Young Mandela

by David James Smith

  Three months later, on July 17, 1944, he was back at the Bantu Men’s Social Centre, as best man at the wedding reception of Walter and Albertina Sisulu (which followed a civil ceremony and a traditional ceremony back in the Transkei). The speeches were many, and no doubt long, by Mandela, Dr. Xuma, Lembede and others. There was dancing to the jazz band, the Merry Blackbirds. Among the bridesmaids was Evelyn Mase, so soon to be a bride herself. For Mandela was about to take a wife too, a woman who seems to have gone missing from his life story, a woman who is entitled to, and overdue, some restoration.

  Five

  IN MARCH 2009, the Soweto Heritage Trust opened Nelson Mandela’s former township home on the corner of Ngakane and Vilakazi Streets as a museum. Number 8115 Orlando West is now officially known as Mandela House. White people were once banned from entering Soweto; later they became too afraid to go there; now they arrive in organized groups on tourist buses.

  To enhance the displays, the curators of the museum decided to originate audio-visual material and conducted a filmed interview with Winnie and her daughters Zindziswa and Zenani (more familiarly known as Zindzi and Zeni) during which Winnie insisted that she had been the first and only Mrs. Mandela to live in that house, following her marriage to Mandela in June 1958. Her daughter Zindzi revealed not long after that she had always thought that too and had only just discovered it was not actually true. She and Zenani had always been told that story by their mother, but were now keen to see it corrected for the sake of accuracy.

  The incident was not only indicative of a tendency to rewrite history but was also a pointer to some of the ill feeling that has arisen in recent years between the offspring of Mandela’s first family from his marriage to Evelyn, on one side, and the family of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela on the other. The Nelson Mandela Foundation, which represents Mandela’s interests as well as arranging his business affairs and charitable concerns, sits somewhere between them, not always easily.

  Among the first family there is a feeling that they have been dispossessed, written out of Mandela’s life. Among Winnie’s family there is a sense that his first family have sometimes wanted to exploit Mandela’s name for their own ends, be it financial or political.

  The tensions between the two families have occasionally boiled over into open hostilities, most notably at the time of his son Makgatho’s death in January 2005, which was followed by the public proclamation that he had died of HIV. It occurred again during Mandela’s ninetieth birthday celebrations in 2008; and most recently, a year later, over Mandela’s two controversial public appearances in support of Jacob Zuma and the ANC during the 2009 election campaign.

  These tensions have their origins way back in the family history and are perhaps an inevitable consequence of Mandela’s devotion to the liberation cause. Mandela has often expressed his guilt at the suffering he inflicted on his family as a result of his involvement in the ANC’s struggle against apartheid. Certainly, not all the bitterness felt by the two sides of the family is aimed at the other. Much of it, especially from the first family, is directed towards Mandela himself.

  As one of his granddaughters said, “I feel that men like him who sacrifice their families for the better good of everyone shouldn’t have families because their families pay a heavy price, as we’ve paid.”

  These are sensitive, delicate personal issues, not only involving Mandela but others too—they speak of hidden tragedy and blighted lives—and I can only write about them because people have been open with me, wanting to see the truth aired at last. From the beginning, I was encouraged by those around Mandela to write about him as a human being. Don’t write about the icon, came the plea; he knows he is not a saint, he has flaws and weaknesses just like everyone else.

  * * *

  After residing in Alexandra and then the mining compounds, Mandela lived for a few months at the home of Walter Sisulu at 7372 Orlando West, which must have been among one of the earliest batches of completed properties in a newly created township in the heart of what would later become known as Soweto.

  African families, especially those from rural areas such as the eastern Cape, accepted their responsibilities to extended family and friends from the homelands and would rarely refuse anyone in need of a meal or somewhere to sleep. People might have come to the city looking forward to new opportunities, but they would look backward too, in most cases, and never forget their origins or seek to erase their past.

  While he was still a schoolboy back home, Sisulu had shared classes with Sam Mase, who was distantly related to him through marriage. Sam got caught up in the religious fervor that swept through the young men in Qutubeni, the town where they lived. His faith remained unshaken all his life and was already in place when he moved to Johannesburg and stayed with the Sisulus. There, he became politicized and, in spite of his faith, perhaps even a communist. Sam was even an early influence on Walter, introducing him to left-wing literature.

  Sam’s younger sister, Evelyn, also left the eastern Cape and she too came to stay with the Sisulu family in 1939 when they were still living on Orlando East. Evelyn had been entrusted to the care of Sam after the death of their mother when Evelyn was twelve. Sam was the eldest survivor of six children, but three had died in infancy, following the premature death of their father, a mineworker. Their mother was his second wife. Evelyn began training to be a nurse, as her mother had wanted, and became friends with Walter’s future wife, Albertina. Walter left the house to Sam when he moved to a new, larger house at 7372 Orlando West.

  As Evelyn would later tell the story, her brother became ill and could not carry on paying her school fees. She therefore began her nursing training at the non-European Hospital in Hillbrow where she was paid £1 a month and enjoyed a half-day off every fortnight, when she would go to the bioscope, or cinema—segregated of course—to watch Fu Manchu films.

