[Stephen]

Great little story on the BBC about Mandela and how he was like a myth when in prison as photos of him were banned so no one knew what he looked like.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25256818

As the imprisoned Nelson Mandela became the face of a global campaign against apartheid, within South Africa a ban on his image meant people weren't sure what he looked like - and he became a mythological figure, recalls author William Gumede.


Nelson Mandela was very fond of telling a story of how, in the early 1980s, while at the windswept Robben Island prison where he had been banished for opposing the apartheid regime, he was taken to the mainland in Cape Town for a medical check-up.