Conversations with Myself

by Nelson Mandela

  3. FROM HIS UNPUBLISHED AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MANUSCRIPT WRITTEN IN PRISON

  A warm friendship developed between me and Lazar Sidelsky and the numerous acts of kindness and assistance he gave me on all sorts of problems would fill a whole chapter.2 A very special friend was John Mngoma, an orator and well versed in Zulu history. I would listen to him for hours relating interesting episodes from our past…As a result of these and other contacts I made during my early days in Johannesburg, I developed some inner strength and soon forgot about my difficulties and my poverty and suffering, my loneliness and frustrations. These connections gave me the confidence that I could stand on my own feet, enjoy the goodwill and support of worthy men and women I had not previously known and to whom I could turn in case of need. And now I had a home of my own choice far away from my birthplace and had made progress, however little, mainly through my own initiative and resources. I have a special attachment to the people who befriended me during times of distress. A feature of many of these friendships is that they were built around families rather than individuals, and they have scarcely been affected by the death of those members through whom they were founded.

  4. CONVERSATION WITH RICHARD STENGEL

  MANDELA: But there is a fellow I became friendly with at Healdtown, and that friendship bore fruit when I reached Johannesburg. A chap called Zachariah Molete. He was in charge of sour milk in Healdtown, and if you are friendly to him, he would give you very thick sour milk…When I arrived in Johannesburg in the early forties, I stayed in…Alexandra township, and I became a close friend of his, because his father had…a grocery shop, and he was the chief steward of the Wesleyan Church and he looked after me, because I was struggling, made sure I got some groceries. [On] one particular occasion he came to me and said, ‘Look, you must be very careful at night because there is a gang which they call the Thutha Ranch.’ Now ‘thutha’ means collecting and taking away. They were such gangsters, such thieves, that when they raided your house they would remove everything – they got the name from there. And he says, ‘They are operating in your area here.’ Now I was staying…in a single room, and one night I woke up because there [was] noise of people walking outside, and I listened to this and I remembered what Zachariah had told me. And then there was an argument and the argument was clear. One chap says, ‘No, let’s get in, let’s go in’ and another one says, ‘No, man, this chap has no money, he has nothing, he’s a student.’ Then they argued…but the other chap was tough. He said, ‘Leave the student alone, man, leave him alone’…But apparently the chap who was insisting got so frustrated, so annoyed, that he kicked the door – it was a poor door you see and the bolt, you know, just snapped. But they didn’t enter; they passed.

  STENGEL: That was your door that he kicked?

  MANDELA: My door, yes. And I got such a shock, such a shock, but they passed; they didn’t enter…I changed my bed and I put it across the door there, you know, because it was the only way of closing the door and keeping it in place. That’s how I slept. And I was very grateful because…whoever it was…who saved me from being robbed, one of them was kind enough, you know, to say, ‘No, don’t do that.’

  5. FROM A LETTER TO ZINDZI MANDELA, DATED 9 DECEMBER 1979, WHICH WAS CONFISCATED BY PRISON CENSORS BECAUSE HE DIDN’T ‘HAVE PERMISSION’ TO INCLUDE IT IN HER CHRISTMAS CARD THAT YEAR

  I sometimes wonder what happened to our boxing gym at what used to be called St Joseph’s in Orlando East. The walls of that school and of the DOCC [Donaldson Orlando Community Centre] are drenched with sweet memories that will delight me for yrs [years]. When we trained at the DOCC in the early [19]50s the club included amateur and professional boxers as well as wrestlers. The club was managed by Johannes (Skip Adonis) Molosi, a former champ and a capable trainer who knew the history, theory and practical side of the game.3

  Unfortunately, in the mid-50s he began neglecting his duties and would stay away from the gym for long periods.

