Nelson Mandela and his pain of failed marriages
Kalhari read out a passage for us without telling us its source. She began:
Perhaps l was blinded to certain things because of the pain I felt for not being able to fulfil my role as a husband to my wife and a father to my children. But just as I am convinced that my wife’s life when I was in prison was more difficult than mine , my own return was also more difficult for her than it was for me. She married a man who soon left her; that man became a myth; and then that myth returned home and proved to be just a man after all.
Former South African President Nelson Mandela celebrates his 86th birthday with his wife Graca Machel, left, and ex -wife Winnie Madikizela Mandela, right, in his rural home town of Qunu in the Eastern Cape Province on 18 July 2004 (AFP)
These words were compelling. We listened eagerly. Kalhari was presenting what was termed “Reading for the Day”, a closing item in an agenda we had devised for a weekly three-hour English Communication session held in Colombo in the mid-nineties for the executive staff of a private sector bank. She continued:
As I later said at my daughter Zindzi’s wedding, it seems to be the destiny of freedom fighters to have unstable personal lives. When your life is the struggle, as mine was, there is little room left for family. That has always been my greatest regret, and the most painful aspect of the choice I made.
‘We watched our children growing without our guidance,’ I said at the wedding, “and when we did come out of prison, my children said, “We thought we had a father and one day he’d come back. But to our dismay, our father came back and he left us alone because he has now become the father of the nation.’” To be the father of a nation is a great honour, but to be the father of a family is a greater joy; but it was a joy I had far too little of.
We realised at once that Kalhari was reading from Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela’s widely acclaimed autobiography of South Africa’s freedom struggle. It was an excerpt from the story of the hardship and suffering and ultimate triumph of a leader, like no other. This excerpt like much of the Mandela saga is told with controlled emotion and a sense of serene sadness.
On the last day of our course Kalhari presented us on behalf of her class a gift of Long Walk to Freedom, which had just appeared in the Colombo bookshops. We read it avidly. And, we started reading it again on December 5, the day that Mandela breathed his last, with a wish to finish the 751 pages on December 15, the day his mortal remains were laid to rest in Qunu, the village of his birth and childhood.
Among the many sacrifices Nelson Mandela made for his country was the personal pain of two failed marriages. He wrote about how they ended – without malice or self-pity and how they began – with passion and delight.
First wife Evelyn
Madiba’s first wife was Evelyn Mase, a quiet, pretty trainee-nurse from the countryside, the daughter of a mine worker. He had died when Evelyn was an infant and her mother when she was twelve. She stayed with her brother, Sam Mase, who was then living in the home of Walter Sisulu, Mandela’s fellow freedom fighter, “It was in the lounge of the Sisulus’s home that I met Evelyn…I asked her out very soon after our first meeting. Almost as quickly we fell in love. Within a few months I had asked her to marry me, and she accepted.” They married in the early 1940’s and moved into a two-room municipal house n Soweto ( acronym for South-Western Townships). The house was like hundreds of other box shaped houses built on postage-stamp-size plots on dusty dirt roads. Their double bed took up almost the entire floor space on the bedroom. “It was my first true home and I was mightily proud. A man is not a man until he had a house of his own. I did not know then that it would be the only residence that would be entirely mine for many, many years….That year our first son, Maida Thembekile , was born…I had now produced an heir, though I had little as yet to bequeath to him. But I had perpetuated the Mandela name and the Madiba clan, which is one of the basic responsibilities of a Xhosa male.
“I enjoyed domesticity, even though I had little time for it. I delighted in playing with Thembi, bathing him and feeding him, and putting him to bed with a little story. In fact, I love playing with children and chatting with them; It has always been one of the things that make me feel most at peace. I enjoyed relaxing at home, reading quietly, taking in the sweet and savoury smells emanating from pots boiling in the kitchen. But I was rarely at home to enjoy these things.”
These are little known aspects of the private life of a public figure that became a much loved global icon.
