The "myth" of Nelson Mandela has far less to conceal than that of his former wife

The late great Ray Charles reportedly told film director Taylor Hackford that he didn’t want the biopic Ray he was making to be a “whitewash” of his life, but to expose the blemishes as well. It certainly made sense from an artistic standpoint, since no one is without faults, and critics and filmgoers would know it was a only a glossed-over version of reality, and finding it less “entertaining” as well. Being a history buff, I was eager to watch Peter O’Toole and Richard Burton go toe-to-toe in the 1964 film Becket when it was released on DVD some years ago. But I was deeply disappointed by the deceptive portrayal of Burton’s Thomas Becket; the reality was that Becket was no “saintly” character regardless of what the Catholic Church calls him. He was a complex character who at the time was probably more reviled than revered in England, and it was only after the shock of his rather undignified “martyrdom” that his reputation was revised. 

That brings me to the passing away of Nelson Mandela, no doubt a majestic figure of recent times. Mandela was actually in prison for most of his revolutionary life as a member of the African National Congress, but he became a potent symbol of the oppressive nature of Apartheid. It is interesting to note that former South African president and ANC member Thabo Mbeki wrote a letter in which he condemned the “personality cult” that some were cultivating in the ANC, noting that Nelson Mandela himself had not sought the notoriety that he was given during his imprisonment. However, he proved to be useful as a symbol against Apartheid internationally; Mbeki also noted that the ANC was able to use the South African government’s “persecution” of his wife for the same public relations effect.

Like many martyrs for a cause, Nelson Mandela only gained in stature the longer he remained in prison. His prison stay also seemed to have mellowed the revolutionary spirit that had caused him to be viewed as a “terrorist” prior to his imprisonment; already quite old when finally released, he certainly seemed less “demonic” to fearful white South Africans once Apartheid officially ended, and his relatively moderate policies as president—criticized for that reason in some quarters—suggested that he was the right man at the right time, at least for whites. 

I observed in the Seattle Times a sidebar story that was intended to expose the “myth” of Mandela, or at least reveal that he was capable of “human” foibles. However, most of these were in regard to his personal habits; there has been no suggestion that he was power mad or brutal in his exercise of it. The same cannot be said of his former wife, Winnie Mandela, who equally shared in the myth of his “saintliness”—perhaps even more so. 

There was a recent biopic on Winnie Mandela’s life starring Jennifer Hudson, which received the decidedly “rotten” score of 15 percent by Rottentomatoes.com, which grades a film by an average score derived from a select number of film reviews; that the audience rating was a much higher 60 percent only suggests that people who bothered seeing the film were probably already predisposed to the film’s deliberate distortion of her life. This distortion goes far beyond the glossing-over of Winnie Mandela’s career of adulterous relationships while Nelson Mandela was in prison, and continuing after his release. It wasn’t a well-kept secret that their reunion was less than happy, and that was the principle reason for the break-up of their marriage.

The nimble sidestepping becomes even worse by largely ignoring not just her convictions for fraud and theft in recent years, but her involvement in brutal revenge killings during the 1980s in Soweto, when she regularly used her personal influence to "persuade" the thugs in her employ to commit various human rights atrocities (like “necklacing”—literally burning victims alive) that made Apartheid crimes seem benign in comparison. It is also suspected that her “influence” was involved in the mysterious deaths and disappearances of various anti-Apartheid political rivals during that time. 

However, Winnie Mandela’s standing in the world and “cult of personality” was such that even though she was eventually convicted for orchestrating the murder of a 14-year-old boy accused of being a police informer, she was only “fined” in the case, and would receive a “suspended sentence” for the later fraud conviction. It seems that the need to turn her into a global  "heroine" is such that anything is forgivable, or deniable.