Nelson Mandela - Prisoner 466/64

By Philip Gourevitch, The New Yorker

09 December 13

t Robben Island Prison, a former leper colony and animal-quarantine station off Cape Town, Nelson Mandela—Prisoner 466/64—was kept by South Africa’s white-supremacist regime for eighteen years in an eight-foot-by-seven-foot cell. He was allowed to send one letter and to receive one letter every six months. On June 23, 1969, Mandela wrote to his daughters, Zenani, who was ten, and Zindziswa, who was eight. (Zeni and Zindzi, he called them.) “My darlings,” he began. “Once again our beloved Mummy has been arrested and now she and Daddy are away in jail.” Mandela was serving a life sentence for conspiring to overthrow the government by force as the leader of the armed wing of the African National Congress, and his then wife, Winnie, an A.N.C. activist, had just begun what would be a seventeen-month stint in Pretoria Central Prison, more than a year of it in solitary confinement. Mandela, who had not seen their girls since Zeni was three and Zindzi was eighteen months old, could only offer them cold comfort as—covering both sides of a foolscap sheet in well-disciplined script—he imagined their motherless plight: “It may be many months or even years before you see her again. For long you may live like orphans without your own home and parents, without the natural love, affection and protection Mummy used to give you. Now you will get no birthday or Christmas parties, no presents or new dresses, no shoes or toys. Gone are the days when, after having a warm bath in the evening, you would sit at table with Mummy and enjoy her good and simple food. Gone are the comfortable beds, the warm blankets and clean linen she used to provide. . . . Perhaps never again will Mummy and Daddy join you in House No. 8115 Orlando West, the one place in the whole world that is so dear to our hearts.”

Mandela made no apologies. Instead, he told his daughters about their mother’s choices and her convictions and her courage, and he said that as they grew up—in the care of family friends—they would come to recognize the importance of her sacrifices. “In the meantime,” he wrote, “you must study hard and pass your examinations, and behave like good girls.”

Two years later, in March of 1971, Mandela wrote to Zeni, who had just turned twelve, recalling that shortly before she was born her mother had been thrown in jail for fifteen days. “Do you understand that you were nearly born in prison?” Then he summoned a more painful memory, telling Zeni of one of the last times he had seen her. Mandela, already the chief of the A.N.C.’s army of saboteurs and guerrillas, Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), was living a clandestine life, and Zeni was brought to see him at a safe house. “I was wearing no jacket or hat. I took you into my arms and for about ten minutes we hugged, and kissed and talked. Then suddenly you seemed to have remembered something. You pushed me aside and started searching the room. In a corner you found the rest of my clothing. After collecting it, you gave it to me and asked me to go home. You held my hand for quite some time, pulling desperately and begging me to return.” Mandela understood. “You felt I had deserted you and Mummy,” he wrote, and added, “Your age in 1961 made it difficult for me to explain my conduct to you.”

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