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Leading South African activist Ahmed Kathrada spent 25 years imprisoned with Nelson Mandela and became a close friend and advisor.

Now Mandela has asked him to travel the world to publicise his new book Conversations With Myself, in which the former South African President reveals his personal archives, including diaries, letters and hours of private recordings.

Ahmed's family migrated to South Africa from India.

In South Africa's three-tiered Apartheid system he was not allowed to attend either the school for white people or the school for black people in his local area. Instead, at the age of eight, he was sent 200 miles away to Johannesburg to a school for "coloured" people.

As a teenager he campaigned against the unjust apartheid laws and met Nelson Mandela at university. The two men became close friends and colleagues in the African National Congress (ANC).

He was arrested in 1963 with Mandela and other ANC activists in the infamous Rivonia case. The eight men were found guilty of sabotage and attempting to violently overthrow the government and given life sentences with hard labour.

When Ahmed came into the Outlook studio he spoke about hard labour, smuggling Mandela's autobiography out of prison and how difficult it was to adjust to the modern world after release.

Nelson Mandela's Conversations with Myself is out now and published by Macmillan.

First broadcast on 13 October 2010.