The Mandela daughters have sided firmly with their mother after her sacking, writes Justin Pearce
Winnie Mandela may have suffered the most devastating defeat of her political career this week. Yet she has won the battle for the loyalty of the Mandela children, leaving her estranged husband — one of the world’s best-loved national leaders — a lonely man.
The clinical letter addressed to “Mrs Mandela” which terminated Winnie Mandela’s position in government marks a new low in relations between President Nelson Mandela and his estranged wife — and the signs are that his daughters have shunned him too.
Sources close to Winnie Mandela say that her daughters, Zindzi Mandela-Hlongwane and Zenani Dhlamini, have effectively cut themselves off from their father, confirming the suspicions which arose when neither daughter chose to accompany the president when he hosted Queen Elizabeth during her state visit to South Africa last week.
The presence of Rochelle Mtirara as Mandela’s consort has been explained in terms of their distant ties of kinship, but this does not disguise the fact that not one of his three daughters (his oldest daughter, Makaziwe, is from his first marriage) chose to make herself available.
“It’s no coincidence,” said a source close to Mrs Mandela. Ever since the bungled police raid on Mrs Mandela’s home three weeks ago, her daughters have stood firmly in support of their mother.
Nelson Mandela’s long period of imprisonment virtually ruled out the possibility of a close relationship with his younger daughters. Zenani was five and Zindzi three when he was incarcerated in 1963, and he was unable to see them again until they were almost adults. In such circumstances it was inevitable that the daughters’ first loyalty would be to their mother.
Still, it would take more than their parents’ separation to split them from their father, and Dhlamini stood at the president’s side during the inauguration last year.
But she declined to repeat the performance for the royal visit, suggesting that relations have deteriorated badly since then. Recently, Mandela- Hlongwane gave a remarkably frank magazine interview detailing the remoteness of her father during her upbringing. The feeling in the Winnie Mandela camp is that the daughters cannot countenance what they see as unacceptable treatment endured by their mother in the weeks leading up to her dismissal.
Nelson Mandela’s autobiography provides some telling clues to the nature of his relationship with Winnie Mandela and her daughters. For 21 years, all his conversations with his wife took place through a glass screen. For two years in the 1960s, the couple was denied a meeting altogether.
Their relationship was sustained by the photographs which Nelson Mandela cherished, and the letters which, more often than not, arrived shredded by the prison censors. Nelson Mandela writes in his autobiography about one such letter which was inspired by a plant which withered and died in the garden that he cultivated on Robben Island: “I did not want our relationship to go the way of that plant, and yet I felt I had been unable to nourish many of the most important relationships in my life. Sometimes there is nothing one can do to save something that must die.”
His delight in his family together with his sense of distance from them is poignantly expressed in his account of his first meeting with his daughter Zindzi since her infancy: “I was delighted to behold what a beautiful woman my youngest daughter had become and how closely she resembled her equally beautiful mother.
“Zindzi was shy and hesitant at first. I am sure it was not easy for her finally to see a father she had never really known, a father who could love her only from a distance, who seemed to belong not to her but to the
Mandela’s unconditional loyalty to his wife and daughters, born of their artificial relationship during the prison years, continued for the first few years after his release. He took a considerable political risk in standing by Winnie Mandela during her trial on charges of kidnapping in 1991. Even after her conviction, Mandela wrote that “as far as I was concerned, verdict or no verdict, her innocence was not in doubt”.
Yet such unstinting loyalty could not weather the political realities which were driving the couple further apart, culminating in the announcement of their separation in 1992.
The president also does not enjoy a close relationship with Makgatho and Makaziwe, the children of his first wife, Evelyn, from whom he separated in 1955. The reasons for the separation are emblematic of the way in which the struggle has always come between Mandela and a happy personal life.
‘She gave me an ultimatum,” Mandela writes. “I had to choose between her and the ANC.”
