Nelson Mandela: the movie

A Cartoon which ran in the South African Mail & Guardian shows a Hollywood producer, all teeth, shades and oleaginous charm, visiting Nelson Mandela to discuss making the film of his book. "I can see it now," he enthuses. "Robert De Niro is Nelson Mandela in Escape from Robben Island!" "Robert De Niro?" The president is aghast. "Suppose you escape from prison and befriend a killer whale," suggests the producer. "Trust me, Mister President, politics is not good box office."

The strip ends with the deal practically wrapped up. "Wait!" yelps the producer. "I haven't even told you about the dinosaurs yet!"

It was only a matter of time after Nelson Mandela was released from his incarceration on Robben Island before the moguls moved in to turn one of the greatest stories of this century into hard box-office cash. After all, if you can put the life of Richard Nixon, John F Kennedy or, for that matter, a saintly figure like Gandhi, on celluloid, why not Mandela?

The story seems made for Hollywood: the boy from the bush who grew up to become leader of the African National Congress, who was imprisoned for 27 years for his beliefs, then released to become president of his country and a global icon of freedom. There's even love interest, in the person of the glamorous Winnie Mandela.

So after Mandela the man and Mandela the book, we will soon be seeing Mandela the movie. Three movies, in fact.

Even before Mandela's autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, was published in 1994, there was intense competition for the film rights. Offers came in from Hollywood, from Canadian and British production companies and from the BBC. Then in March this year it was announced that the rights had been sold to a South African producer, Anant Singh, who made Sarafina with Whoopie Goldberg.

Mandela gave his blessing. "Anant Singh is a producer I respect very much; when we were considering offers I personally opted for him," he said in a television interview. "It is our duty to support our own artists. In any case he is a man of tremendous ability and I think, given the resources and support, he can do absolutely excellently."

Many people, however, suspected that the choice was based not on artistic or commercial considerations but political ones. While the world may think of President Mandela as a beacon of hope for the whole of humanity, to South Africans he belongs to them. They also have a fledgling movie industry to support - and given that Mandela had already aroused ire by publishing his autobiography through an American publisher, he was doubly obliged to make sure that the film rights stayed at home. And so a South African got the nod - but the question was asked: was Anant Singh really the best man for the job?

Barely was the ink dry on the contract than a new storm blew up with the news that another film on the life of Mandela - an unauthorised version - was about to start shooting. Worst of all, this version, produced by the American cable-TV channel Showtime, starred not a South African as the great man but an American, Sidney Poitier, with Michael Caine as FW de Klerk, the last apartheid president, who freed Mandela and ultimately handed over power to him.

It was as if Marlon Brando had been chosen to play Sir Winston Churchill. South Africans were outraged. Surely only a South African could adequately understand and convey this quintessentially South African story. As Jon Kani, the grand old man of South African theatre who has appeared frequently on the London stage, says, "There are actors in this country who could have acquitted themselves brilliantly - and one of them is me."

Kani may well be right but, producer David Wicht explains, "The movie is based around Sidney Poitier playing Mandela. The moment that Poitier signed to do the film, it became a reality. To my mind Poitier fits the part better than John Kani anyway."

Sidney Poitier himself has been quoted as saying, "No actor in the world can play Mandela better than Mandela. And he has played it for all the world to see." Nevertheless, the resemblance between the two men is uncanny, right down to the president's rather stiff way of walking. Michael Caine, meanwhile, does a wonderful impersonation of Michael Caine being de Klerk, complete with false bald patch and stick-on Afrikaner accent.

Wicht is keen to underline that his film, Mandela and de Klerk, in no way infringes Singh's rights. It deals only with the last, most dramatic part of the story - the negotiations with de Klerk which led to Mandela's release from prison, then to South Africa's first democratic elections and his inauguration as president. It is based entirely on material already in the public domain.

The working title for the film, in fact, was One Man, One Vote, in order to avoid any suggestion that the film had Mandela's authorisation. Even so, the president's office issued a statement, warning that this was not the official film of the book. And Mandela's lawyers wrote to him advising him to have nothing to do with the film.

However, when Poitier arrived in Cape Town in May to begin shooting, Wicht set up a meeting with Mandela. Completely ignoring his lawyers' advice, Mandela agreed, and invited Wicht to bring along the press. The president and the Oscar-winning actor shook hands and Mandela joked that he would not wash his hand afterwards. Poitier, he said, was "not only a film star but a freedom fighter. He supported our struggle for many years."

Mandela and de Klerk will be shown on American TV this year, and will no doubt reach our screens too before very long. "I think this film's taken some of the wind out of Anant's sails," confides Wicht. "I think we've got the best part of the story..."

Singh, meanwhile, has yet even to finalise a scriptwriter for Long Walk to Freedom. He envisages it, he says, as an epic on the grand scale, like Gandhi, and dismisses the competition as "very historical. The way I want to deal with my film is that it's going to be about the human being, about the man, the emotion, things that people can connect with." This, as South African film critics have pointed out, may not be easy. Mandela's book, while immensely long, does not reveal much about the man. In the end, the film may be hobbled by the very fact of being the authorised version and of being constrained to stick relatively closely to the book.

Singh is not committing himself to choosing a South African actor to play Mandela (though he is surely under pressure to do so). "I'll look far and wide, internationally and locally," he says. He does, however, hint that he is considering offering the role of de Klerk to Anthony Hopkins. Long Walk to Freedom will begin shooting at the end of next year and should appear on our cinema screens in 1999.

Meanwhile, as the two giants slug it out, a pygmy has crept through unnoticed. Mandela, a feature-length documentary on Mandela's life, premiered in London and Johannesburg last October and is poised for a limited release in the Britain in March. Strangely, the president did not attend the Johannesburg premiere: his office claimed he had a bad knee (though it did not prevent him from attending the celebrity banquet afterwards).

Directed by independent film-makers Jo Menell and Angus Gibson, Mandela combines archive footage with interviews with the president himself (who turns out to be a brilliant storyteller), his first wife Evelyn, his second wife Winnie, and others. It is unashamedly a hagiography - "a real feel- good film," says Gibson. "In the world at the moment, there are very few political figures whom one can look at and think, `There's a role model'. We saw value in making a film with a long shelf-life, like a record, an archive; it's not a film for now."

Despite these noble sentiments, Mandela has not done well in South Africa, where audiences prefer action films to documentaries and already see enough of their president on television. That must be a worry for the producers of the other movies too. After all, plenty of flops have been made about great men - and it remains to be seen whether any of the versions of Mandela's life story will inspire audiences to make the long walk to the box office.