David Beresford
In the final adjournment on Tuesday in the case of Mandela vs Mandela — waiting for the Judge President of the Transvaal, Judge Frikkie Eloff, to deliver the by-now inevitable decree of divorce — the state president sat slumped in his chair, gazing into the middle distance.
Gone was his bonhomie with the press and his old-world gallantry with his beautiful junior counsel.
In the rare glimpse of misery on his unguarded face, it was possible to read the story of a family life gone wrong: the brutal break-up with his first wife; the loss of a beloved son in a car crash; the turbulent life of a fatherless Zinzi … and now Winnie.
“I have been fairly successful in putting on a mask behind which I have pined for the family, alone,” he once told Winnie in a letter from Robben Island.
At 3.15pm on Tuesday the stony-faced mask of dignity was back on. But as Judge Eloff pronounced the decree, one could sense that behind the mask he was mourning another loss, another defeat.
And yet, curiously, the divorce action represented yet another triumph in the life of Nelson Mandela. Because, behind the salacious detail of bedroom snubs, adultery and Winnie’s extravagance, the court heard a testament from the president which was reminiscent of the glorious “speech from the dock” at Rivonia.
Ishmael Semenya, counsel for Winne Madikizela- Mandela (as she now wishes to be known) faced an almost impossible task in his conduct of the defence and it was mirrored in the increasingly desperate smiles with which he met the president’s rejoinders to his questions.
Semenya’s task was to clear the way for two key witnesses underpinning the defence: the former security branch agent, Paul Erasmus, and Chief Kaiser Matanzima.
Erasmus was to give substance to that familiar refrain that apartheid was to blame — that dirty tricks operations by the top-secret police unit “Stratcom” had poisoned the well- spring of the marriage.
That established, Matanzima was to take the marital dispute out of the jurisdiction of the court into the realm of tribal “custom” in which the affairs of Thembu royalty were arbitrated and mediated by their peers.
Semenya battled to breach Mandela’s implacable refusal to give ground on either count. “Winnie underwent gross persecution, brutal treatment by the police,” conceded the president. But, he qualified: “There were many women in this country who suffered far more than she did,” citing Albertina Sisulu as an example.
Madikizela-Mandela’s counsel continued pressing the line of security police manipulation. “I have never been influenced by my enemies, by those … who sent me to jail for 27 years,” the president flared with exasperation.
Finally, he resorted to threat. Declaring there were “even more serious reasons why I left home”, he said: “I appeal to you not to put any questions which might compel me to reveal facts which might damage her image and bring pain to my children and grandchildren.”
Semenya had even more difficulty with Matanzima, Mandela bridling at every mention of the former homeland leader’s name. Denouncing the chief as a “collaborator” and a “liar”, Mandela said: “Nothing agitates me more than the attempt to bring Matanzima into these proceedings.”
The efforts by the defence to establish the superiority of tribal custom over civil law earned the court a lecture on the subject. “I respect custom. But I am not a tribalist. I fought as an African nationalist and I have no commitment to the custom of any particular tribe,” he told Judge Eloff.
As for the right of Tembu chiefs to interfere in a civil divorce suit: “This particular kind of custom I am not even aware of.”
It was hopeless and Semenya knew it. As he bowed his way out of the cross-examination — – “no further questions, my lord” — the case was already over. He had failed to challenge the adultery allegation and failed to establish the faintest prospect of reconciliation. The president had shut him out.
As Judge Eloff finished pronouncing the final decree and rose, Mandela the litigant stood with the rest of the courtroom in respect for the bench. Then Mandela, the president, barked an order to his aides who scurried across the courtroom to summon Semenya to his presence.
The diminutive lawyer hurried, wide-eyed to him. Mandela solemnly shook his hand and congratulated him on his conduct of the defence. The mask was in place. It was the closing scene of a truly presidential performance.