A new collection of Nelson Mandela's private papers reveals his years of heartache at missing his family while in prison and his wariness at becoming idolised, in excerpts published Sunday The book "Conversations with Myself" goes on sale Tuesday, but passages printed in British and South African papers show his thoughts on everything from the danger of corruption in power to his personal grief at the death of his son.
Decades worth of letters, diaries and private recordings were distilled by his eponymous Foundation in a project that purports to show the private man behind the global icon.
Now 92, the man who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his struggle against the white-minority apartheid government says he doesn't want to be remembered as a larger-than-life saint.
"One issue that deeply worried me in prison was the false image I unwittingly projected to the outside world; of being regarded as a saint," he said in a excerpt printed in South Africa's Sunday Times.
"I never was one, even on the basis of the earthly definition of a saint as a sinner who keeps trying."
Mandela was detained for 27 years for resisting apartheid rule. He was released in 1990 and led negotiations with the government that culminated in his election as the country's first black president in 1994.
He stepped down in 1999, after serving one term in office. He now appears frail and makes few public appearances since retiring from public life in 2004.
He remains deeply revered in South Africa, and although he has spoken publicly about his shortcomings, critical talk is almost non-existent about the man known fondly by his clan name Madiba.
The book appears to invite a more rounded discussion of his life, while also focusing on the enormous personal sacrifices required by his devotion to the liberation struggle.
"As a young man, I combined all the weaknesses, errors and indiscretions of a country boy, whose range of vision and experience was influenced mainly by events in the area in which I grew up and the colleges to which I was sent," he wrote, according to the South African paper.
"I relied on arrogance to hide my weaknesses," he added.
In letters written to his family while in prison, Mandela wrote that he felt "soaked in gall" by being powerless to help his then-wife Winnie and his children, according to Britain's Sunday Times.
"I feel I have been soaked in gall, every part of me, my flesh, bloodstream, bone and soul, so bitter am I to be completely powerless to help you in the rough and fierce ordeals you are going through," he wrote to Winnie Mandela in August 1970.
When Winnie was also jailed for a time in 1969, he wrote to his daughters Zeni and Zindi, then aged nine and 10 that "now she and Daddy are away in jail."