TWO-TIME Sunday Times Alan Paton Award recipient, author Jonny Steinberg’s most recent tome’s title, Winnie & Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage, might mislead the reader to be of the impression that it is solely about the late South African revolutionaries, Winifred Madikizela and Nelson Mandela’s marriage – when their union is revealed in the thick paperback as having been more than just a relationship between a universally acclaimed couple.
In keeping with the hint in the title, I decided to glean choice excerpts from the book which resonate with romantic episodes from their courtship, interrupted marriage and mutual sacrifice toward relieving South Africans of varying hues from the yoke of Grand Apartheid.
Picture a scenario whereat two vehicles belonging to vying suitors would be spotted parked on opposite ends of a female hostel and a young ‘beautiful, flirtatious woman’ would jump out of the other and immediately dash across to jump into another!
A pre-revolutionary and verily unmarried Winnie Madikizela would attend to the besotted whims of two rivals, namely, Barney Sampson – described as stylish and good-looking – and the then womanizing and pioneering lawyer, Nelson Mandela.
‘Twas the 1950s and both future husband and wife had arrived in Johannesburg from the rural Transkei to stake their respective claims as career professionals during an era when Blacks were deliberately relegated to menial roles in society by the prevailing apartheid bureaucracy!
Sampson was to later attempt suicide from the heartbreak of losing Winnie to Nelson and the Thembu aristocrat ultimately claimed her as his wife!
In Steinberg’s account, Mandela comes across as having been tolerant of Madikizela’s flirtatious conduct during their courtship – which extended to his being conscious of the presence of rivals for her affection. “Such an intimidating and seductive beauty does not go with a revolutionary!” a comrade, Moses Kotane once remarked to Mandela upon beholding Winnie.
The content recounts a couple the toast of both Black, White, Jewish and Indian society. Mandela not only being one of a few practicing Black attorneys at the time – but also standing out through the bespoke suits he wore and a certain two-tone Oldsmobile car he owned. Madikizela being so fashion conscious that she’d be seen with fashion magazines from which she adopted the trending styles of the era.
In fact, Winnie made waves amongst her peers at the Helping Hand Club for Native Girls by being the only residence to appear in the Bantu World newspaper not once but twice in a given year! The duo attending Sunday lunches at Joe Slovo and Ruth First’s Whites-only suburban home where a Black man would be seen nonchalantly laying alongside a White girl poolside –defying apartheid’s verboten statutes.
Another canvas depicts dances at the Bantu Men’s Social Centre with Nelson waxing poetically about Winnie convulsing her body with a Hawaiian dance whilst he stood ready to embrace her. Dates at the Donaldson Orlando Community Centre where she watched him punching a bag and skipping and doing push-ups.
Other vignettes describe a lifestyle name-dropping the frequenting of prominent venues such as the Odin and Harlem cinemas in Sophiatown – as well as the place’s vibrant jazz scene; awareness of magazine page models ranging from the American dimple-cheeked beauty, Lena Horne to Black South Africa’s own celebrity, Dolly Rathebe, et cetera!
Their romantic destiny, let alone the political one, had sparked off one rainy afternoon in March 1957 when Mandela’s law practice partner, Oliver Tambo, spotted him inside a roadside delicatessen whilst giving his fiancée Adelaide Tshukudu and Winnie a ride back home from work.
Introducing the shy young lady from Bizana, Tambo exclaimed to Nelson, “Don’t you know Winnie?”
“She is always dancing up and down the newspapers.”
Fifteen months after that rendezvous, they got married – with their union interrupted by spells in prison for either of them. A scene describes how Nelson once footed it home to Orlando West upon being released from a jail stint – to be met in the middle of the street by a buoyant and barefooted Winnie who had been watering the garden! They hadn’t seen each other for five months!
Steinberg’s extensively researched result also touches on Nelson Mandela’s own flirtations – a side of South Africa’s future president which put paid to his first marriage. “Nelly was a ladies’ man”, associates from the mid-1950s pointed out. In one incident, an ANC colleague, described as being a famously beautiful widow, who had earned the ire of Mandela, retaliated, “How can I be against Mr Mandela when he left his hat in my house?”
He would be seen paying Winnie the impressionable social worker visits at Baragwanath hospital whilst still married to Evelyn Mase, the devout Jehovah’s Witness who happened to be a nurse at the same institution. Ye Gods, even the ANC Women’s League leader, Lillian Ngoyi, didn’t escape his attention – an intimation the author alluded to Mandela’s authorized biographer! So much so that fellow activist, Helen Joseph wondered in her memoir why the two didn’t end up marrying!
When his union with Mase became untenable, Mandela decided to pool his lot with Madikizela – much to the chagrin of her dad, Columbus, who, at their wedding intoned: “If your man is a wizard, you must become a witch!” An urbane patriarch protective of his progeny, the elderly headmaster’s misgiving about his daughter’s choice stemmed from her marrying a man already married to the struggle.
Featuring a monochromatic image depicting the post-1990 re-united couple snuggling to each other pending a social event, the book also includes another showing Winnie in the beauty of her youth during a ball at the Jan Hofmeyr School of Social Work in which she is wearing a white dress complemented by a ring of pearls around her neck.
She appears majestically photogenic as if in keeping with her stated intention of, “I had to become a city girl, acquire glamour!” Offered a prominent figure of Winnie’s generation, “If a woman was ambitious, you look for somebody powerful, you choose a man like Mandela.”
Winnie & Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage, is published in South Africa by Jonathan Ball Publishers and is available at leading bookstores countrywide.
Image (Winnie & Nelson- Portrait of a marriage).
