Nelson Mandela arrives in London today for what is likely to be his last major
public appearance; a 90th birthday charity concert in Hyde Park, starring
Amy Winehouse, Annie Lennox and Razorlight. As with most events in his life,
Mandela's farewell will be acted out on a global stage, but the purpose of
the event - to raise money for Mandela's Aids charity 46664 - is intensely
personal. For a man accustomed to sharing himself with the world, family
tragedies have sometimes proved just too painful. No one knows this better
than Maki Mandela, his eldest surviving child. “My father had a lot of pain
in his life. He has lost three children, and both of his sons. He is very
aware that there is no one to carry on the name in the traditional sense.”
Maki, 54, who lives in Johannesburg, once claimed that her father “wanted us
to be like the Kennedys”, but now denies a comparison that has unhappy
parallels. Mandela wrote about the death of his first son, Thembi, who was
killed in a car accident while he was still incarcerated on Robben Island.
But the loss of his second son, Makgatho, is something he finds harder to
discuss. “He doesn't like to talk about it,” says Maki, speaking in a rare
interview last week. “When people used to mention my brother's name [my
father] would walk away.”
Makgatho, an attorney like his father, died in 2005 of Aids. “When he was in
the hospital my father visited him three times a day,” says Maki. “To lose a
child is the worst thing in the world, and to see your child waning in front
of your eyes like that is unimaginable.” The family were always clear that
they wanted to break the taboo that surrounds HIV and Aids in South Africa,
she adds. “We were never embarrassed about it. Aids is a disease like any
other disease. There is a stigma about talking about it because it is
transmitted through sex. But my attitude is that we all engage in it, we are
all at risk and we all have to talk about it.” Nelson Mandela is, she
admits, a man who has found such discussions difficult, but necessary. The
most significant criticism of his presidency was his slowness in confronting
an Aids crisis that now affects a quarter of South Africans. But it was a
mistake that he admitted, and rectified, by speaking publicly about his
family's loss, and criticising the ANC Government's controversial stance on
the causes of HIV, and the delayed distribution of life-saving
antiretroviral drugs.
“My father is very, traditional, very conservative when it comes to family,”
says Maki. As a retired elder statesman, “he is in his element sitting with
his grandchildren, telling stories about his parents and Qunu, where he grew
up”. That time with him, and those stories, is a luxury that Maki never had.
“I was 6 or 7 when he went into hiding. Then I went to boarding school. Then
he went to prison. As a child, you always want your father to be there
through your trials and tribulations. I used to be very resentful that he
wasn't there.”
As one of the four children of Mandela and his first wife, Evelyn (who died in
2004), Maki has often been described as having had a difficult relationship
with her father. “Don't make me regret I am here,” Mandela once wrote to her
from prison. “What I need to do is worthwhile, not only for you and for the
family, but for all black people.” After his release Mandela confided to
friends that when he tried to hug her, she flinched. “He was a father to the
world, but he was not my father,” says Maki.
Relations were strained between Mandela and his eldest children after his
divorce from their mother and remarriage to Winnie. “We were at war with
Winnie,” Maki has said. “My mother was the one who contributed to my father
becoming a lawyer. She kept the home fires burning. She even paid his school
fees. She raised all of us and the grandchildren, too.”
Evelyn was a quiet woman who preferred to stay out of the limelight, but
continued to remind her children that their father loved them. “She would
tell us that when we were babies, and were crying, he would say to her You
sleep, I'll look after them'. And he would stay up with us and change our
nappies. There was a good side, and there were good times between them. He
wasn't just a strict disciplinarian.”
She pauses: “Though he is a disciplinarian. He's a little better now, but in
the old days he would go on and on about our education. He was determined
that I would go on to study more.” Maki, now 54, eventually got a PhD in
anthropology from the University of Massachusetts and held senior positions
in academia before becoming a businesswoman.
“He wishes he could have been a traditional father,” she says. “He says he
wishes he could have taught us how to handle our money better,” she cackles.
“Since he came out of prison we have never been given the chance to get to
know each other. But as his daughter I'm learning to treasure the moments.
He was in prison for 27 years and is very introspective, but thosemoments
when they come, are like a cloudburst. Those are the moments when he's
happy.”
Old friends have commented on his introspective side. “When he was released
from prison he would come for his lunch and would be very relaxed, but a
side of him was somewhere else, thinking about other things,” says one,
Amina Cachalia. “He had forgotten how to be with people. He talked to me as
if I were a prison warder.”
