisticated society that traded gold and ivory with China, India and Egypt.
While a prisoner of war in North Africa, Maseko sank a fully laden enemy steamer while it was moored in Tobruk harbour.
He was recommended for a Victoria Cross but, being "only an African", received the Military Medal instead.
Umlando Wezithombe is based at the Johannesburg home Buchanan shares with his wife, Santa -- who is researching a series on women icons -- and three children. Harris says he chose the company because it is able to produce comics that combine a story that captures youngsters' imaginations with "the richness that comes from scholarly research".
Harris and Buchanan have spent hours with Mandela, several historians and people who know him well, to produce the nine comics.
"It's been painstaking. Every single visual has been checked and rechecked. We got different reports from different people, but it's history, not a guessing game," says Buchanan.
The detail is impressive. For example, a lot of time was spent agonising over the portrayal of Mandela's birth.
"We asked him what time of day he was born and he didn't remember. No one else knew, but we thought at least he would have cried," says Buchanan of the opening frame of the comic, which shows a baby's cry coming from Mandela's father's kraal.
"The popular story is relatively straightforward, but we've had extraordinary insights, questions and dead-ends," says Harris.
The foundation will get feedback from children on the comics -- the first has been tested on children from Alexandra. There will also be a quiz run, with a prize, on the comic.
The responsibility involved in working on the project is not lost on the artists.
"Mandela is not like one man in Africa, he's all men. I can be in Senegal and I will feel like he is my neighbour," says chief illustrator Pitshou Mampa, who came to SA from the Democratic Republic of Congo two years ago to learn English on his way to study further in Canada.
While doing freelance work Mampa heard that Buchanan was looking for artists to illustrate a series on Mandela and approached him.
The serendipity of finding someone with Mampa's talent has always worked for Buchanan.
"I'd put up notices at technikons and design and advertising schools and they ended up finding me as and when they were needed," he says.
Five full-time artists work for the company -- Mampa, his brother Pascal, Angolan José Jungo and South Africans Jacky Sivuyile and Richie Orphan.
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