Khalo Matabane

The idea for my documentary, Letter to Nelson Mandela, first occurred in 2011 in San Sebastian, Spain. I was having dinner with my hosts who had invited me to the Human Rights Film Festival there to show my work. One of them told me how divided Spain was and spoke at length about the violence. He eventually concluded, ‘’What Spain needs is a Nelson Mandela to unite us.’’ This, I found, was the glorification that I had become accustomed in relation to the global icon.