NELSON MANDELA (SOUTH AFRICAN, 1918-2013)


Autograph letter signed ("Nelson"), written from prison on Robben Island to "Our dear Barbara" (Barbara Lamb, daughter of his friend and mentor Michael Harmel), prompted by Mandela's belatedly hearing news of Harmel's death ("...I have been thinking of you & Ray [her mother] ever since I heard of the death of your darling Pa. I have no details whatsoever as to when & how he died, having received only the bare report of the fact from one who assumed that we already knew about it..."); going on to reminisce at some length about their respective lives and the considerable influence Harmel has had upon him ("...It is not easy to accept that we will never see Mike again. One day I will return & look forward to a reunion with those who have enriched my knowledge, those I admire & highly respect. In this regard he was amongst the very first persons I thought of... A long chain of fond memories going as far back as the early 40s shot through the mind..."), dwelling especially on their first encounter, when Mandela was still finding his feet, fresh out of college; he then goes on to praise Harmel for his propagation of the historical method ("...He was one of those men who fully understood the meaning of their life as part of mankind generally & as individuals. His peep into the future very often coincided with one's most intimate hopes & dreams. May he rest in peace for 'his work on earth is done'..."); he ends the letter by congratulating her on her marriage, even though it took place a full decade ago, at the start of his sentence, and looks forward to the day when they can be united in performance of the Umngqungqo dance (see below); the letter headed by Mandela "Nelson Mandela 466/64 A Group Oct 1 '74", with rectangular censor's 'Gevangenis' (prison) stamp in red ink, the stamp initialled in blue ball-point pen, and marked in red ball-point "S04/74", further stamped in the top right-hand corner in blue ink '81/143198'; together with the autograph envelope addressed to Barbara Lamb in Johannesburg, care of Mrs Helen Joseph, and a forwarding card by the latter to Mrs Lamb in Brighton, England ("...I'm sure you'll be delighted to get this. It looks like Nelson's handwriting..."); plus a photograph of Mandela's wedding to Winnie (see below), the letter 1 ½ pages, on lined paper, folio Robben Island prison, 1 October 1974
|'IT HAS BEEN SAID THAT FAITH IS LIKE AN OAK TREE, IT GROWS STEADILY BUT, ONCE ESTABLISHED, IT ENDURES FOR CENTURIES' – WRITING FROM HIS CELL ON ROBBEN ISLAND, PRISONER 466/64 PAYS NOBLE TRIBUTE TO A COMRADE IN THE FIGHT FOR RACIAL EQUALITY IN SOUTH AFRICA; in the course of which Mandela looks forward to the time when he can join his European sisters in the Umngqungqo (the great Xhosa dance traditionally performed by married women to celebrate a girl's coming of age): "One day I shall put on the spotted shirt Julius gave me in '61 & take out Tilly, Freda & Mary B. to a feast. Thereafter we shall dance. They have a wide choice: the rumba, Mazurka, or Umngqungqo. But for the last they will have to throw away shoes, don karosses, straighten up & vibrate, brandishing a stick in one hand. It has been said that faith is like an oak tree, it grows steadily but, once established, it endures for centuries. Ever ridden a horse in your life, or seen a horse race? Hope is the horse on which you ride & travel to your destination, to reach the winning post. My only fortune in life is to have friends who taught me these things, amongst whom was your beloved Pa. Fondest regards & sincere good wishes to all. Sincerely, Nelson".At the notorious Rivonia Trial of 1964, Nelson Mandela had been sentenced to life imprisonment, of which he was to serve twenty-six years up until February 1990, nearly eighteen of them at Robben Island. As a political prisoner, Mandela was given the lowest possible classification – ranking below those convicted of crimes under the common law such as assault, robbery or rape – of D Grade. As such he was allowed to send only one letter every six months, which was to be written only to a close member of his family and to be no more than five-hundred words long. The only exceptions to this rule were letters to his lawyers or the authorities. In 1967, following protests by the opposition MP Helen Suzman and intervention by the Red Cross, D Grade prisoners were allowed to send a letter every three months. By the time he wrote our letter, Mandela had been upgraded to A Group (as per the heading of our letter), which meant that he was allowed to send six letters a month. By this time, the censors had tired of counting the actual words and instead 'began accepting letters of a page and a half', as here (The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela, edited by Sahm Venter, 2018; from which we quote from pp.ix-xvii below, unless otherwise stated). Six years into his sentence, Mandela complained to his lawyers that the disruptions to his correspondence 'indicate a deliberate intention and policy on the part of the authorities to cut me off and isolate me from all external contacts, to frustrate and demonise me, to make me despair and lose all hope and eventually to break me'. He later recalled: 'They didn't want you to discuss other than family matters and especially when they were considered by them to be of apolitical nature. And that was the reason, that you must confine yourself purely to family matters'; while a fellow prisoner, Eddie Daniels, 'paints a picture of the "frustration" of arbitrary, incompetent, and "vindictive" censoring and holding back of letters'. Partly as a result of this, comparatively few original letters by Mandela written from Robben Island are to be found in private hands, most of the texts of correspondence published in Prison Letters deriving from copies of the originals (see p.xiii). In a letter to Mangosuthu Buthelezi written on 1 October 1978, exactly four years later, Mandela refers to having written our letter (which does not appear to be known to the editor, see pp.362-2).The authorities preferred to refer to Mandela by number rather than name; the first part of which designates his place in that year's admissions, the second the year of admission. Of the several numbers assigned to him, the one heading our letter – 466/64 – is undoubtedly the most famous. Years after his release, at a speech given at the 46664 Concert at Cape Town, he protested that he 'was supposed to have been reduced to that number' (p.xvii).The conditions under which our letter was written were brutal: 'The prisoners were only allowed to stop doing hard labour fourteen years later