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Abstract
Winnie and Nelson Mandela had one of the most iconic political marriages in history. For most commentators, this was a one-sided marriage in which Nelson was by far the more significant actor and Winnie was the burden he had to bear. However, it is not possible to conceive of the public persona of Nelson Mandela after his imprisonment on Robben Island without also understanding Winnie’s role, not merely as upholder of the family name but also in terms of the ways in which she built an independent career out of her position as Nelson’s wife. This article reads the marriage at two levels. First, it argues that there were two actors in the marriage, both central to its narrations and both with political ideas and ambitions. Winnie Mandela was building a genealogy of heroic nationalism for herself from at least the 1960s, in parallel with that of her husband, and her rise to political status was both dependent on the marriage and at odds with its demands. Understanding Winnie as an actor, treating her own biography as seriously as that of Nelson, changes the way in which the marriage is read politically. Second, it draws on the small archive of letters between the spouses that are publicly available to show the ways in which Nelson’s benevolent, patriarchal (albeit loving and compassionate) approach to his wife contrasted with her increasing independence and political power. The separation caused by almost three decades of imprisonment had done more than impose a physical and emotional absence. Their politics, too, had taken extremely divergent paths in which she became a representative of radical politics while he was positioned as reconciliatory visionary.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to acknowledge like to acknowledge the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded ‘Governing Intimacies’ programme at Wits University. Thanks also to Nafisa Essop Sheik and Belinda Dodson, and the participants at the ‘Reassessing Mandela’ workshop at the University of Oxford (especially Colin Bundy), for rich engagements with the paper.
Notes
1 Winnie Mandela’s papers are the property of her family, and have not yet been made available for public use (personal communication, Sahm Venter, archivist and editor at the Nelson Mandela Foundation, 11 September 2018).
2 E. Boehmer, Stories of Women: Gender and Narrative in the Postcolonial Nation (Manchester, University of Manchester Press, 2005).
3 Ibid., p. 68.
4 Ibid., p. 29.
5 Boehmer herself has written a landmark biography of Nelson Mandela: E. Boehmer, Nelson Mandela: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008).
6 Boehmer, Stories, p. 90.
7 A. Benjamin, Part of My Soul Went With Him (New York and London, W.W. Norton, 1985).
8 F. Meer, Higher than Hope: ‘Rolihlahla We Love You’ (Braamfontein, Skotaville, 1988).
9 E. Gilbey, The Lady: The Life and Times of Winnie Mandela (New York, Vintage, 1994).
10 A.M. du Preez Bezdrob, Winnie Mandela: A Life (Cape Town, Zebra Press, 2003).
11 D.E.H. Russell, Lives of Courage: Women for a New South Africa (New York, Basic Books, 1989), p. 98.
12 Gilbey, The Lady, p. 14.
13 Ibid., p. 12.
14 Benjamin, Part of My Soul, p. 48.
15 N. Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom (Boston, New York, London, Little, Brown and Company, 1995), pp. 10–11.
16 Ibid., p. 11.
17 Benjamin, Part of My Soul, p. 47.
18 W. Madikizela-Mandela, 491 Days Prisoner Number 1323/69 (Athens, Ohio University Press, 2013).
19 Russell, Lives of Courage, p. 99.
20 Ibid.
21 Gilbey, The Lady, p. 6.
22 Gilbey, The Lady, p. 7.
23 Meer, Higher than Hope, p. 96.
24 Ibid., 1988, p. 97.
25 Russell, Lives of Courage, p. 99; see also Gilbey, The Lady, pp. 6–7.
26 Mandela, Long Walk, p. 12.
27 Benjamin, Part of My Soul, p. 48
28 Ibid., p. 49.
29 Meer, Higher than Hope, p. 96.
30 Ibid., p. 98.
31 Ibid., p. 97.
32 Ibid., p. 98.
33 E. Kuzwayo, Call Me Woman (Cape Town, Ravan Press, 1985) p. 160.
34 She had other admirers, most notably Barney Sampson, who later took an overdose of pills on hearing that she was going to marry Nelson. Both Winnie and Nelson helped Barney recuperate from this incident, arranging for him to be admitted to the FOSA Hospital in Durban where Winnie’s sister was a nurse.
35 If indeed her influences were largely through her father, the picture is more complex. Columbus’s political affiliations are not clear. Columbus may have been influenced by the strong Africanist traditions in Mpondoland represented by people such as A.P. Mda and S.E.K. Mqhayi, or by the radical Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM), which had a strong base in the area led by I.B. Tabata. The Cape African Teachers’ Association, for example, played an important political role in opposing Bantu education, and Columbus may have been at any one of the meetings that were convened in the Transkei.
36 Gilbey, The Lady, p. 53.
37 T. Lodge, ‘Poqo and Rural Resistance in the Transkei, 1960–1965’, in Collected Seminar Papers (London, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 1979), p. 139.
38 X. Mangcu, Biko: A Life (London, I.B. Taurus, 2014). p. 40.
39 Mandela, Long Walk, p. 214.
40 If you are looking for some kind of romance, you won’t find it: Benjamin, Part of My Soul, p. 59.
41 For the church wedding and the second event in Orlando, Winnie wore a white dress made by unionist and friend Ray Harmel.