In the mid 1950’s their marriage began to unravel. Evelyn had become a Jehovah’s Witness, zealously distributing The Watchtower and urging Mandela to convert his commitment to his political struggle to a commitment to God. “I did not share her faith which taught passivity and submissiveness in the face of oppression, something I could not accept… We had many arguments…and I patiently explained to her that politics was not a distraction but my lifework, that it was an essential and fundamental part of my being. She could not accept this. A man and a woman who hold such different views of their respective roles in life cannot remain close,” the freedom fighter writes. And thus ended Madiba’s first marriage.
Second wife Winnie
But it did not take long for young Mandela to be in love again. “As I drove past a nearby bust stop, I noticed out of the corner of my eye a lovely young woman waiting for the bus. I was struck by her beauty, and I turned my head to get a better look at her, but my car had gone by too fast. This woman’s face stayed with me …”
Some weeks thereafter by a curious coincidence she was sitting in their law firm to meet his partner Oliver Tambo on a legal matter. Her name was Nomzamo Winifred Madikizela, but she was known as Winnie… “Something in me was deeply stirred by her presence. I was thinking more of how I could ask her out than how our firm would handle her case. I cannot say for certain if there is such a thing as love at first sight, but I do know that the moment I first glimpsed Winnnie Nomzamo, I knew that I wanted to have her as my wife.Her spirit, her passion, her youth, her courage, her wilfulnesss _ I felt all of these things the moment I first saw her.”
He filed for divorce from Evelyn and arrangements were afoot for his second wedding. It was the time of the Treason Trial and the Mandela-Tambo law firm was falling apart and he was facing grave financial difficulties. Their firm had gone from a bustling practice that turned people away to one that was now practically begging for clients. He could not even pay the balance of Fifty Pounds still owing on the plot of land he had bought in Umtata and had to give it up. He explained all this to Winnie that they would have to live on her small salary as a social worker. Winnnie understood and said she was prepared to take the risk and throw in her lot with Mandela. “I never promised her gold and diamonds, and I was never able to give them to her,” wrote Mandela.
At their wedding in June, 1958, Winnie’s father told her she was marrying a man who was already married to the struggle, adding, “If your husband is a wizard, you must become a witch,” which means she must follow her man on the path he takes.,
“The wife of a freedom fighter is often like a widow, even when her husband is not in prison. Though I was on trial for treason, Winnie gave me cause for hope. I felt though I had a new and second chance at life. My love for her gave me added strength for the struggle that lay ahead,” wrote Mandela.
On April 13, 1992, he announced poignantly at a press conference his separation from Winnie. He said, “Comrade Nomzamo and myself contracted our marriage at a critical time in the struggle for liberation in our country. Owing to the pressures of our shared commitment to the ANC and the struggle to end apartheid, we were unable to enjoy a normal family life. Despite these pressures our love for each other and our devotion to our marriage grew and intensified…
“During the two decades I spent on Robben Island she was an indispensable pillar of support and comfort to myself personally. …She accepted the onerous burden of raising our children on her own. She endured the persecutions heaped upon her by the Government with exemplary fortitude and never wavered from her commitment to the freedom struggle. Her tenacity reinforced my personal respect, love and growing affection. It also attracted the admiration of the world at large. My love for her remains undiminished…
“However, in view of the tensions that have arisen owing to differences between ourselves on a number of issues in recent months, we have mutually agreed that a separation would be best for each of us…
“I shall personally never regret the life Comrade Nomzamo and I tried to share together. Circumstances beyond our control however dictated it should be otherwise…I part from my wife with no recrimination. I embrace her with all the love and affection I have nursed for her inside and outside prison from the moment I first met her.Ladies and gentlemen I hope you will appreciate how painful this is to me. And I would appreciate it if we could have no questions.”
Third wife Graca Machel
On July 18, 1998 on his 80th birthday Nelson Mandela married his third wife, Graca Machel, widow of Samora Machel, the Mozambican President.
The legendary freedom fighter like no other was also after all a man like any other in want of a wife.