From PBS NewsHour.

When activist and future South African President Nelson Mandela was released from his decadeslong imprisonment in Feb. 1990, MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault traveled to Mandela’s home to interview him.

As one of the first correspondents to join the show in 1977, Hunter-Gault had regularly covered the struggle against apartheid, first traveling to South Africa in 1985 and remaining in close contact with members of the African National Congress.

Because of those connections, she was one of only two journalists granted a half-hour-long interview with Mandela.

They discussed the brutal treatment he endured in prison, the development of “an underground channel of communication” to make sure prisoners could get political education, and his discomfort with his mythologized image.

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