The transition to freedom, and breakdown of his marriage to Winnie, was not a
happy time, Cachalia adds. “He used to tell Winnie, ‘I wish I'd married
Amina; look at how she looks after me'.” He was joking, she says, as they
were never more than friends, but she believes that it reflected the
coldness that had come to characterise his marriage.
Mandela's third marriage, in 1999, to Graça Machel is judged to have brought
the family together and ushered in a more harmonious period in his personal
life. “He comes into the office almost every day that he is in Johannesburg
and works for about three hours,” says Achmat Dangor, who runs the Nelson
Mandela Foundation. “He no longer gets up at 6am; he wakes up when he feels
like it.” He still takes walks, reads newspapers, enjoys a massage and
watches a large TV in his bedroom. When political comrades come round for
advice he tells them to a take a deep breath and think carefully before
acting. He is traditional, but also funny and irreverent. When the Queen
phones he has been known to call her Elizabeth. “Why not?” he teases shocked
guests. After all, he says, she calls him Nelson.
Above all, he remains shrewd and thoughtful - far from the image he has of a
benign grandfather. A masterful politician, he survived his years in power
with his reputation intact; his charities keep a vigilant eye on their
donors and commercial associations. Mandela still holds the moral high
ground: during the recent crisis over xenophobic attacks in South Africa,
his foundation took out a full-page advert telling the nation to “Stop the
madness”. But he is only a man, not a product that can save South Africa
from its worst impulses. “We can't bottle him like wine,” says Dangor. Even
so, few are ready for a postMandela future. Mamphela Ramphela, a long-time
activist, agrees: “We are not yet ready to let him go.”
Maki says his willingness to forgive, and be transformed, has helped her to
move on from her own anger. “As his child, I can say, I'm very proud of him.
He came to power in Africa and was able to leave that power behind him
easily. He's stubborn, but a great believer. His life has been a struggle,
but it's been a struggle of hope.”
Charity makes a drama out of a crisis
“We were so focused on the transition to democracy, so aware of the need for
reconciliation and rebuilding that no one realised that this illness was
silently weaving its way into the roots of our nation. Now it's the biggest
threat of all,” says Chantal Cuddumbey, of 46664, the African Aids charity
that takes its name from Nelson Mandela's old prison number.
Cuddumbey is helping to organise this week's Hyde Park concert to celebrate
Mandela's 90th birthday. She has also been raising money for a touring play
and community discussion programme about Aids. When I speak to her she is in
Tembisa, a township east of Johannesburg, watching the play being performed
for secondary schoolchildren. The play stresses the need for abstinence, but
in reality most of the young people in the audience are already sexually
active, and some watch with growing, pregnant, bulges under their school
blazers. The performance is followed by a Q&A session.
“Men with multiple sexual partners are a big issue, and there is a growing
problem of sugar daddies,” she says. An expanding middle class means that
more men can afford several girlfriends. “Men often pull up at school gates
in their BMWs and one of their teenage girlfriends hops in; half an hour
later she comes back. Sometimes the girls are encouraged by their mothers
because of the extra money.”
The programme also stresses the need for condoms. But in a country where at
least a quarter of the population has HIV, and there is huge incidence of
rape and sexual assault, it is an uphill struggle. Will the play and
discussion actually change any of these teenagers' behaviour? “Not everyone
will do what they say, but some will change,” says one girl.
The charity moves on to a large community forum in Lerome, near the Sun City
holiday resort. Under a large tent the entire local population has gathered.
Elderly women are watching the proceedings and knitting. Young men look
sharp in tracksuits, and chew toothpicks. Goats gambol past on the dusty
road outside. The scene is almost idyllic until the session's leader asks
those who have lost someone close to them through Aids to collect a stone
and lay on it on a rug at the front of the tent: “This is not a time for
fear, but a time to admit that we are lost.” Almost everyone collects a
stone.
The discussion moves on to the practical problems posed by a community that is
losing seven members a week to Aids, and has little space to bury any more.
South Africa has been crippled by a health crisis compounded by myriad
social and economic factors; and even working in partnership with other
larger agencies, 46664's resources are small.
“In theory it is now a disease you can live with,” says Cuddumbey, “but what
is the point of antiretroviral drugs if there is no clean drinking water to
take them with. Or if the clinic that supplies them is a hundred miles
away?” The charity aims to step up its work, and Cuddumbey looks to the
words of Mandela for inspiration: the only way is to go house to house
telling people to get tested and report the disease - or sign their own
death warrant. But it is hard to be optimistic in a country that is running
out of graves.
www.46664.com