In the same chapter Mandela admits that Makgatho and Makaziwe were traumatised by this split. One source close to the family suggested that these older children, now in their forties and established in successful careers, have had difficulty dealing with the paternalistic attitude which their father finds hard to avoid.
“When your life is the struggle, as mine was, there is little room left for family,” Mandela writes in his autobiography. “That has always been my greatest regret, and the most painful aspect of the choice I
It is only with the struggle behind him that Mandela now faces the full consequences of that choice.
‘You’ve downed a democrat, Mr President’
Alan Reynolds, Winnie Mandela’s private secretary, takes issue over her dismissal
President Nelson Mandela’s dismissal of his wife from her government post this week gives no indication of the reasoning behind his action. He has not met her personally in the matter, and so we do not even privately have his reasons for his action. Accordingly, we must presume that he dismissed her because of her trip to West Africa in February.
Ultimately, that trip involved meetings with four heads of state of African countries, with 11 African ministers of culture, and was undertaken entirely in the interests of South Africa and its developing relations with West Africa.
Although there have been attempts to trivialise the trip as a “jaunt”, there never was any question but that Mrs Mandela undertook the trip as business of state. She was invited to Burkina Faso in her capacity as Deputy Minister of Arts and Culture, by the Minister of Culture of Burkina Faso. She accepted the invitation only after seeking the advice of our Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which “strongly recommended” that she undertake the trip for the purposes of improving bilateral relations with Burkina Faso.
Once these details had been finalised, permission for the trip was sought from the president, and received in a letter from his office dated February 15 1995. On receipt of this, the final confirmations for the visit were made with the host governments.
On learning on February 20 through the deputy president’s office that the president had changed his mind and no longer wished her to travel, Mrs Mandela wrote him a detailed letter explaining exactly why the visit was important, and pointed out that it would cause great offence if appointments of this nature were suddenly cancelled. She also requested a personal appointment with the president on her return.
She further consulted with the chief whip of the ANC, Reverend Arnold Stofile, who pointed out the ANC had a very bad reputation for missing appointments, and that in the light of this it would be bad for the image of the ANC if she suddenly cancelled a trip involving foreign heads of state.
The president’s office had not responded to her letter by the time Mrs Mandela departed on her international flight to West Africa on February 23, and she left under the impression that her explanation had been accepted. There was never any attempt or intention on her part to defy the president in the matter and, if he is at all reasonable, he must understand that. If there is any blame to be apportioned, it rests firmly with the failure of his own office to respond timeously to an urgent communication from a deputy minister.
The reason given for the decision by the president to withdraw his approval for the trip was that “urgent discussions must take place to address issues that have been raised publicly bearing on the conduct of ministers and deputy ministers”. If the president was referring to the resignation of 11 members of the ANC Women’s League, I regard that reason as being of the most dubious authenticity — Deputy President Thabo Mbeki had been deputised to deal with the Women’s League matter, and Mbeki was out of the country at that time. There was thus no prospect of any meeting in this matter being successfully convened. In addition, President Mandela had been informed that the league itself had set up a conference to resolve the league issues, and that conference was scheduled for March 25 and 26.
As to the other possible reasons, I do not think that morality is the issue, because it is a matter of public record that the benches of Parliament are not occupied exclusively by people of uniformly high moral calibre and President Mandela knows that. There are many people in Parliament, and in the Cabinet, against whom far worse allegations are made than those being made against Mrs Mandela.
And I do not think that “obedience” is the issue because, apart from the fact that Mrs Mandela was not “disobedient”, there have been some other examples of “disobedience” by ministers which have not been punished by dismissal.
As to criticism of the government, that is a healthy and vital part of democracy, or is this perhaps not a democracy? And why is it only when Mrs Mandela criticises the government that there is reaction, and not when other members of the government do so?
And I certainly do not think that “good government” was a concern, because if it was, the president would have agreed that a state visit by one of his deputy ministers was of far greater importance to good government than a fracas in the Women’s League, for which resolution mechanisms had already been