|
Africa
The Mandela many have never seen
The world knows him as a saint – perhaps the only living saint there is. But a new book on Nelson Mandela’s years before he was jailed for life in 1964, has revealed a different face to Saint Mandela, portraying all his human vices. “These are sensitive, delicate personal issues, not only involving Mandela but others too – they speak of hidden tragedy and blighted lives,” says David James Smith, the author of the sensational new book, Young Mandela. Welcome to the Mandela many people have never seen. This report is by our editor, Baffour Ankomah.
It is hard to knock a living legend. Only a wife, a lover or a mistress has that privilege. Only they are privy to the intimate man, so wrote Lady Nadira Naipaul, the Pakistani journalist and columnist, who published a sensational article in March this year purportedly based on an interview given by Nelson Mandela’s ex-wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. The contents of the article were so shocking that days after it was first published in the London Evening Standard and regurgitated around the world by other media, Winnie was forced to disown it.
“I did not give an interview. It is therefore not necessary for me to respond in any detail to the contents of a fabricated interview. I will in the coming days deal with what I see as an inexplicable attempt to undermine the unity of the family, the legacy of Nelson Mandela and the high regard with which the name Mandela is held here and across the globe,” Winnie, who was then visiting America, said in a statement distributed by the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
But Lady Naipaul and the Evening Standard stood steadfastly by their article. In a counter-statement, the Evening Standard said: “Nadira Naipaul is a distinguished journalist who visited Winnie Mandela at home and spoke to her at length about her experiences. Nadira and her husband, the writer Sir V. S. Naipaul, are photographed with Winnie Mandela, and this picture was printed with the article. We cannot understand Winnie Mandela’s denial of an event and conversation which clearly took place.”
Winnie, now 73, had reportedly told the Naipauls when they met her at her Soweto home that Mandela was no longer accessible to his daughters and they have to get through much red tape just to speak to him. “This name Mandela is an albatross around the necks of my family,” Winnie was reported to have said. “You must all realise that Mandela was not the only man who suffered. There were many others, hundreds who languished in prison and died. Many unsung and unknown heroes of the struggle, and there were others in the leadership too, like poor Steve Biko, who died of beatings, horribly alone.”
|
SITE EN FRANÇAIS
print story