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  From a letter to Zindzi Mandela, dated 9 December 1979. The letter was discovered in 2010 in the South African National Archives with a handwritten note in Afrikaans by a prison censor which read: ‘The attached piece that prisoner Mandela included with his Christmas card will not be sent. The card will be sent. The prisoner has not been informed that this piece has been rejected. He does not have permission to include it with the card. I discussed this on 20 December 1979 with Brigadier du Plesssis and he agrees with the decision. Keep it in his file.’

  Because of this, the boxers revolted. Twice I settled the matter, but when Skip failed to pay heed to repeated protests from the boxers, things reached breaking point. This time I was totally unable to reconcile the parties. The boxers left the DOCC and opened their own gym at St Joseph’s. Thembi and I went along with them. Simon Tshabalala, who is now abroad, became the manager, and the star boxer was, of course, still Jerry (Uyinja) Moloi who later became the Tvl [Transvaal] lightweight champ and leading contender for the national title. Apart from Jerry we produced 3 other champs: Eric (Black Material) Ntsele who won the national bantamweight from Leslie Tangee, Freddie (Tomahawk) Ngidi who became Tvl flyweight champ, a title which was later held by one of our gym mates, Johannes Mokotedi. There were other good prospects like Peter, the flyweight, who built our garage at home. He hailed from Bloemfontein and was a student at the Vacation School in Dube. Thembi himself was a good boxer and on occasions I sat until very late at night waiting for him to return from a tournament in Randfontein, Vereeniging or other centres. I and my gym mates were a closely knit family and when Mum [Winnie] came into the picture that family became even more intimate. Jerry and Eric even drove Mum around when I could not do so and the entire gym turned up at our engagement party.

  By the way, Freddie worked for our firm as a clerk. He was quiet and reliable and the entire staff was fond of him. But on one Xmas eve I returned to the office and who did I find lying flat and helpless in the passage just outside the general office? Freddie. His appearance so shocked me that I rushed him to a doctor. The quack gave him one quick look and assured me that the champ was OK but that he needed more sleep. He had succumbed to the usual Xmas sprees and over-indulged himself. I drove him to his home at OE [Orlando East] quite relieved. Incidentally, I should have told you that during the dispute at the DOCC Skip accused Jerry of stabbing him in the back just as Mark Antony betrayed his friend Caesar. Thembi asked who Antony and Caesar were. At the time Thembi was only 9. Skip explained, ‘Don’t tell us about people who are dead.’ If I had not been there Skip would have pulled out the child’s bowels, so furious he was. He bitterly complained to me about what he considered to be discourtesy on the part of the boy. I reminded him that in my house I was the patriarch and ruled over the household. But that I had no such powers in the gym; that Thembi had paid membership fees, we were perfect equals and I could give him no instructions.

  We would spend about 11/2 hrs in the gym and I was at home about 9 pm. Tired with hardly a drop of water in my body. Mum would give me a glass of fresh and cold orange juice, supper served with well-prepared sour milk. Mum was glow[ing] with good health and happiness those dys [days]. The house was like a beehive with the family, old school friends, fellow workers from Bara [Baragwanath Hospital],4 members of the gym and even clients calling at the house to chat with her. For more than 2 yrs she and I literally lived on honeymoon. I quietly resisted my activity that kept me away from home after office hrs [hours]. Yet she and I kept warning each other that we were living on borrowed time, that hard times would soon knock at the door. But we were having a great time with good friends and we did not have much time for self-pity. It is more than 2 decades since then, yet I recall those dys so clearly as if everything happened yesterday.

  6. CONVERSATION WITH RICHARD STENGEL

  STENGEL: During this time there was quite a lot of socializing, wasn’t there? You mentioned before, when you first came to Johannesb
urg, you were taken to parties, Communist Party parties, and you met Michael Harmel,5 and there’s been a lot written about the mixing, in a social way, that was going on with Joe Slovo and Ruth First…6

  MANDELA: No actually, it was not something extraordinary; just like anything that was happening in this country both amongst whites and blacks. The only difference is that here you had blacks and whites together.

  STENGEL: But that was extraordinary, wasn’t it?

  MANDELA:…That mixing was extraordinary, but the parties themselves were something that were very frequent in the country. Yes, it was not something novel. And it didn’t happen with such regularity. The point was that these groups were also used, certainly by the [Communist] Party, for the purpose of recruiting new members.

  STENGEL: I see…at least among whites, didn’t they feel that they were doing something that was very daring and exciting by having mixed parties like that?

  MANDELA: No, no, no, I don’t think so. Here were whites who were bred in the democratic tradition, in the proper sense of the word, who had committed themselves to the struggle by the oppressed people and therefore they wanted moments of relaxation and invited Africans, blacks.

  STENGEL: And you would go to these parties?

  MANDELA: Oh yes, yes. I was not a frequent [party goer]. In fact, at one time Joe complained to Walter [Sisulu] that ‘Man, Nelson doesn’t like parties.’

  7. CONVERSATION WITH RICHARD STENGEL

  MANDELA: I was being introduced to various strands of thought in Johannesburg.

  STENGEL: And when you went to the meetings you would just sit and listen?

  MANDELA:…I never spoke. The only thing I took part in was debates – not in political meetings but just academic debates. For example, there would be a team from Bloemfontein to Johannesburg; I would be invited to lead a discussion from Johannesburg. That I participated in, but in meetings I never did, until I joined the [ANC] Youth League. Even then I was very nervous. I was really very nervous.

  STENGEL: Nervous why? Because it was a big step, or it was dangerous?

  MANDELA:…I didn’t know politics, you see? I was backward politically and I was dealing with chaps, you see, who knew politics, who could discuss what was happening in South Africa and outside South Africa. Chaps, some of whom had only Standard Four, academically very humble educational qualifications, but they knew far more than I did…At Fort Hare [University] I did two [BA] courses in History where I went into South African history very deeply and European history. But what Gaur Radebe knew was far more than I did because he learned not only just the facts;7 he was able to get behind the facts and explain to you the causes for a particular viewpoint. And I learned history afresh and I met a number of them. Of course people like Michael Harmel with MAs, you know, and Rusty Bernstein was [a] BA from Wits [University of the Witwatersrand], these chaps…were also very good in history and although I was not a [Communist] Party man, but …I listened to them very carefully.8 It was very interesting to listen to them.

  STENGEL: When you first went to the Communist Party meetings…you were very anti-communist then?

  MANDELA: Yes quite, oh yes, oh yes.

  STENGEL: So when you were going to the meetings it didn’t make you sympathetic to the Communist Party?…

  MANDELA: No, no, no, no, no, no. I was just going there because I was invited and I was keen to see. It was a new society where you found Europeans, Indians and Coloureds and Africans together. Something new to me. Which I had never known. And I was interested in that.

  STENGEL: You were interested in being a social observer more than you were interested in the politics.

  MANDELA: Oh, no, no, no. I was not interested really in the politics. I was interested, you see, yes, in the social aspect of it…I was impressed by the members of the Communist Party. To see whites who were totally divested of colour consciousness was something, you know, which…was a new experience to me.

  STENGEL: So did that feel liberating in a way? Was that intoxicating?

  MANDELA: No, it was interesting. I wouldn’t say it was liberating. And that is why I attacked the communists, you see, when I [became] involved politically. And I didn’t think it was liberating. I thought Marxism was something that actually was subjecting us to a foreign ideology.

  8. FROM A LETTER TO WINNIE MANDELA, DATED 20 JUNE 19709

  Indeed, ‘the chains of the body are often wings to the spirit’. It has been so all along, and so it will always be. Shakespeare in As You Like It puts the same idea somewhat differently:

  Sweet are the uses of adversity,

  Which like a toad, ugly and venomous,

  Wears yet a precious jewel in the head.10

  Still others have proclaimed that ‘only great aims can arouse great energies’.

  Yet my understanding of the real idea behind these simple words throughout the 26 years of my career of storms has been superficial, imperfect and perhaps a bit scholastic. There is a stage in the life of every social reformer when he will thunder on platforms primarily to relieve himself of the scraps of undigested information that has accumulated in his head; an attempt to impress the crowds rather than to start a calm and simple exposition of principles and ideas whose universal truth is made evident by personal experience and deeper study. In this regard I am no exception and I have been victim of the weakness of my own generation not once but a hundred times. I must be frank and tell you that when I look back at some of my early writings and speeches I am appalled by their pedantry, artificiality and lack of originality. The urge to impress and advertise is clearly noticeable.

  9. FROM A CONVERSATION WITH RICHARD STENGEL ABOUT THE 1952 DEFIANCE CAMPAIGN AGAINST APARTHEID LAWS

  Well, I had been in prison before that, but for minor violations and where I was detained for about a day, not even a full day. I was detained in the morning and released in the afternoon…I was arrested there, not because I had defied, but because I had gone and urinated in a, what-you-call, whites’ toilet room, for whites only. Well we can say I went to wash my hands in a white lavatory and then they arrested me…[chuckles]. It was a mistake on my part; I didn’t read the sign. So then they arrested me, took me to a police station. But at the end of the day they released me. Now, but here were people who were going to jail because of a principle, because they were protesting against a law which they regarded as unjust. Students who were my colleagues left classes and went to defy for the love of their people and their country. That had a tremendous impact on me.

  10. FROM A CONVERSATION WITH RICHARD STENGEL

  [I don’t]…interfere in the affairs of others, unless I’m asked. Even when I’m asked, my own concern is always to bring people together. Even as a lawyer, when…a man or his wife comes to me to institute divorce action, I always say, ‘Have you done everything in your power to resolve this problem?’…Some people welcome that, and in fact I have saved marriages in that way. And then some people of course resent it. She comes to you because they have quarrelled…and she feels bitter, and when you say, ‘Can I call your husband?’ You see? Oh, she gets terribly agitated. And from that moment even when you go to court she does not even want you to look at her husband…You see she wants you to adopt exactly the same position which she adopts. It becomes very difficult. But the point is that I have always tried to bring people together, you know?…But I don’t always succeed.

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  From a letter to Winnie Mandela, dated 27 December 1984.

  11. FROM A LETTER TO WINNIE MANDELA, DATED 27 DECEMBER 1984, QUOTING FROM A LETTER TO K D MATANZIMA11

  It appears…that you and the Government intend that I and some of my colleagues should be released to Umtata.12 I perhaps need to remind you that when you first wanted to visit us in 1977 my colleagues and I decided that, because of your position in the implementation of the Bantustan Scheme, we could not concede to your request.13 Again in February this year when you wanted to co
me and discuss the question of our release, we reiterated our stand and your plan was not acceded to. In particular we pointed out that the idea of our release being linked to a Bantustan was totally and utterly unacceptable to us. While we appreciate your concern over the incarceration of political prisoners, we must point out that your persistence in linking our release with Bantustans, despite our clearly expressed opposition to the scheme, is highly disturbing, if not provocative, and we urge you not to continue pursuing a course which will inevitably result in an unpleasant confrontation between you and ourselves. We will, under no circumstances, accept being released to the Transkei or any other Bantustan. You know fully well that we have spent the latter part of our lives in prison exactly because we are opposed to the very idea of separate development, which makes us foreigners in our own country, and which enables the Government to perpetuate our oppression to this very day. We accordingly request you to desist from this explosive plan and we sincerely hope that this is the last time we will ever be pestered with it.

  12. CONVERSATION WITH RICHARD STENGEL

  Stengel: We left off last time talking about your trip in September 1955 when your bans expired,14 and you write quite a lot about it in your memoirs, in the manuscript, in great detail. Was the trip important to you because you felt like it was your last moment of freedom?