Regrets, recipes for herbal tea and dreams of Winnie dancing … Mandela’s letters from Robben Island reveal the family man behind the political warrior
In 1969, six and a half years into his 27 year imprisonment, Nelson Mandela wrote to his wife, Winnie: “Since the dawn of history, mankind has honoured & respected … men and women like you darling – an ordinary girl who hails from a country village hardly shown in most maps.” The letter is one of many he wrote to Winnie and it is his love for her that lights up the pages of this mesmerising book of prison letters, many of which have not previously been published.
He had been sentenced to life at a time in South Africa’s history when life meant life, and at first was only allowed to write one 500-word letter every six months, and then only to family members. He wrote drafts in the hardback notebooks he kept in his cell (and at one time was furious that two of these, along with a precious pen, had disappeared). Because the prison authorities would delay his letters – sometimes not sending them – and would hold up or confiscate replies, he never knew whether they’d been received. On one occasion, when he realised that someone had not got his letter, he painstakingly recopied it exactly as it had been a decade before. Thus does time pass slowly in prison.
Nelson Mandela was an icon in his time and has been mythologised since his death as the man who brought peace to a country and made forgiveness on a grand scale seem possible. His voice, brought to life in these letters – which are being published to celebrate the centenary of his birth – helps the reader understand why: his writing pulsates with a conviction allied to a humanity that helped lay the grounds for the miracle of South Africa’s peaceful transformation. At the same time, we are given a privileged glimpse into just how much this one man, and his family, suffered for that transformation.
The year of his letter to his “ordinary girl” stands out as one of the most terrible of all his years of imprisonment. Winnie, his contact with the world, was herself in prison, awaiting trial, leaving their children “orphans”. His mother had not long since died and he had not been allowed to go to her funeral, a loss that stayed with him for a very long time. In a number of letters, some of them written years after the event, he describes his mother’s visit to him, and his last sight of her as she walked from the prison towards the boat that would take her to the mainland, and his sudden feeling that he would never see her again. Reeling from her loss, he was handed a telegram telling him that his 24-year-old son, Thembi (by his first wife Evelyn) had died in a car accident. He describes how his blood turned to ice and how he eventually found his way back to his cell which was, as he writes: “The last place where a man stricken with sorrow should be.” As with his mother, he was denied the chance to bury his son or to visit his grave. Achingly, he writes about his last sight of Thembi in 1962:
Then he was a lusty lad of 17 that I could not associate with death. He wore one of my trousers which was a shade too big for him … He had a lot of clothing, was particular about his dress & and had no reason whatsoever for wearing my clothes. I was deeply touched for the emotional factors underlying his actions were too obvious. For days thereafter my mind & feelings were agitated to realise the psychological strains & stresses my absence from home had imposed.
For more read the full of article at The Guardian
