The project plans to bring together, on one site, documents scattered between the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory, the National Archive, the justice and correctional services departments and other countries, as well as providing a vital insight into Mr Mandela’s thoughts and feelings at some of SA’s most historic moments.

In his diaries and personal notebooks are his reasons for putting forward Cyril Ramaphosa as his successor over former president Thabo Mbeki; his views on HIV/AIDS voiced in 1991 during Codesa (Convention for a Democratic SA) talks; insight into the debate on lowering the voting age to 14; and, on a lighter note, a letter to a national newspaper in 1996 requesting that they stop saying he was dead.

Achmat Dangor, CEO of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, says it is negotiating, through the US ambassador for access to CIA documents that support the claim that the CIA tipped off the South African government as to Mr Mandela’s whereabouts, leading to his arrest.

"There is a rich treasure trove of history, and the foundation and the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory, tasked with archiving footage and documents relating to Mr Mandela’s life, have been trying to work out how to make this available to the world.

"By converting these documents to digital format, the centre can have digital copies of documents, which avoids ownership or rights debates," says Mr Dangor.

Notes in Mr Mandela’s own handwriting for the unfinished follow-up to Long Walk to Freedom, tentatively titled Presidential Years, are among the documents to be digitised.

Archivist and head of the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory Verne Harris says the book, which Mr Mandela wrote by hand and eventually abandoned in 2002, provides invaluable information about his thoughts, including views on his successor.

"In the first chapter, you see him, at age 80, reflecting on the nature of autobiography and his wish to be seen as a flawed human being. He does not quite pull that off and perhaps that is why he abandoned it in the end," Mr Harris says.

Google has donated a grant of the same size to the Desmond Tutu Peace Centre, and the Tertiary Education and Research Network of SA (Tenet) received $750000 for its work in assisting universities with internet and information technology services, as part of its efforts to increase internet access in Africa.

Mr Dangor says the Nelson Mandela Foundation approached Google to ask for its expertise in improving links on the nelsonmandela.org site and the relationship grew from there. "I am very interested in the technology that makes a searchable document from a handwritten document, which will mean we can place original documents on site."

Luke Mckend, country manager for Google SA, says the project was in line with its interest in bringing the world’s historical heritage online. "Our grants to the Nelson Mandela Centre and the Desmond Tutu Peace Centre will facilitate new digital archives for SA’s past, giving the global public an unprecedented opportunity to engage with the history of some of the most extraordinary leaders of our time."

The decision to begin archiving documents on Nelson Mandela’s life was taken in 2004, says Mr Dangor, to make them publicly available, as part of the foundation’s aim to drive social justice issues. The foundation also became aware that data made available free by the Nelson Mandela Foundation was being "sold on by some agencies to academics and schools at great cost".

Mr Harris says Mr Mandela has given them the right to use every document in their possession as they see fit, but documents may be withheld because of privacy or third party issues. "We will release every possible document we can find that we think is relevant," says Mr Harris.

"We are bound by law to protect third parties and we will endeavour to get those permissions so we can use the documents."

There is also some urgency in preserving documents, in particular the nearly 100000 pages of Mr Mandela’s treason trial. "Much of it is old faxes and pages that are fading fast," says Mr Harris.

• benjaminc@bdfm.co.za