Family, Fellow Activists Visit Nelson Mandela

CAPE TOWN, South Africa â€”  Imprisoned black leader Nelson Mandela saw relatives and fellow activists Saturday after earlier rejecting government-sanctioned visits to protest a ban on celebrations of his 70th birthday.

Mandela’s wife Winnie, their daughter, two grandchildren and an American attorney who represents the Mandela family’s interests visited Mandela at Pollsmoor Prison for 80 minutes.

Mandela also met with Yusuf and Amina Cachalia, activists who in the 1950s waged with him a campaign against South Africa’s policy of apartheid, or racial segregation. The Cachalias last saw Mandela in 1962, the year he was imprisoned. They had been applying for 15 years for permission to meet him again.

Mandela is serving a life sentence for sabotage and plotting to overthrow the white-led government as a leader of the African National Congress, the country’s main guerrilla group.

Winnie Mandela said prison officials had the best intentions in offering her husband a special meeting with nine of his relatives on his 70th birthday last Monday. But she said Mandela rejected the offer to protest the government’s ban on celebrations of his birthday and to protest the detention of pro-Mandela activists.

Attorney Robert J. Brown of High Point, N.C., said Mandela agreed to grant power of attorney to him to protect the use of the Mandela family name and its interests worldwide.

Brown, who announced a similar agreement with Winnie Mandela last week, said the agreement requires that he consult with African National Congress President Oliver Tambo in Lusaka, Zambia, on all matters relating to the family.