It was during a visit to Kenya to attend a meeting on the Great Lake crisis earlier this year that President Nelson Mandela came across a portrait of himself that was to win him over.
The portrait that captured Mandela’s attention was painted by Joakim Onyango Ndalo, a self-taught artist whose works are well-known across East Africa. Ndalo paints hyper-realistic pictures and has become particularly renowned for his large-scale portraits, often of international political leaders.
According to those present, it didn’t take Mandela more than a brief moment to recognise the artist’s talent. His visible enthusiasm for the work reportedly surprised even his host, Kenya’s Vice- President George Saitoti, who was seeing Mandela off at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi.
So enthused was Mandela that he instructed his high commissioner in Nairobi to ensure that the portrait be bought (at not inconsiderable cost) and loaded in the presidential jet before take-off. So the portrait was fetched from a delighted Ndalo and brought directly to the airport. But a problem soon arose: Ndalo’s paintings are so large that the portrait couldn’t fit in the cargo hold of the jet. Special arrangements had to be made for it to be transported to Cape Town on a separate cargo plane.
After Mandela had left Kenya, Professor Saitoti officially commended Ndalo for having made his visitor so happy.
A standard eight school dropout, Ndalo always planned to become a painter. But before his career could take off, he became a victim of Idi Amin, the deposed Ugandan dictator. As a young man he was taken prisoner by one of Amin’s Nubian officers and forced to train his workers in painting and shoe design.
“Whenever I asked the soldier to release me so that I could return to Kenya, he refused,” says Ndalo today. Just as he was planning to escape the work camp, he was arrested by Amin’s soldiers, allegedly for having acquired independent wealth from his paintings, and transferred from one prison to another.
He was eventually only released due to the intervention of Bishop Kiwanuka of the Legio Maria Africa Church, of which Ndalo was a member.
He immediately returned to Kenya, where his reputation as a painter of influential leaders and public servants continues to grow. Some of the powerful men who have commissioned portraits from Ndalo include Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni, Kenya’s President Daniel arap Moi and almost all of his top officials in cabinet.
When I met him he was busy painting portraits of former British prime minister John Major, of United States President Bill Clinton and a new one of Mandela. He says that he has always admired Mandela and that he hopes to visit South Africa one day.