Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela

• Interviews with the ANC activists: Selebano Matlhape, Bethuel Setai, Winkie Direko, Mathew Mogkele
• Starring the scenes: Tshepo Clement Madibeng, Matsepo Majara, Kabi Thulo, Maria De Koker, Mxolisi Mantlana, Mbuyiselo Nqobi, Mncedisi Kwinana, Fezekile E. Peter, Andile Lizo Ngwilingwili, Linda Carlos Hlogwane, Alex Selesho, Watson P. Thapong, Richman Mphou Edward Charles Human, Vuyo Mfanekiso

Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela is a documentary by American director Thomas Allen Harris.

The documentary film about twelve first-generation members of the ANC, the so-called twelve disciples of Nelson Mandela, consists of interviews with the surviving members of the group, trailing scenes of their history and personal recollections of the director to his stepfather, Benjamin Pule " Lee" Leinaeng, a leading member of the group.

The American Harris was strongly influenced by the political atmosphere in the house of his stepfather, which became the center of the ANC in New York. As a personal tribute, the film is subtitled A Son's Tribute to Unsung Heroes. Occasion of the clues was the funeral Leinaengs in Bloemfontein in 2000, so that it no longer comes himself to speak, but only a few of his companions.

The history of the twelve freedom fighters began in the late 1950s in Bloemfontein, where they were students at a high school in the township of Botshabelo and were confronted daily with the brutality of the apartheid system. Politically, they were sensitized by her teacher Winkie Direko, the Free State, after the end of apartheid, Prime Minister of the province. After the Sharpeville massacre, the group in 1960 fled across Botswana to Dar es Salaam, met Nelson Mandela in Sudan, were trained militarily in Cuba and eventually found some of them in exile in East Germany, where Lee journalism learned before a grant from the Lincoln University in the USA received. In New York, he set up an office of the ANC temporarily taught at New York University and worked from 1981 at the UN anti-apartheid office. Eight years later, he visited for the first time since the flight Bloemfontein, where he again lived permanently from 1997.