Justin Pearce
ALAN REYNOLDS looks worried. It’s Wednesday afternoon, and he’s just heard that a Johannesburg newspaper has run a headline announcing a meeting between Winnie Mandela and Thabo Mbeki. Neither he nor Mbeki’s office appears to know anything about the meeting — yet the calls are pouring in.
“One of those things,” he says resignedly. “Stuff like that will happen.”
No one envies Reynolds’ job right now. He is the de facto public relations officer for South Africa’s most talked-about deputy minister, Winnie Mandela, and he freely admits he would rather be on a beach than behind a desk.
Suntanned and casually dressed, Reynolds looks a misfit in the burnished corridors of 120 Plein Street. He recalls that his open-necked shirts prompted a veteran civil servant to remind him that his job carried a clothing allowance: “I went out and bought two new pairs of Levi’s.”
Before taking up his appointment with the ministry, Reynolds was a full-time gardener in Oudtshoorn: “I was deep in the throes of plotting a lavender hedge when I got a phone call offering me the job.”
Officially, his job is that of Mandela’s private secretary — “I thought I was just going to do typing” — but the work has ended up entailing a lot more than
“Quite apart from being the deputy minister, she is a kind of Elizabeth Taylor as well — she gets fan mail.”
Dealing with fan mail is one thing. But deputy ministers do not have the privilege of employing media liaison officers, which means that Reynolds has spent the past few weeks on the front line of South Africa’s hottest news story: the allegations of corruption and misconduct that have been piling up against Winnie
He feels though that being thrown in at the deep end may have had its advantages: “I’m not skilled in politics — which means that all I do is tell the truth. It’s not necessarily a bad position to be operating from.”
He speaks without a trace of smugness — and the fact that he can say something like that without blinking indicates a deep loyalty — even reverence — towards Mandela. While other ministerial staff will refer to their bosses as “the minister”, Reynolds almost invariably refers to Mandela simply as “she” — and you can almost hear a capital “S” on the pronoun.
At first sight the rapport between Alan Reynolds and Winnie Mandela seems incongruous — the fiery politician meets the laid-back beach bum — yet in another way it makes sense. Winnie Mandela has never been one for toeing party lines, and Reynolds too is anything but a political hack. He dabbled in politics as a student at the University of Natal “but I didn’t fit in well enough for all that”.
Not fitting in was evidently an experience that equipped him well to work for a deputy minister who has been reprimanded by the president for her criticism of government policy.
But it was at university that Reynolds met Professor Fatima Meer, a long-standing friend of the Mandelas. He accompanied Meer when she visited Winnie Mandela during her exile in Brandfort — and was immediately impressed by the fortitude which Mandela displayed in spite of the harrowing treatment she received from the state. It was an impression that lasted.
“She’s an incredibly brave person, but an incredibly gentle and kind person,” Reynolds insists. “She has been forced to fight, as one of the few people who would publicly support the ANC during its banning. And she has the strength to challenge even the new order when necessary.”
He is convinced that the recent media onslaught against Mandela is based on no more than rumour, and is ultimately the work of individuals who since before Nelson Mandela’s release from prison have been trying to destroy what political influence his wife holds.
This week’s news that police were unable to produce the affadavit which supposedly justified the raid on Mandela’s home provided only a qualified sense of
“I wish I could feel vindicated — but I feel absolute fury over what we’ve been through these past three
The fan mail addressed to Winnie Mandela is still stacked high in his tray. When the phone stops ringing, he hopes to get round to opening it.