Conversations with Myself

by Nelson Mandela

  9. FROM A LETTER TO NOLUSAPHO IRENE MKWAYI, DATED 19 NOVEMBER 1969

  I had also been anxious to attend the funeral and to pay my last respects to Thembi just as I has been keen to do so in the case of the death of ma. Though I had never hoped to succeed, my heart bled when I finally realised that I could not be present at the graveside – the one moment in life a parent would never like to miss. Many people who ponder on the problems of the average prisoner tend to concentrate more on the lengthy sentences still to be served, the hard labour to which we are condemned, the coarse and tasteless menus, the grim and tedious boredom that stalks every prisoner and the frightful frustrations of a life in which human beings move in complete circles, landing today exactly at the point where you started the day before. But some of us have had experiences much more painful than these, because these experiences eat too deeply into one’s being, into one’s soul.

  10. FROM A LETTER TO HIS SON MAKGATHO, DATED 28 JULY 1969

  I hate giving lectures, Kgatho, even to my own children and I prefer discussing matters with everyone on a basis of perfect equality, where my views are offered as advice which the person affected is free to accept or reject as it pleases him. But I will be failing in my duty if I did not point out that the death of Thembi brings a heavy responsibility on your shoulders. Now you are the eldest child, and it will be your duty to keep the family together and to set a good example for your sisters, to be a pride to your parents and to all your relatives. This means that you will have to work harder on your studies, never allow yourself to be discouraged by difficulties or setbacks, and never give up the battle even in the darkest hour. Remember that we live in a new age of scientific achievement, the most staggering of which is the recent landing of man on the moon. That is a sensational event that will enrich man’s knowledge of the universe and that may even result in a change or modification of many fundamental assumptions in many fields of knowledge. The younger generation must train and prepare themselves so that they can easily grasp the far-reaching repercussions of developments in the realm of space. This is an era of intense and vicious competition in which the richest rewards are reserved for those who have undergone the most thorough training and who have attained the highest academic qualifications in their respective fields. The issues that agitate humanity today call for trained minds and the man who is deficient in this respect is crippled because he is not in possession of the tools and equipment necessary to ensure success and victory in the service of country and people. To lead an orderly and disciplined life, and to give up the glittering pleasures that attract the average boy, to work hard and systematically in your studies throughout the year, will in the end bring you coveted prizes and much personal happiness. It will inspire your sisters to follow the example of their beloved brother, and they will benefit greatly through your scientific knowledge, vast experience, diligence and achievements. Besides, human beings like to be associated with a hardworking, disciplined and successful person and by carefully cultivating these qualities you will win yourself many friends.

  11. CONVERSATION WITH RICHARD STENGEL ABOUT SEXUALITY

  STENGEL: The letters to your wife that I have read…they are very, very passionate, and it is an unusual combination, because the letters were very passionate and yet you were very much in control of yourself at all times. How do you explain that?

  MANDELA: Well it was, it is [a] difficult thing to explain, but here I was with a woman with whom I have [been] married…for four years when I was sent to jail, and she was a very young person, inexperienced; she had two children and she couldn’t bring them up properly because of the harassment, and persecution by the police.

  STENGEL: And so how does that explain the passion in your letters?

  MANDELA: Well, you know, I was thinking of her, of course, every day and also I wanted to give her encouragement, to know that there is somebody somewhere who cares for her.

  STENGEL: Yes. Well that’s obvious from the letters. How do you yourself deal with the idea that your wife…that you were sentenced to life in prison, you were gone for many, many years. She has a life outside, she meets other men…it must be very difficult to think about that; that perhaps she, you know, meets other men that she might like or might take your place temporarily. How did you deal with that?

  MANDELA: Well that was a question, you know, which one had to wipe out of his mind. You must remember that I was underground for almost two years before I went to jail. I took a deliberate decision to go underground…In other words…those issues were not material issues to me, and then 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.

  STENGEL: And then everything else you…that’s sufficient and you put the other things out of your mind?

  MANDELA: Oh, yes.

  STENGEL: Because they are not important.

  MANDELA: Yes.

  STENGEL: And it doesn’t alter her relationship to you, and your relationship to her.

  MANDELA: No.

  STENGEL: What about, in the same vein, the fact again that you think you might be in prison for life, and the idea that you might never make love to a woman again; that your sexuality would just atrophy. How do you deal with that in prison?

  MANDELA:…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.

  12. FROM A LETTER TO WINNIE MANDELA, DATED 23 JUNE 1969

  For one thing those who have no soul, no sense of national pride and no ideals to win can suffer neither humiliation nor defeat; they can evolve no national heritage, are inspired by no sacred mission and can produce no martyrs or national heroes. A new world will be won not by those who stand at a distance with their arms folded, but by those who are in the arena, whose garments are torn by storms and whose bodies are maimed in the course of contest. Honour belongs to those who never forsake the truth even when things seem dark and grim, who try over and over again, who are never discouraged by insults, humiliation and even defeat. Since the dawn of history, mankind has honoured and respected brave and honest people, men and women like you darling – an ordinary girl who hails from a country village hardly shown in most maps, wife of a kraal which is the humblest even by peasant standards.