42 Meer, Higher than Hope, p. 106.
43 Benjamin, Part of My Soul, p. 60.
44 Mandela, Long Walk, p. 258.
45 A. Sampson, Mandela: The Authorised Biography (New York, HarperCollins, 1999), p. 113.
46 Benjamin, Part of My Soul, p. 61.
47 Sampson, Mandela, p. 113.
48 Benjamin, Part of My Soul, p. 66.
49 C. Walker, Women and Resistance in South Africa (London, Onyx Press, 1982).
50 Benjamin, Part of My Soul, p. 68.
51 Sampson, Mandela, p. 113, emphasis added.
52 Ibid.
53 T. Lodge, Mandela: A Critical Life (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006) pp. 190–4.
54 Sampson, Mandela, p. 253.
55 These included Nelson’s previous marriage and reputed neglect of his first wife Evelyn, who lived a rural life very different to Nelson’s urban world, and various infidelities on the part of Winnie.
56 Meer, Higher than Hope, p. 111.
57 Gilbey, The Lady, p. 55.
58 Unlike Vaclav Havel’s letters to his wife Olga, which were similarly monologic, Nelson’s letters to Winnie are folded into his correspondence with his wide circle of friends and comrades: V. Havel (tr. Paul Wilson), Letters to Olga: June 1979–September 1982 (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1988).
59 Mandela, Long Walk, p. 400.
60 S. Venter, ‘A Note on the Letters’, in S. Venter (ed.), The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela (New York, London, Liveright, 2018), p. ix.
61 Mandela, Long Walk, p. 401.
62 Nelson Mandela, Letter to Winnie Mandela, 2 April 1969, in Venter, Prison Letters, p. 81.
63 Madikizela-Mandela, 491 Days, p. 240.
64 Madikizela-Mandela, 1999, Interview with Malou von Sivers, broadcast by Swedish television channel TV4, November 1999.
65 Sampson, Mandela, p. 248.
66 Madikizela-Mandela, 491 Days, p. 94.
67 Russell, Lives of Courage, p. 94.
68 Nelson Mandela, Letter to Zenani and Zindzi Mandela, 23 June 1969, in Venter, Prison Letters, p. 95.
69 Nelson Mandela, Letter to Winnie Mandela, 23 June 1969, in Venter, Prison Letters, pp. 98–9. This was a year of particular hardship for Nelson, as his 24-year-old son Thembekile died in a car accident in July. His mother had died ten months before. He was not allowed to attend either funeral.
70 D. Magaziner, ‘Pieces of a (Wo)Man: Feminism, Gender and Adulthood in Black Consciousness, 1968–1977’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 37, 1 (2011), pp. 45–61; I. Macqueen, ‘Resonances of Youth and Tensions of Race’, South African Historical Journal, 65, 3 (2013), pp. 365–82; Mangcu, Biko.
71 Sampson, Mandela, p. 269.
72 Ibid., p. 270.
73 Ibid.
74 Benjamin, Part of My Soul, p. 114.
75 Benjamin, Part of My Soul, p. 114.
76 Benjamin, Part of My Soul, p. 115.
77 Mangcu, Biko, p. 248.
78 Benjamin, Part of My Soul, p. 121.
79 Nelson Mandela, Letter to the Commanding Officer, Robben Island, 1 December 1974, in Venter, Prison Letters, pp. 272–6.
80 Lodge, Mandela, p. 145.
81 Ibid., p. 143.
82 Nelson Mandela, Letter to Winnie Mandela, 1 February 1975, in Venter, Prison Letters, pp. 277–9.
83 Benjamin, Part of My Soul, p. 23.
84 Ibid., p. 26.
85 Ibid., p. 45.
86 Sampson, Mandela, p. 298.
87 R. Holmes, ‘All Too Familiar: Gender, Violence and National Politics in the Fall of Winnie Mandela’, in A. Myers and S. Wright (eds), No Angels: Women who Commit Violence (London, Pandora, 1996), p. 95.
88 J. Hyslop, ‘Schools, Unemployment and Youth: Origins and Significance of Student and Youth Movements, 1976–1987’, in B. Nasson and J. Samuel (eds), Education: From Poverty to Liberty (Cape Town, David Philip, 1990), pp. 79–87; M. Marks, Young Warriors: Youth Politics, Identity and Violence in South Africa (Johannesburg, Wits University Press, 2001); Jeremy Seekings, The UDF: A History of the United Democratic Front in South Africa, 1983–1991 (Athens, Ohio University Press, 2000).
89 Sampson, Mandela, p. 245.
90 Marks, Young Warriors, p. 5.
91 Nelson Mandela, Letter to P.W. Botha, State President, 13 February 1985, in Venter, Prison Letters, pp. 452–8. The letter was signed by the senior leadership on Robben Island: Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Raymond Mhlaba, Ahmed Kathrada, and Andrew Mlangeni.
92 These incidents are discussed at some length in, among others, M. Meredith, Mandela: A Biography (New York, PublicAffairs, 2010); Sampson, Mandela; Lodge, Mandela; Holmes, ‘All Too Familiar’.
93 J. Carlin, ‘Whatever Went Wrong with Winnie?’ Independent, London, 29 March 1995, available at https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/whatever-went-wrong-with-winnie-1613232.html, retrieved 6 November 2019.
94 Madikizela-Mandela, 491 Days, p. 237.
95 Madikizela-Mandela, 491 Days, p. 235.
96 P. Jana, Fighting for Mandela: The Explosive Autobiography of the Woman who Helped Destroy Apartheid (London, Metro Publishing, 2016) p. 226.
97 Ibid., pp. 231–2.
98 Boehmer, Nelson Mandela p. 71.
99 Boehmer, Stories, p. 211.