in 1978... In the beginning the food was barely edible and divided up according to racist principles... The weather conditions on the island were extreme... In the beginning, African prisoners had to wear short pants and sandals year-round, whereas Indian and coloured prisoners were issued with long pants and socks... There were no beds for the first ten years – prisoners slept on the concrete floor on a sisal mat with three "flimsy" blankets. It was so cold in winter, they slept fully clothed... Throughout the week, prisoners were put to work in the yard, breaking stones with hammer. On the weekends, they were locked in their cells for twenty-three hours a day... At the beginning of 1965, they were set to work digging in the lime quarry. It was gruelling work, and the glare of the sun on the white limestone seared their eyes. For three years, repeated requests to the prison authorities for dark glasses were rejected. By the time permission was given, the eyesight of many of the prisoners, including Mandela's, had been irreparably damaged' (pp.20-21).In 1975, the year after writing our letter, Mandela began work in secret on his memoirs, the book which was eventually to be published in its revised version as Long Walk to Freedom. In it, he describes his first meeting with Harmel at a Communist Party gathering: 'The get-togethers were arranged by the party, and most of the guests were party members. I remember being anxious the first time I went, mainly because I did not think I had the proper attire. At Fort Hare, we were taught to wear a tie and jacket to a social function of any kind. Though my wardrobe was severely limited, I managed to find a tie to wear to the party. I discovered a lively and gregarious group of people who did not seem to pay attention to color at all. It was one of the first mixed gatherings I had ever attended, and I was far more of an observer than a participant. I felt extremely shy, wary of committing a faux pas, and unequipped to participate in the high-flown and rapid-fire conversations. My thoughts seemed undeveloped by comparison to the sophisticated dialogue around me. At one point in the evening, I was introduced to Michael Harmel, who I was told had a master's degree in English from Rhodes University. I was impressed with his degree, but when I met him, I thought to myself, "This chap has an M.A. and he is not even wearing a tie!" I just could not reconcile this discrepancy. Later, Michael and I became friends, and I came to admire him greatly, in no small measure because he rejected so many of the rather foolish conventions I once embraced. He was not only a brilliant writer, but was so committed to communism that he lived in a manner no different from an African'.The account he gives Harmel's daughter in our letter is far more nuanced: "It is given to few men to be able to hide their achievements as successfully as your Pa did & to free themselves from those chains of Convention which make the average intellectual behave like a marionette. When I first saw met him I was fresh from College where Academicians tended to be correct & formal in dress... He was dressed simply & without a tie... I assumed that he was an ordinary worker who was exceptionally gifted. It was quite some time later when I accidentally discovered that he was in fact quite a Scholar in his own right. A live wire loaded with current. You will be surprised when I tell you that my first reaction to Mike's informality after I first discovered his true academic background, was one of disappointment. I was convinced that he did not deserve the honour of being placed amongst the elite. It was some yrs later that I came to accept his simplicity as a virtue on which one could model his own life...".Many of Mandela's prison letters were written in an attempt not only to stay close to his wife but to act as a father to his children, none of whom were allowed to visit him until they had turned sixteen. Our letter shares something with these, in that it is written to a daughter who has lost her father. Moreover, his isolation at Robben Island means, as he tells her, that he knows nothing of the circumstances of her father's death; the news of which had reached him only by accident. As District Secretary of the Communist Party of South Africa, Michael Harmel was, as we have seen, an early comrade in the struggle against apartheid. His wife, Ray, was no less remarkable. It was she who kept the family by working as a seamstress, while at the same time never shying away from fighting for workers' rights. It was she who, at Mandela's request, made Winnie's wedding dress and those of her bridesmaids. The well-known photographs of the event (one of which is included with the letter) were taken at the Harmels' house by a fellow activist, Eli Weinberg, a photographer for the Guardian newspaper. The actual wedding had in fact taken place a few days earlier, at Bizana in the Transkei; although no photographs were taken at the time, thanks to banning orders.In the memorable passage at the end of our letter, in which Mandela asks Barbara to eschew the European mazurka or Latin American Rumba in favour of the Xhosa Umngqungqo, the dance performed by elder women to celebrate girls who are coming of age, Mandela summons three European women to join them in the dance – "Mary B." can be identified as Mary Benson, a close friend who had raised money for Mandela's defence and later wrote Mandela: The Man and the Movement, 1986. (Her remaining papers, including letters by Athol Fugard, were sold in our London rooms, 13 November 2007, lot 446.) "Freda", likewise, can be identified as her friend Freda Levson, who also raised money for Mandela's defense; she with Mary Benson being Mandela's hosts for his now famous clandestine visit to London in 1962. The third woman invited to the dance, "Tilly", appears to be Tilly First, the sister of Ruth, who helped Mary Benson and Freda Levson in their work at the time of the treason trials. Helen Joseph, through whom this letter was sent to Barbara Lamb in England, was also a noted anti-apartheid activist, Mandela's children Zinzi and Zenani finding a refuge at her home in Norwood, to where our letter is addressed. President Mandela delivered the address at her funeral in 1993.Please note: this item is located in South Africa, and may be viewed in Johannesburg by appointment with Bonhams local representative Penny Culverwell. It may not be exported without approval of the South African Heritage Resources Agency and the South African Reserve Bank. Please contact the department to make an appointment to view the item or for further information.