  My sense of devotion to you precludes me from saying more in public than I have already done in this note which must pass through many hands. One day we will have the privacy which will enable us to share the tender thoughts which we have kept buried in our hearts during the past eight years.

  13. FROM A LETTER TO ADELAIDE TAMBO, DATED 31 JANUARY 197011

  Time was when I would have found it very difficult to manage without seeing Zami indefinitely and without receiving letters or hearing from her and the children. But the human soul and human body has an infinite capacity of adaptation and it is amazing just how hardened one can come to be; and how concepts which we once treated as relatively unimportant suddenly become meaningful and crucial.

  I never dreamt that time and hope can mean so much to one as they do now. An important personage commented on the death of Thembi and Ma, and on the incarceration of Zami and said: for you it never rains but pours. That is how I also felt at the time. But the numerous messages of condolence and solidarity that we received gave us a lot of encouragement and spirits are as high as you have always known them to be.

  Hope is a powerful weapon even when nothing else may remain.

  What has sustained me even in the most grim moments is the knowledge that I am a member of a tried and tested family which has triumphed over many difficulties. In such a l
arge and broad family opinions can be diverse on almost everything, but we have always succeeded in sorting out things together and going forward all the same. This fact endows my spirits with powerful wings.

  14. CONVERSATION WITH RICHARD STENGEL ABOUT HIS MOTHER

  STENGEL: Did she [your mother] understand your struggle and your beliefs and sacrifices?

  MANDELA: Yes, she did. But at first she didn’t understand at all. Because one day, I came back home after work, from work, and she was waiting for me. ‘My child, you must go back to the Transkei because there were two white men here, who came here and they spoke very good Xhosa and they said, “Look, your son is wasting his time. He is a lawyer. He is with people who are just wanting to create trouble, who have no profession, like Mr [Walter] Sisulu and you’d better save your child. Your child should go back to the Transkei.”’ And she was saying, ‘No, no, no, let’s go back. Let’s go back to the Transkei.’ So I realised that I hadn’t done my work properly. Instead of starting preaching to my mother here, I was preaching, you know, to the public. I must start here. So I then started explaining to her why I’m in politics. And later, she would say, ‘Look if you don’t join other children in politics, I will disinherit you!’ Yes. But it took some time before she could say so. Mmm.

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  From a letter to Zeni Mandela, dated 1 March 1971, on the occasion of her twelfth birthday.

  15. CONVERSATION WITH RICHARD STENGEL ABOUT HIS FEELINGS OVER LEAVING HIS FAMILY

  MANDELA: And of course, King Sabata…the father of the present king. That is my nephew and he looked after my mother very well and he is the person who buried her. Yes…I was sorry when he died when I was in jail.

  STENGEL: That was very difficult for you? The idea that you were the breadwinner and now you were in prison and couldn’t…

  MANDELA: Yes, quite, oh yes. That was a difficult thing. And I sometimes used to think – search my soul – whether I had done the right thing, because not only my mother, but my sisters were struggling; although two of them were married, but they were struggling and…I wondered whether I had done the right thing to try and help the public, and get your parents and your family in such difficulties. But every time, I used to end up by saying, ‘Well, this was the correct decision on my part.’

  STENGEL: But then there was a struggle between your personal obligations to your family and your larger obligations to society?

  MANDELA: Yes, yes, quite.

  STENGEL: And that’s the argument that you were…?

  MANDELA: Yes, quite. Yes, yes. Have I taken the right decision? Can the decision be right, which means that your family should suffer as they do? And my mother struggled, you know, to send me to school, and although I was later taken by a member of our clan…Chief Jongintaba Dalindyebo, who was acting for Sabata, he was regent for Sabata.12 He brought me up and treated me very well, you know, like one of his children. I never had complaints with him, you know, under him and his wife…But…my duty was that as soon as I was able to be a breadwinner, I should look after my mother and my sisters. I couldn’t, at a critical moment.

  STENGEL: Because, in moral philosophy, there are those who can say that your first obligation is to those around you?

  MANDELA: The family, mmm.

  STENGEL: And so that it’s a hard – it’s difficult?

  MANDELA: Very difficult indeed. Very, very, very difficult. But one had to endure it, you see, because when I sat down to think about this, I said, ‘Well nevertheless, I have taken a decision, a correct decision’ because they are not the only people who are suffering. Hundreds, millions, in our country are suffering and so I felt I had taken a correct decision.

  16. FROM A LETTER TO ZENI AND ZINDZI MANDELA, DATED 1 JUNE 1970

  It is now more than 8 years since I last saw you, and just over 12 months since Mummy was suddenly taken away from you.

  Last year I wrote you 2 letters – one on the 23rd June and the other on 3rd August. I now know that you never received them. As both of you are still under [16], and as you are not allowed to visit me until you reach that age, writing letters is the only means I have of keeping in touch with you and of hearing something about the state of your health, your schoolwork and your school progress generally. Although these precious letters do not reach, I shall nevertheless keep on trying by writing whenever that is possible. I am particularly worried by the fact that for more than a year I received no clear and first-hand information as to who looks after you during school holidays and where you spend such holidays, who feeds you and buys you clothing, who pays your school fees, board and lodging, and on the progress that you are making at school. To continue writing holds out the possibility that one day luck may be on our side in that you may receive these letters. In the meantime the mere fact of writing down my thoughts and expressing my feelings gives me a measure of pleasure and satisfaction. It is some means of passing on to you my warmest love and good wishes, and tends to calm down the shooting pains that hit me whenever I think of you.

