Rather than portray Nelson Mandela (Madiba) as the famous leader of South Africa, his grandson, Ndaba Mandela, in his newly published book Going to the Mountain, chose to focus more on his role as a grandfather to him, as well as to the rest of the world.
Mandela’s book was released last month in honor of what would have been the year of his grandfather’s 100th birthday. Mandela recently traveled to cities across the United States including New York, Washington D.C., Atlanta and Malibu promoting the new book.
“This is my tribute to my grandfather and I wanted people to understand the value of Nelson Mandela,” says Mandela, in an interview with Diverse. “Many of us, our age and older, know why Nelson Mandela is important for this world. But the younger people do not, necessarily. I wanted the younger people to be able to relate to him from the point of view of being a grandfather because they would be able to relate to him as a grandfather much more than they would a Statesman and as this iconic leader. It’s a grandfather, everybody has a grandfather.” 
Mandela’s book highlights his experiences living with his famous grandfather, who became the public face of the anti-apartheid movement, eventually emerging as the leader of the African National Congress (ANC) political party and later, as president of South Africa’s president. Along the way, Mandela details the lessons that he learned from his grandfather.
When Mandela moved in with Madiba at age 11, that was only the second time the two had met. The only other interaction was four years earlier, when his grandfather was held as a political prisoner at Victor Verster Prison near Cape Town, South Africa.
Mandela grew up in the poverty-stricken township of Soweto located in Johannesburg, South Africa during the apartheid period. Within his home, he often experienced alcohol-related abuse. Due to apartheid’s racialized segregated system, Soweto was consistently filled with police raids, brutality and protests.
“Soweto is a ghetto by any standards,” says Mandela. “Most of the houses use coal stoves to cook so there is like a smog that sits over Soweto. The nice thing about Soweto though is that everybody knows everybody. You don’t just know your neighbors, you know the whole street, that street and that street. Very communal, very family oriented but of course, there is a lot of social ills that happen. I did see cops and every time cops came by, people would freeze up. It was hostile. People’s houses getting ransacked and people getting searched.”
