The New Republic: Nelson Mandela's First TV Interview (1961) | ITN Roving Report

ITN Archive presents 'The New Republic', a 1961 Roving Report on South Africa. Filmed in June 1961, just days after South Africa declared on 31 May that it would henceforth be a republic, the report captures South Africa at a critical point in its history. Interviews by ITN reporter Brian Widlake reflect a range of perspectives, most notably that of African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela. Widlake conducted Mandela's first television interview at the ANC leader's hideout; a warrant for Mandela's arrest had been put out earlier in the year for his role in organising mass stay-at-home strikes in protest at the government's apartheid policy. It was around the time of this interview in June 1961 that Mandela and other members of the ANC leadership founded Umkhonto we Sizwe ("Spear of the Nation"), the paramilitary wing of the ANC.
'Roving Reports' was a series of documentary reports produced by ITN News from around the world, broadcast between 1957 and 1964. The description of this 1961 report contained in the ITN Archive is reproduced below:
"This report on South Africa has interviews with defenders and opponents of the racial policy of the new Republic, including the first television interview with Nelson Mandela, the African nationalist now in hiding. A Ruling Nationalist MP explains that apartheid attracts overseas investors who realise that South Africa will always be ruled by the whites. The Country's specific appeal, according to the stock exchange President, is great natural wealth linked to a very cheap labour force. Footage of a squalid township shows that cheap labour also means the degradation of Africans who are denied basic civil and political liberties. Strikers are liable to three years in prison and a recent stay-away protest led to the arrest of 10,000 people. White liberal critics of the Government and the policy of apartheid, Helen Suzman and Julius Lewin believe that opposition is gradually growing as European settlers too begin to suffer from the loss of basic human rights, but neither foresees any change in the Republic's racial policy. Mandela predicts violence if the Government continues to react repressively against his peaceful campaign for African franchise and a multiracial society."
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