Records of the 1964 trial where Nelson Mandela got a life sentence are to be digitised as part of archives of the life of South Africa’s first black president, his foundation said on Thursday.
The Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory and Internet giant Google in March created online digital archives of Mandela’s life, comprising thousands of handwritten documents, photographs and videos of Mandela.
These will soon include the Rivonia Trial of 10 anti-apartheid activists and members of the African National Congress that took place between 1963 and 1964.
“One of the key projects we will soon be embarking on is the digitisation of the Rivonia Trial trial records,” Sello Hatang, spokesman of the centre told AFP.
“Once digitised, it will ensure records are available to a greater number of people and form part of the Nelson Mandela greater archives.”
Though this digitisation will increase the records’ accessibility, very few original documents are available, according to Verne Harris, head of the memory programme at the centre.
“Most of the Rivonia trial records are lost,” he told the centre’s donors on Thursday night.
Mandela was captured by police and sentenced in 1964 to life in prison during the Rivonia trial where he delivered a speech that was to become the manifesto of the anti-apartheid movement.
He was jailed on Robben Island for 18 years before being transferred in 1982 to Pollsmoor prison in Cape Town and later to Victor Verster prison in nearby Paarl.-SAPA-AFP
The Guardian 
A STREET barrier penetrated the rear right of the car in which former president Nelson Mandela’s great-granddaughter Zenani Mandela died in 2010, the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court heard yesterday.
Johannesburg metro police officer Henry Miller, a scene investigator and photographer, described how he found the barrier ripped from its bolts. It had been dragged behind the out-of-control luxury car.
Miller was giving evidence in the trial of Sizwe Mankazana, the driver on the night 13-year-old Zenani died.
Describing the accident scene, which took place on the M1 North just before the double-decker section, Miller said the speed limit in the area was 80km/h.
He outlined how the car hit a concrete barrier, then swerved across two lanes and hit the steel barrier.
Mankazana was driving Zenani home from the Soccer World Cup concert at Orlando Stadium on June 11 2010 when their car crashed.
Members of the Mandela family, including Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, her daughters Zindzi and Zenani, and the child’s mother Zoleka were in court yesterday, as was Mankazana’s mother.
Miller said he had stopped the morning before the accident at the exact spot where the accident occurred a few hours later. He had noticed the steel barrier had been damaged and was very close to the white line.
He told the court he tried to bend the barrier back into place. Eventually he used a length of cable to force it back by between 50cm and 70cm. In the early hours of the following morning he was back at the same spot, at the scene of the crash that claimed the child’s life.
The trial continues.