  When the Sisulus moved on, Evelyn continued living with her brother but would visit the new Sisulu home. It was there that she met Mandela. Evelyn told biographer Fatima Meer, “I think I loved him the first time I saw him. The Sisulus had many friends. They were such genial, generous people and Walter had many friends who came to their home, but there was something very special about Nelson. Within days of our first meeting, we were going steady and within months he proposed. Nelson spoke to my brother and he was overjoyed, the Sisulus were overjoyed. Everyone we knew said that we made a very good couple.”

  They were radiant, she said, on the day of their wedding at the Native Commissioner’s Court in Johannesburg on October 5, 1944. Mandela was twenty-six and Evelyn was twenty-three. They could not afford a wedding feast and there was no traditional element to their celebrations—Mandela never even paid lobola.

  At the time of Mandela’s release from prison, in 1990, Evelyn was back in the eastern Cape, running a store in the village of Cofimvaba, with a notice pinned to her gate asking the media to leave her alone. One reporter, Fred Bridgland, eventually penetrated her defenses and found her fuming gently at the manner in which her ex-husband’s release was being compared to the second coming of Christ.

  “It’s very silly when people say this kind of thing about Nelson. How can a man who has committed adultery and left his wife and children be Christ? The whole world worships Nelson too much. He is only a man.”

  As has become clear in the writing of this book, Evelyn’s bitterness had been simmering for many years. She felt ill treated and abandoned but even in spite of all the years of perceived neglect, it was not hard for her to conjure her feelings of thirty-six years earlier when she met this handsome, charming man who made her laugh, who flirted and said he would come to see her at the hospital. He had kept his word and they quickly became lovers.

  “I thought he was beautiful.”

  Of course, the young couple had little money and Mandela must have been under increasing pressure as he tried to work and study, while supporting his new wife, with children soon to come. Evelyn said that from the start they had “many,
many problems and most important was the house problem. There was literally not a house, nor a room to be rented within reasonable distance of my work and Nelson’s.” So they took a room with Evelyn’s other surviving sibling, her sister Kate, whose husband was a clerk at City Deep Mines. Kate stayed at home looking after her own two children. The newlyweds did not have to pay board and lodging, but simply shared what they had, which wasn’t much, with Mandela only working part-time and Evelyn still only bringing in a few pounds a month from her nursing.

  Yet they were happy together, she said, and they were both excited when she became pregnant. Mandela had arranged for her to be admitted to Bertram’s Nursing Home and his joy was there for all to see when their first child, a boy, Thembekile, was born on February 23, 1946. Mandela came to see her loaded with nighties and baby clothes and, when she brought Thembi home, there waiting for them was a beautiful cot that he had bought.

  The arrival of Thembi must have entitled the family to their own place as they were now allocated a two-roomed house in Orlando East where they lived for a few months before moving to 8115 Orlando West at a monthly rent of 17s 6d in or around early 1947.

  It is not clear exactly when Mandela first moved into number 8115 but it was certainly at least a decade before Winnie joined him there in June 1958. There would have been documentation recording his lease and rental payments, but all the paperwork was stored at the West Rand Administration Board and that burned down in the mid-1970s.

  Mandela has said he moved there as a young married man with a child in 1946 but his first wife, Evelyn, told Fatima Meer that they moved there in early 1947, which seems the more likely date.

  One possible clue is a surviving file of correspondence relating to an application that Mandela made at this time for a loan from the Bantu Welfare Trust. He wrote to them on December 30, 1946, using a PO box number as his reply address. He wrote again on May 28, 1947, this time from 8115 Orlando West. It therefore seems likely he moved to the house in between those dates.

  Number 8115 was the place of Mandela’s dreams, often referred to by him later in letters from prison, as in this evocative letter to his daughters Zindzi and Zenani in 1969, written to support them after their mother Winnie had been arrested:

  It may be many months or years before you see her again. For long you may live like orphans without your own home and parents, without the natural love, affection and protection Mummy used to give you. Now you will get no birthday or Christmas parties, no presents, no new dresses, no shoes or toys. Gone are the days when, after having a warm bath in the evening, you would sit at table with Mummy and enjoy her good and simple food. Gone are the comfortable beds, the warm blankets and clean linen she used to provide.

  She will not be there for friends to take you to bioscopes, concerts and plays, or to tell you nice stories in the evening, help you read difficult books and to answer the many questions you would like to ask. She will be unable to give you the help and guidance you need as you grow older and as new problems arise.

  Perhaps never again will Mummy and Daddy join you in House no. 8115 Orlando West, the one place in the whole world that is so dear to our hearts.

  In his memoir he suggested the modest scale of his dreams: number 8115 might not have been much, but it was his. In fact it was not even his, but was rented:

  The house itself was identical to hundreds of others built on postage-stamp sized plots on dirt roads. It had the same standard tin roof, the same cement floor, a narrow kitchen and a bucket toilet at the back. Although there were street lamps outside we used paraffin lamps as the homes were not yet electrified. The bedroom was so small that a double bed took up almost the entire floor space.