  17. FROM A LETTER TO SENATOR DOUGLAS LUKHELE IN SWAZILAND, DATED 1 AUGUST 197013

  Letters from me hardly ever reach [their] destination and those addressed to me [fare] no better. I am hoping that the remorseless fates, that consistently interfere with my correspondence and that have cut me off from my family at such a critical moment, will be induced by considerations of honour and honesty to allow this one through. I know that once it reaches your hands my troubles will be virtually over.

  You know that I am essentially a rustic like many of my contemporaries, born and brought up in a country village with its open spaces, lovely scenery and plenty of fresh air. Although prior to my arrest and conviction 8 years ago I lived for 2 decades as a townsman, I never succeeded in shaking off my peasant background, and now and again I spent a few weeks in my home district as a means of recalling the happy moments of my childhood. Throughout my imprisonment my heart and soul have always been somewhere far beyond this place, in the veld and the bushes. I live across these waves with all the memories and experiences I have accumulated over the last half century – memories of the grounds in which I tended stock, hunted, played, and where I had the privilege of attending the traditional initiation school. I see myself moving into the Reef in the early forties, to be caught up in the ferment of the radical ideas that were stirring the more conscious of the African youth…I remember the days when I served articles, licking stamps, daily running all sorts of errands, including buying hair shampoo and other cosmetics for white ladies. Chancellor House!14 It was there that OR [Oliver Tambo] and I became even more intimate than we were as College mates and as [Youth] Leaguers. Around us there developed new and fruitful friendships – Maindy, Zubeida Patel and Winnie Mandleni, our first typists; the late Mary Anne, whose sudden and untimely death greatly distressed us; Ruth, Mavis, Godfrey; boxing Freddy and Charlie the upright and popular caretaker and cleaner who never missed a day at Mai-Mai.15 For some time you battled almost alone and against formidable difficulties to keep the firm afloat when OR and I were immobilised by the Treason Trial.16 I even recall the strange incident that occurred when you visited Zami and I at our home in Orlando West in Dec. ’60. As you approached the gate a bolt of lightning split out with such tremendous force that Zeni, then only 10 months, was flung to the ground where she remained motionless for some seconds. What a relief it was when she came round and started yelling; it was a close shave…Spiritual weapons can be dynamic and often have an impact difficult to appreciate except in the light of actual experience in given situations. In a way they make prisoners free men, turn commoners into monarchs, and dirt into pure gold. To put it quite bluntly, Duggie, it is only my flesh and blood that are shut up behind these tight walls.

  Otherwise I remain cosmopolitan in my outlook; in my thoughts I am as free as a falcon.

  The anchor of all my dreams is the collective wisdom of mankind as a whole. I am influence
d more than ever before by the conviction that social equality is the only basis of human happiness…It is around these issues that my thoughts revolve. They are centred on humans, the ideas for which they strive; on the new world that is emerging; the new generation that declares total war against all forms of cruelty, against any social order that upholds economic privilege for a minority and that condemns the mass of the population to poverty and disease, illiteracy and the host of evils that accompany a stratified society.

  18. FROM A LETTER TO WINNIE MANDELA, THEN IN PRETORIA CENTRAL PRISON, DATED 1 AUGUST 1970

  The crop of miseries we have harvested from the heartbreaking frustrations of the last 15 months are not likely to fade away easily from the mind. I feel as if I have been soaked in gall, every part of me, my flesh, bloodstream, bone and soul, so bitter I am to be completely powerless to help you in the rough and fierce ordeals you are going through. What a world of difference to your failing health and to your spirit, darling, to my own anxiety and the strain that I cannot shake off, if only we could meet; if I could be on your side and squeeze you, or if I could but catch a glimpse of your outline through the thick wire netting that would inevitably separate us.

  Physical suffering is nothing compared to the trampling down of those tender bonds of affection that form the basis of the institution of marriage and the family that unite man and wife. This is a frightful moment in our life. It is a moment of challenge to cherished beliefs, putting resolutions to a severe test. But as long as I still enjoy the privilege of communicating with you, even though it may only exist in form for me, and until it is expressly taken away, the records will bear witness to the fact that I tried hard and earnestly to reach you by writing every month. I owe you this duty and nothing will distract me from it. Maybe this line will one day pay handsome dividends. There will always be good men on earth, in all countries, and even here at home. One day we may have on our side the genuine and firm support of an upright and straightforward man, holding high office, who will consider it improper to shirk his duty of protecting the rights and privileges of even his bitter opponents in the battle of ideas that is being fought in our country today; an official who will have a sufficient sense of justice and fairness to make available to us not only the rights and privileges that the law allows us today, but who will also compensate us for those that were surreptitiously taken away.