For a white South African educated at an elite Afrikaner university, Nic Buchanan sounds brutal in his denunciation of the country?s history as taught in schools and colleges in the apartheid era. ?The history we were taught started with the arrival of Jan van Riebeeck in 1652,? Buchanan says, referring to the first Dutch-descent white settler in South Africa. ?Everything before then was written off as savagery or barbarism. Any story that involved heroism was about white people,? says the 35-year-old artist heading a project backed by anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela to change all that.

From his cramped studio in a Johannesburg cottage, Buchanan is leading five young African artists to produce a nine-part series of comic books on Mandela?s life ?to help young people rediscover the correct and proud history of South Africa?. Mandela is due to launch the first of the ?Madiba Legacy Series? in Johannesburg on Friday. Some 1 million copies of the first book, sponsored by mining group Anglo American, are being shipped to schools and newspapers for free distribution.

The series will eventually be translated from English into South Africa?s 10 other official languages. The Mandela Foundation?s Centre of Memory says it has already received publishing enquiries from Russia, Italy and Canada. African American readers and Japan?s $ 7 billion a year comics market are other potential outlets.

Buchanan referred to African civilisations such as the Mapungubwe Kingdom that thrived around 1200 AD in the area where the present borders of South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana meet. Its splendour was discovered in 1933 when excavators unearthed vast amounts of gold buried with its monarchs. The white government hid this knowledge until 1994 when Mandela, having served 27 years in apartheid jails, was elected South Africa?s first black president at the end of over three centuries of white domination, Buchanan said.

One section depicts how Mandela and his step-brother stole cattle, lied to clan elders and ran away to Johannesburg to escape an arranged marriage. Mandela?s first name Rolihlahla is translated in the comic as ?the one who troubles?, although he is most commonly referred to by his clan name Madiba. ?The thread of the story is that he was a troublemaker. When he made up his mind that something was not right, he fought it hard,? Buchanan said, citing Mandela?s expulsion from Fort Hare University for rebellious behaviour.

?Portraying him as a normal person is important in getting the message across to kids,? Buchanan says. ?They could have been born in a mud hut but still gone on to do great things.? The Mandela Centre of Memory has scheduled a comprehensive feedback programme to see how the message gets to the youth. ?We don?t want to just throw the comics around,? the centre?s project director Verne Harris told Reuters. The centre would run a quiz in newspapers and seek feedback directly from selected schools in the Eastern Cape, he said.

John CHIAHEMEN