Mandela recalls misspent youth eating stolen pigs

Published on Friday 17 March 2006 01:40

WORLD leaders have their faults, the former South African president Nelson Mandela told the cast of an Oscar-winning gangster film, recalling his own teenage years as a pig thief.

"All of us were mischievous in our younger days," he said yesterday after meeting with the cast of Tsotsi. "You know, we had a method as young chaps of about 16 or 17, of stealing pigs."

Tsotsi, South Africa's first Academy Award-winning film, portrays a violent young gangster's journey of redemption after stealing a car and shooting its owner, only to discover a baby in the back seat. The 87-year-old Nobel laureate joked that he, too, had a wayward youth, roasting stolen pigs.

He and his friends would leave beer out to tempt the pigs, adding: "Once we are far away we will get behind the pigs and drive them to a valley and then stab it ... the owners will not hear its sounds and then we would roast it and eat it".

But, he added: "Some of the leaders of this country and elsewhere in the world started with misdemeanours of all kinds, but as they grew up, they became responsible people."