A new book on South African liberation struggle icons Nelson and Winnie Mandela is a masterful biography of the pair. It’s a work of scholarship involving an immense body of primary and secondary research, written with flair and panache but in an easy and compelling style, making it accessible to anyone with an interest in politics, power and South Africa and looks set to become the definitive work on them.
Jonny Steinberg’s splendid 550-page biography, Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage, ends on a note of pathos with a poignant tale from Nelson Mandela’s deathbed.
Four days from death in December 2013, Nelson is in an advanced state of dementia and refuses to eat. Graça Machel, his third wife, invites his estranged second wife, Winnie, to be with him, noting that she was “Nelson’s great love”, and it’s Winnie who feeds him. Winnie remarks to a friend:
