‘Every letter I write home is an act of purification, so clean and strong do I feel each time I do so’
Mandela’s letters from jail reveal how his love for his wife sustained him through the years of hardship
EVERY morning when Nelson Mandela got out of bed in his prison cell on Robben Island, he would walk up to a photograph stuck to the wall and touch it with his nose.
That is how Madiba greeted his then-wife, Winnie, for more than 20 years. “I dust [the picture] carefully every morning, for to do so gives me the pleasant feeling that I’m caressing you as in the old days,” he wrote in a letter to Winnie in 1976 — more than 14 years after they were separated.
“I even touch your nose with mine to recapture the electric current that used to flush through my blood whenever I did so.”
This glimpse of Mandela’s inner life is one of hundreds contained in love letters sent to and from Robben Island, which now bear testimony to the man behind the iconic public persona.
Extracts from some of his letters have appeared in the biographies published since his release. But 16 years ago, the Sunday Times stumbled on copies of thousands of unsorted Robben Island letters, including many written by Madiba, in store rooms at the national archives in Cape Town.
They formed part of a transfer of documents from the island to the mainland after the prison closed in the early ’90s.
The Sunday Times alerted authorities to the historical treasure, but a request by the newspaper to publish selected extracts was declined. Mandela was then president.
Eight years later, in 2005, they were inspected by former archives chief director Graham Dominy, who said a few boxes of Robben Island documents appeared to have been mistakenly sent to Cape Town rather than Pretoria by the former department of prison services.
The letters, written between 1974 and 1976, include correspondence between Mandela and Winnie when both were in jail, and between Madiba and his children. They confirm what most of the world already knows — that Mandela was an extraordinary man, as concerned about his daughter’s science project as about nonracialism or human rights. Copies of the letters were archived by prison authorities along with all incoming mail. The result is a treasure trove of Mandela’s thoughts and feelings.
The letters to Winnie and his children, in particular, reveal his keen sensibilities and, at times, a narrative bordering on poetry. On several occasions he reflects on the joy of writing to Winnie: “Every letter I write home is an act of purification, so clean and strong do I feel each time I do so. All the sweet moments I’ve lived with you in the past have been transferred to these lines and the end of the month is an occasion that gives me thrills much similar to those I’ve experienced whenever I hold your hand,” he wrote in March 1976.
Some letters draw attention to the couple’s heartache at being separated. One describes the difficulty in choosing between photographs of his family. He was only allowed to display three at a time.
On hearing that Winnie had been imprisoned in Kroonstad, he wrote: “You will derive a lot of pleasure from doing physical exercises regularly in your cell and with a bit of running in the yard at least three times a week. That will keep you fit, trim and in high spirits. Life’s most important goals are like the distant horizons and recede as you move forward. But there is nothing impossible to one who is determined, who thinks clearly, carefully plans, and acts. No matter how difficult things may appear to be, they will work out in the end,” he wrote in December 1974.
In another letter, he said he needed Winnie like the roots of a plant need the soil. “I looked at the tiny roots and couldn’t help wondering at the fact that the entire life of that big and lovely plant had depended on those tiny roots,” he said, referring to a tomato plant he had dug up.
“It occurred to me that . . . there is somebody whose love for me and enormous sacrifices on my behalf, and all the rough experience she has gone through because of her devotion to me, I take for granted; but who stands in the same position as the soil and roots, nitrogen and sunshine do to that plant. I love you.”
On Winnie’s 39th birthday, he wrote about an impromptu celebration using meagre prison provisions. “I remembered you with a real feast on September 26. I put four teaspoons of powdered milk in a mug, three teaspoons of Milo, two teaspoons of brown sugar and buried the whole mixture in hot water. It was a magnificent brew fit for a monarch,” he wrote in October 1975.
On another occasion he wrote to Winnie: “When this letter reaches you I’ll have completed the unbelievable stretch of 13 years away from you. Still I’m fit for another 13 if needs be. Life is rich and interesting. Each day differs from the one before and is full of adventure and surprises. There’s something new to learn each time and I always look eagerly to the morrow. I often doubt if I could have been in such high spirits if you had not mothered me with such warm love.”
Most of the prison letters have been collected and audited by the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory Project.