With regard to the matter of Mandela vs Mandela, there is a degree of angst being suffered by some of our colleagues in the press: anxious hand-wringing over the question as to whether the media had the “right” to stick its collective nose into the matrimonial affairs of the president. Press freedom is very well, goes the refrain, but what about the right to privacy ?
Clearly the rights to privacy and freedom of information, like all competing rights, require a balance. But the Mandela divorce case demonstrates precisely why, in the case of public figures — and, in particular, politicians — the balance needs be weighted heavily in favour of freedom of information.
Most obviously the case was a test of the character of two public representatives. It might be argued that they were not in need of testing — that the relative merits of the couple were already well-known — but that goes to the particular and not the principle. If the re-election of Winnie Madizikela- Mandela (as she now wants to be known) to head the African National Congress Women’s League is any indication, there are, anyway, many in this country who need their noses rubbed in the obvious.
Even if Madizikela-Mandela were not a public representative in her own right she was, after all, Caesar’s wife; having failed to show herself beyond reproach, it would have been fitting that the public, as well as the courts and her husband, should have had an opportunity to lay judgment upon her.
As an added bonus the public ventilation of the case also provided the nation with a lesson in civics. Madizikela-Mandela’s attempt to introduce Kaiser Matanzima into the proceedings raised the relationship between tribal custom and the laws of a modern, industrial state. The president’s response was a salutary one: tradition is all very well, but life must go on. Her attempt to introduce Paul Erasmus and “Stratcom” raised a familiar refrain: that all our difficulties are to be blamed on apartheid. The president put it in perspective: apartheid has much to account for, but we can still be authors of our own woes.
The president may consider the divorce one of the low points in his private life. We would assure him that it was one of his most noble performances in public life. We have much to be thankful for in Nelson Mandela. To the litany of national indebtedness we can now add a fine precedent where press freedom is concerned.