An Icon Has Left The Building
Mr Nelson Mandea is dead. His death created the expected mondial swirl of reaction for a number of weeks until his burial. But as the dust settles and being a magazine that celebrates the exceptional, it would be remiss of us not to mark our own line in the sand following the great man’s passing.
It’s hard to imagine that we will ever see the like again. Today is a different world to his early boxer years and one where politicians (and plenty of civvies) would never dream of discomforting themselves for a righteous cause, but would readily sell their grandma down the river for yet more position, money and power, or comment lazily on an important social issue from the anonymous comfort of Twitter.
Different
So he was different. Special. Braver than most of us.
We thrive on writing and interviewing those we consider rather special but even we got fed up of the obsequious canonising of a man who did not ask for either the suffering or the power or responsibility that was bestowed upon him by others. Needless to say his mark of greatness is that he rose to the occasion and met both victory and defeat with equal style and courage.
Tempering the fawning were the usual box of frogs naysaying his achievements,
‘He was a terrorist!’
‘He refused the peaceful solution offered to him.’
All so easily repeated from the comfort of a keyboard with Jeremy Kyle on in the background of course. How easy it is to dismiss the environment of poverty and inhuman violence Mandela and his ilk lived in as if he or the ANC chose to go out on a killing spree just for the sheer hell of it.
And then there is the reality of the fact that he was a man replete with failings which he readily admitted. Acknowledging this only serves to keep him human and pass on the concept that greatness lies in everybody and you don’t have to flex like a saint to achieve it.
So no gushing platitudes here, just a few interesting snippets we unearthed whilst reviewing the life of a modern icon.
No Pictures
Because there was a ban on images of Mr Mandela, very few people actually knew what he looked like before he emerged a free man in February 1990. The huge expectation was as much to do with curiosity about what he would look like after 27 years in captivity.
The Letters
Mandela wrote a lot of letters and kept diligent records of his life. Probably due to the fact that his jailers knew the importance his writing held for him, (he would secretly teach other inmates to read and write), they would play a cat and mouse game with him. 
Whilst he wrote profusely he never knew how many of his letters would ever reach the hands of the addressee. Witholding letters to him was also a game gleefully played by his captors and the cat and mouse mockery is illustrated in a letter he wrote to his then wife Winnie Mandela in 1970 :
“If there was ever a letter which I desperately wished to keep, read quietly over and over again in the privacy of my cell, it was that one. It was compensation for the precious things your arrest deprived me of – the Xmas, wedding anniversary, birthday cards – the little things about which you never fail to think.
But I was told to read it on the spot and [it] was grabbed away as soon as I had reached the last line.”
Mandela On Lack Of Sex
Mandela was asked frankly by author Richard Stengal (Long Road To Freedom), how he coped in prison without sex and how he deals with the fact that his wife would more than likely have turned to other men during his incarceration:
“Well that was a question, you know, which one had to wipe out of one’s mind … one had to accept the human issue, the human fact, the reality that a person will have times when he wants to relax and one must not be inquisitive. It is sufficient that this is a woman who is loyal to me, who supports me and who comes to visit me, who writes to me. That’s sufficient.”
And on the issue of potentially never having sex with a woman again:
“Oh well, one gets used to that, and it’s not that [hard] to control yourself; I mean I was brought up in high schools, boarding schools, where you were without women for almost six months, and you exercised discipline of yourself. And then when I went to prison, I resigned myself to the fact that I had no opportunity for sexual expression and I could deal with that.”
The Mind F*cks
Mandela would often return to his cell at the end of the day to be reminded of his absolute impotence to protect his family. The prison guards would leave press cuttings on his desk with negative news particularly about his wife being arrested for the umpteenth time and leaving his children without both parents.
He remained stoic about it as both he and the guards knew there was nothing he could do.
The Specials
Mandela knew all about Mr Jerry Dammers freedom call song ‘Free Nelson Mandela.’ From his writings it is clear that he was aware that the record was sitting at number 4 on Capital Radios pop charts at one point.
On Tracy Chapman
At the June 1990 concert celebrating Mr Mandela’s release, Mandela was rather keen to see one artist in particular:
“I wanted to see Tracy Chapman … I have always been intrigued by that young lady, and I was sitting in a box … when she came on the stage I was really excited and she then started playing … I was beginning to enjoy the music when … I was told that Neil 
Kinnock was here to see me … I was keen to see Kinnock because the Labour Party and its leader Neil Kinnock had been a strong pillar in our struggle, in the anti-apartheid struggle. They had demanded my release and they had welcomed me when I reached London. They were very good and I was happy to meet him … but I regretted missing Tracy Chapman.”
On the other hand when Ms Whitney Houston performed at Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday celebrations, her people (on behalf of her sponsors – think sugary drink) had insisted that she perform against an innocuous black backdrop so as not to appear politically aware of the whole point of the bash. In the same vein Ms Whoopi Goldberg was told to keep away from any political references when she appeared onstage.
How things change.
On His Sainthood
“As a young man I … combined all the weaknesses, errors and indiscretions of a country boy, whose range of vision and experience was influenced mainly by events in the area in which I grew up and the colleges to which I was sent. I relied on arrogance in order to hide my weaknesses. As an adult, my comrades raised me and other fellow prisoners … from obscurity to either a bogey (sic) or enigma.
One issue that deeply worried me in prison was the false image that I unwittingly projected to the outside world; of being regarded as a saint. I never was one, even on the basis of an earthly definition of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.”
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Much thanks to the following:
Sources:
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Nelson Mandela
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