For a book that some book publishers in South Africa said would not sell well, Lionel J. Maxim's "Madiba the Rainbow Man" is proving the critics wrong.

About 20,000 copies have been sold and the first-time author is in Bermuda on the latest stop of his book signing tour, which began in Los Angeles about a couple of weeks ago.

The children's book is about the life of Nelson Mandela and considering Mandela's popularity worldwide, the book has international appeal.

Mr. Mandela is affectionately known by his clan name, Madiba, which is how the title of Mr. Maxim's book came about. "Out of respect I would address him as Tata, which means father," said the author.

Mr. Maxim's short trip to Bermuda has been taken up with book signings and visits to schools, talking to children about both the book and educating them about his country. He admits some sectors of the South African community did not embrace the book, but he persevered nonetheless.

"I discovered that in the white publishing market back home in South Africa that they feel more comfortable when a white man writes a story about black people in their community," said Mr. Maxim.

"I don't know if it is because of trust or a writing technique. I never had any formal writing or training, but I found that everyone who read my book said 'oh, a wonderful book, it's well written', which tells me it is a God-given talent.

"I knocked on a lot of doors and was told 'you won't even sell up to 3,000 copies at the most', but in the first publication we have sold about 20,000 copies and I can tell you it is being read worldwide.

The book is being sold at the Robben Island Museum in Cape Town. Mandela spent spent 18 of his 27 years' incarceration at Robben Island which is a popular tourist attraction.

"I still do a lot of promotions at Robben Island Museum, where people want autographed copies.

"Most of the time people say to me 'why can't you bring this book into America, we would love to have it in the schools'. Even Chinese people said 'translate it in Chinese and bring it to China', but not having the connections and contacts and afraid you will end up with the wrong people and they might disappear with the book."

Thanks to Dr. Mel Butler, president of American company Butler Distribution Inc., the book is now being distributed outside of South Africa, with Mr. Maxim just having completed book signing stops in Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore and Washington, DC, which coincided with Black History Month in February.

"This is my very first time to the United States, so I'm actually living my dream," revealed the author.

"I'm focusing on writing about black heroes all over the world, wherever they are and whatever achievement they had, and teaching children about perseverance. For me it is just about being a writer and leaving behind a legacy for the kids who are going to be a part of our future.

"Like they say 'you cannot go forward until you know what your past was like' because history repeats itself from time to time. One of my favourite phrases from Nelson Mandela which he said in 1996 is 'A nation's future is only as good as its next generation of citizens'."

Inspiritation for the book came from Mr. Maxim's two children, Brent and Tarra, and he dedicated it to them and his later mother Rachel. Mr. Maxim was reading one of the earlier books about Mr. Mandela when his then four-year-old daughter asked him why there weren't any books about Nelson Mandela for children.

"I was reading a book called 'Robben Island, Symbol of Resistence' just to get some motivation and inspiration from the struggle because I was part of the struggle in 1976 as well," he revealed.

"It was a collective movement that took place in South Africa and everybody with a dark skin was a part of the struggle. I was still in high school when the struggle started, when the Dutch language Afrikaan was forced on the black pupils in Soweto and I am basically from the coloured race grouping in the Western Cape.

"When we heard of it the student uprising began and as you would have read that time in the papers there was fighting with the police and the army they sent in. Based on those things I have always been an ANC supporter and member because of my relationship with the struggle." When his research revealed no children's book about the country's great leader, Mr. Maxim decided to fill the void.

"He gracefully came out of prison, forgave the white oppressor and became president of the country, and then told us to stop the fighting and go back to school," said the 44-year-old Mr. Maxim. "Between 1976 and 1986 were the worst years and our plans were to burn the country down. But Mandela saw a different way."

The country began its transition upon Mandela's release in 1991, after serving 27 years in prison. At the election in 1994 he became the president of the country that had imprisoned him for almost 30 years.

"On the Cape Town parade he was standing on the steps of the balcony of City Hall and he said to his supporters 'look, it's time you go back home, don't cause any more trouble'."

"We calmly dispersed, after breaking a few more windows on our way out, and went home. Then came the election in 1994 and the world was waiting for something bad to happen.

"We had plane loads of media coming from all over the world, they thought the world was going to explode. We had major incidents before the election, this was a white government that wasn't prepared to lose but they had to give up.

"One thing I admired about F.W. de Klerk, the previous president, was that he saw what the future was going to be about if he was going to hang onto power. The blacks were in the majority, there were no two ways about that, and if he wasn't going to give up the power we were going to take it from him in any case.

