Nelson Mandela’s contested genealogy

Posted on October 27, 2010

When Xolelwa and I sat down for a conversation with Verne Harris and Sello Hatang from the Nelson Mandela Foundation on 12 October 2010, it was the day of the international launch of Madiba's latest book, Conversations with Myself. The book has been published in 20 languages around the world. It makes available in the public domain material from Mandela's private archive. As Harris said to us, and has been captured by Andrew Harding in a review of the book, Conversations with Myself "is published at a time when... some of his aides are warning of a 'more and more brutal' battle for control of his legacy, and of the wealth that the Mandela 'brand name' can still generate. The opening of the archives is part of a broader campaign to address such issues". See City Press review

Part of this project of framing Mandela's legacy has been the publication on the Foundation's website of Mandela's genealogy. While generating a genealogy may seem a straightforward exercise, in the case of a public icon like Mandela the project raises major questions: Who has the authority to decide who gets included or does not when Mandela has been married three times? Who is considered family and who not in the extended networks of the first and second families that were explored by Victoria Collis-Buthelezi in her review of David James Smith's Young Mandela in September? What methods are used in putting together such a genealogy? With so many people claiming to be Madiba's children - more than twenty in the past six years according to Harris - do you investigate these claims for such a genealogy project?

Hatang and Harris insist that the legacy of Mandela belongs to all the people and institutions who have been touched by Madiba, including those all over the world. They also repeat often that they are not gatekeepers; the legacy is open to contestation and they enable that contestation. For example, they arranged many of the interviews that Smith conducted for his book and made archival material available to him. The conclusions he reached are his, they say, and it is not for the Foundation to challenge them.

The genealogy project began when they came across several versions of the family tree while working through Mandela's archive. These versions differed from one another and were also different to the version in Fatima Meer's biography of Mandela, Higher than Hope (1990), which had been given to Meer by Madiba himself. So they decided to investigate. Stakeholders had to be consulted: the 'family', the ANC, the government, etc. Two differing views emerged in the family: one group thought only Madiba's biological children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren should be included. Another group said all the people who have been embraced by the family as forming part of the family group should be in the family tree. When Madiba's grandson, inkosi Zwelivelile of Mvezo, was asked to advise, he suggested that according the custom of the abaThembu the genealogy was not for the Foundation to construct and publish on its website; it rather belongs to the people - the family, the clan, etc. He also pointed out some errors of spelling and of the misplacement of certain names, e.g. on the left rather than on the right hand side.

Let us recall here that inkosi Zwelivelile, or Mandla as he is commonly known, has been quoted by Niren Tolsi in an article in the Mail&Guardian of 22 June 2009 as saying, "This family goes back to the 12th century, yet everybody is fixed on one man -- not to downplay his role, which is a gigantic one -- but there were Mandelas before my grandfather and there are Mandelas after him". Tolsi goes on to say, "Zwelivelile effortlessly recites the family's genealogy and history and proudly struts his chieftainship, which, says a spokesperson for the AbaThembu king, Buyelekhaya Dalindyebo, was returned to the Mandelas two years ago "in honour" of Madiba, who passed it on to his grandson". The genealogy Mandla recites appears to differ somewhere from Madiba's own from what Harris and Hatang say. Where it differs, Mandla has said Madiba must have made a mistake.

Yet Mandla's insistence on claiming Madiba for his vision of traditional leadership is problematic. As Harris says, Madiba has said of Mandla's chieftainship, "Now I'm very pleased that my grandson has taken this position... and it's good for me to see this happening. You know, I'm fortunate to have a grandson who likes all the things I don't like". Clearly genealogy is important also to one's position as chief. Given that many chiefs were appointed by colonial officials in place of hereditary ones, it is an important matter for legitimacy to be able to show that one is a hereditary chief today. And yet, as shown by documents the Foundation has made publicly available, the family narrative that Madiba's father was the hereditary chief who was deposed by government authorities in 1920 is not borne out by evidence. The evidence suggests that Madiba's father was a government-appointed chief, appointed in 1915 or 1916, who was deposed in 1925 by a magistrate.

Here, as with the genealogy the Foundation has published, as Hatang pointed out, the openness of the past to revision when it is narrated orally, the ability of the family tree to be constructed anew each time someone with different stakes speaks it, is forestalled by the document.

In deciding on a version of the genealogy to publish, the Foundation has gone with the view that only biological descendents should be included. It has only gone as far back as Madiba's parents. Hatang and Harris maintain that the genealogy is open to revision and that they hope one day to find common ground with Mandla so that they can publish a record going back beyond Madiba. For now, each time somebody calls the Foundation to ask how many children Madiba has or who their names are, they can simply her/him to the website: