What happens when we call Winnie and Nelson mother and father? Is it just an African custom governing relationships? Is it an expression of the intimacy of our relationships with them? What kinds of lines of enquiry does it support? What does it make impossible? These questions on the legacy of Winnie and Nelson should trouble us.
On the 30th of January, the Nelson Mandela Foundation hosted a thought-provoking closed dialogue with Jonny Steinberg, the author of Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of A Marriage, in conversation with writer Lwando Xaso and author Mathabo Tlali. The facilitator, the Foundation's Kneo Mokgopa, opened the conversation with an emotive poem that captured the essence of the story between these two figures, creating an intimate and vulnerable container for the discussion.
“I made it a whole day, still, no rain
still, I am without exit wound
& he will say Tonight, I want to take you
how the police do, unarmed & sudden
& tonight, when we dream, we dream of dancing
in a city slowly becoming ash.”
Danez Smith, Tonight in Oakland
When we call Winnie and Nelson the mother and father, we invite a set of complicated and contradictory ideas to govern our relationships with them. ‘Fatherness’ comes with a host of grammars, terms, and experiences. It invites deep love, familiarity, and ownership; it speaks to the duty of care fathers hold; and the responsibility of respect from the children. It also invites feelings of anger, dominance, and neglect. ‘Fatherness’ is attached to a whole host of traumas, especially in this country.
Steinberg’s book troubles this familial relationship we have with the two of them. The title of Jonny’s book is not “Mam’ Winnie and Tata Mandela.” By casting Winnie and Nelson as intimate characters in what reads like a novel, we are asked to look at aspects of Winnie and Nelson’s lives that demystify them as mother and father of the nation. They are not presented as impenetrable icons of history but as vulnerable, capricious, and flawed.
This presentation troubles many of us, especially concerning Winnie’s life. In the discussion, Lwando Xaso laments this discomfort of not wanting to know what the parents are up to, not wanting to see their self-ambition or their sins. But, when we do look at them, as Steinberg asks us to look at them, the damning thing is that we see ourselves in them, and all our failures. We see our own vulnerability, our own tendencies, and proclivities.
It is not uncommon to hate a father. To want nothing to do with a mother. And we see this in Nelson Mandela’s legacy a lot, the dismissal of his name, the vexation at the very thought of him - The rejection of Nelson Mandela as the father we knew as a saviour but could not liberate us.
But Jonny’s book does more than humanise Winnie and Nelson (to our relief or our dismay). In “Rescuing Nelson Mandela from Sainthood,” Sisonke Msimang delivers a powerful deconstruction of the ‘Mandela means forgiveness’ narrative that has surrounds his legacy. The forgiveness narrative, as opposed to a justice narrative, places Whiteness at the centre of the frame because it is overwhelmingly whiteness that is being forgiven. Only one person ever went to prison from the TRC, de Kok, otherwise, it was a theatre of our horrors and torments and a festival of forgiveness.
Jonny acknowledges the overwhelming production of Mandela-related materials and publications by White authors and researchers, and how the significant attention paid to Nelson Mandela has the ability to let Whiteness “off the hook” for colonialism and Apartheid because Nelson forgave them - and forgave them on all our behalves. This usefulness of the “Forgiver-In-Chief” is not lost on Jonny. This book does not fall into that pitfall, even as he fails to participate in African customs governing relationships with elders. Winnie and Nelson complicates the forgiveness narrative by demonstrating the inextricable links the lovers had.
“Those who want to cast Mandela as a saint find it difficult to reconcile the fact that Mandela loved Winnie because she was implicated in violence and corruption and all the issues that are the opposite of what Mandela stands for.” Sisonke
Winnie and Nelson reminds us of the strain of this relationship, the political implications of this strain, and what it means for them to be yoked together in this way. How their marriage legitimised their roles in society to remarkable success. But, also, how this relationship presents a microcosm of our broader society. It is a charming picture, if not very pretty.