"It would have become something like we have between Israel and Palestinians at this time. But the elections took place and immediately after the election, which we knew we were going to win in any case, there was total calm in the country. I think most of the media left disappointed because violence sells papers and there was no news."

Change came gradually but Mr. Maxim said there is more unity in the country now than there has ever been. "We become one when the rugby or soccer team plays, and even the cricket team," Mr. Maxim says with pride. Violence exists, yes, but brought about because of high unemployment. It is also as bad as portrayed in the international media, said Mr. Maxim.

"Our universities are cramped with black and coloured students but there are no jobs when they get out."

"We realised we could not just dismantle the pillars of apartheid in one go, because everything would collapse on top of us," he stated.

"We are still busy removing apartheid policies that are in our way but I'm happy to say that 80 percent of apartheid that was in our country has been removed. We do have the occasional isolated incident, but that happens anywhere in the world, and of course South Africa is one of the most advanced countries on the continent with one of the best infrastructures. Bear in mind South Africa was built by whites for themselves, not for us, and now that we've taken it back we have taken it back with the infrastructure in place. Lucky for us we were wise enough to listen to the wise words of Nelson Mandela and not destroy the country, otherwise we would have been making loans to get the country back to normal."

Mr. Maxim said blacks have enrolled in schools, obtained jobs and moved into neighbourhoods that would have been off limits to them a decade ago. Foreign investment is needed to provide more jobs and over the last few years African Americans have begun investing in that country with confidence.

"We still have racial incidents on the farms, which are isolated and away from the cities, and people are not educated about their rights." "It's going to take us a few more years of good nation building before we will have everything in place. We live in harmony with 80 percent of the white community and we have interracial relationships taking place. That was not tolerated before, just for looking at a white person you could have gotten locked up.

"I advise my African American brothers and people of Bermuda to come and visit and see how you can invest and build up the country. We pay eleven Rand to get one dollar and what we need in South African at this point is jobs.

"We have a 30 percent unemployment rate, which is high. And that is where the crime factor comes in. Crime is not there because people are born criminals, but it is there because people need to eat and live."

Mr. Maxim says he felt comfortable moving about Bermuda, saying he felt like he was at home amongst his own people.

"At a school I spoke at in Bermuda, there was a lady drawing some African art and she said to me she couldn't understand what the influence is, that everything she draws is African.

"I said 'that is because you are African'. It is part of her soul. You can get any African out of Africa, but you shall never get Africa out of an African."

South Africa has eleven different languages, nine provinces, each about 20 times the size of Bermuda. "We've got a lot of bankrupt farms at the moment because a lot of whites are pulling out. They blame it on the crime but they still want to hang on to their wealth and have a master's attitude. They want to live in the past. You have to go back three months the last time a tourist was mugged."

One of the rising crimes in the country is the illegal trade in 'Ebolone', the country's shell fish, which is considered a delicacy.

"It is a very sought after delicacy in the east, like shark fins, and the Chinese and Japanese dry it out and make soup out of it," Mr. Maxim disclosed.

"They offer a lot of money for it. People will take the Ebolone and sell it to the black market, which takes it into the Asian markets. The people who are stealing the Ebolone are out of work fishermen and you can't blame them."

He compares that to the slaughter of the African rhino for their horns and the elephants for their ivory which is also an illegal trade.

"They (those in the black market) don't suffer the consequences when those resources are depleted completely.

"The foreign market is showing a strong interest and they have the strong dollars to pay for it. These people can make a fortune overnight and the man who hasn't been working for a couple of months and is struggling to feed his family will be tempted to go and get it.

"The Ebolone is rare because it takes a couple of years to mature and is very expensive."

Mr. Maxim was born in Cape Town in 1957, but during the apartheid era his family was forcibly uprooted and relocated to an area called Bonteheuwel in the heart of the Cape Flats.

He still lives in Cape Town area, one of the most beautiful areas of the country and the most popular spot for tourists.

"We live next to one another as neighbours now," he says of the blacks and whites.

"Even I live in a former predominantly white area, the Kirstenhof area in Cape Town. One of our biggest tourist attractions in South Africa is Cape Town, second to the wildlife national park. I had the honour of meeting your Premier, the Honourable Jennifer Smith, and she said she had been to Cape Town recently. She met my Minister of Tourism and spoke very fondly of the experience she had on the soil of Africa.

"She was very positive about what she had seen out there and hopefully that will encourage people from Bermuda to come out there for a holiday. What I'm doing here is sharing our culture with the young people here."