  It was the opposite of grand but it was my first true home of my own and I was mightily proud. A man is not a man until he has a house of his own.

  The name Soweto (an acronym based on the first syllable in each of the three words in South-Western Townships), where the Mandelas and Sisulus lived, was not officially adopted until 1963 as the collective name for the locations that had been established on land inconveniently positioned on former farms some distance beyond the southwestern edges of Johannesburg and conveniently—for whites who didn’t have to look at it—hidden from the city by mining mounds.

  The city did not want black people living in the inner urban areas such as Sophiatown and hoped eventually to forcibly remove them to the outer locations. The original settlements had sprung up to accommodate the Africans who had flocked to the city during the gold rush, both as miners and as general workers: domestics, flat boys, houseboys and so on. Assemblies of shacks and tents had gradually been transformed into thriving slums, continuously swelled by new arrivals. At the turn of the century all the races had been thrown in together, but with the advent of segregation, black people began to be shipped out to Klipsruit, the first of the southwestern locations next to, if not quite on top of, a sewage farm.

  Orlando—named for the then chairman of the Native Affairs Committee, Councilor Edwin Orlando Leake—was first envisaged in the early 1930s as the “biggest and finest township in the Union of South Africa.” The first homes were basic constructions with a bucket for a toilet and soon became known as “matchbox houses,” but that did not stop the city council from marketing Orlando East with photographs captioned, “Happy township residents.”

  During the Second World War there was a new wave of arrivals in Johannesburg from the rural areas and Orlando East struggled to cope with the increased overcrowding. There was conflict between the newcomers, many of whom had nowhere to sleep, and the older residents. A campaign arose for new land and housing, led by the so-called horseback “messiah” of Soweto, James Mpanza. On March 20, 1944, he led a famous march on his horse from Orlando East across the river to Orlando West, where he set up a squatter camp with shacks made from sacking material called masakeng, which gave the camp its name, Shantytown Masakeng. Mpanza controlled the camp and collected rents.

  The city council responded by offering shacks of its own at cheaper rates. But by 1942 only 750 houses had been built there and thousands more were needed. Indeed, part of the problem to begin with had been the slow pace of progress at its proposed development of Orlando West

  Number 8115 was part of an accelerated building program of 2,350 new homes that began in 1944. The first fifty were handed over the following year to selected tenants from Orlando East, Shantytown and elsewhere. The work continued in the shadow of threats by impatient squatters to take over the properties. At one stage some half-built homes were invaded by several hundred families and building work ground to a halt.

  The tender was very specific that the newly built homes should be “sub-economic in character” with a maximum shelf-life of around forty years. They were three-roomed and four-roomed properties within a single-story rectangular design and would include provision for

  cooking (coal or wood burning stoves only); food storage; sanitary requirements (water-borne sewage will not be available for a considerable period. Competitors are asked to include in their plans a future WC to each house); ablutionary requirements (facilities provided should be of a character most suited to low-cost installation and maintenance).

  Stoeps or porches may be included at the [tender] competitor’s discretion but the economic factor must here, as elsewhere, be constantly borne in mind. No electrical work to be allowed for, either in the plans or the estimate of cost.

  The city council tried to get the properties occupied as soon as they were ready, which suggests that the three-roomed corner site at Stand 8115 must have been finished and ready at the end of 1946.

  In later years, as the various locations became established, residents would dub them with names that parodied posh white areas. Beverly Hills was one, while Mandela’s corner of Orlando West became known as Westcliff, after the area in Johannesburg overlooking Zoo Lake. Archbishop Desmond Tutu moved in down the road.

  The Mandelas had a second child in 1947 and named her Makaz
iwe, a Xhosa name that means “She Must Be Known.” She was ill from birth and never recovered, dying after nine months in 1948. Mandela does not give her illness a diagnosis in his memoir but Evelyn has said the cause of death was meningitis. Her grave at the family burial site in Qunu has this inscription: “From the scented garden of his earthly creations, God plucked the sweetest blossom from his heavenly abode.”

  After the sudden death of Thembi in a car crash, in 1969, at the age of twenty-three, Mandela must have thought back to the first Makaziwe and wrote that he ought to have been better prepared, for Thembi was not the first child he had lost:

  Way back in the 1940s I lost a nine months baby girl. She had been hospitalized and had been making good progress when suddenly her condition took a grave turn and she died. I managed to see her during the critical moments when she was struggling desperately to hold within her body the last sparks of life which were flickering away. I have never known whether I was fortunate to witness that grievous scene. It haunted me for many days thereafter and still provokes painful memories right up to the present day, but it should have hardened me for similar catastrophes.

  One wonders, too, at the effect, on both Evelyn and their relationship, of such a difficult loss, during a period when their lives were already encircled by hardship. Mandela said his wife was distraught. He had outlined something of the state of his affairs in his application to the Bantu Welfare Trust in December 1946, in which, with exaggerated formality, he had stated how pleased he would be if they would kindly consider his application for a loan of £250.