By Chris Bathembu
Mthatha – As we drove around the tiny village of Mqekezweni, Eastern Cape, Nozolile Mtirara looked shaken and rather depressed. The area brings back both good and bad memories of her late husband Justice - a brother and a very close friend of Nelson Mandela.
Former South African President Nelson Mandela (18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) will be remembered not only as a man whose achievements came at great personal cost and suffering to his family, but also as an icon whose sacrifice made the world a better place.
As a tribute to Mandela, SAnews caught up with Mtirara recently. Every time Mtirara speaks about Mandela, Justice’s name is mentioned because the two were almost inseparable. Apart from his native Qunu - Mqekezweni, which consists of no more than a few hundred people - is probably one of the few places which informed the rich history behind Mandela and what motivated him as young man to become one of the world’s greatest leaders.
Mandela had moved from Qunu to Mqekezweni when he was just nine years old following the death of his father Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa.
The then head of the village, Chief Jongintaba Dalindyebo, had offered to become a guardian to the young Mandela when his mother could not afford to send him to the kind of schools that would prepare him for life’s many challenges. Chief Dalindyebo was Justice’s father but the latter and Mandela treated each other as blood brothers as per custom. There is no such thing as a half brother in African culture.
It is at Mqekezweni that Mandela underwent the traditional Xhosa initiation to manhood at the age of 16, and because he was now a “man” he owned property for the first time and could also take a wife. It is at the village that he attended a one-room mission school where he studied English, History and Geography for the first time at standard six. It is at this same school, which was also used as a church that he met a “lovely” young woman who would later play a huge role in his life. That woman was Winnie Madikizela, the daughter of the church’s Reverend.
SAnews found the school still intact with its original building and furniture. During his recent visits there Mandela had instructed the elders in the area that the structure, together with a hut he shared with Justice, not be tampered with.
“He gave strict instructions that the church and the hut which he used to sleep in together with my husband, not be demolished, but must receive constant renovations, he even bought glasses for the windows and ordered people to renovate it inside,” said Mtirara.
Mandela, who has built a big face brick house for Mtirara, is very fond of her, mainly due to the circumstances that had led to her marriage with Justice.
It was in the early 1940s, as Mandela recalls in his autobiography Long Walk To Freedom, that the Chief summoned him and Justice to a meeting. Mandela had just returned to Mqekezweni for the holidays from Fort Hare University in nearby Alice where he had been studying towards a law degree. At the meeting, Chief Dalindyebo shocked the two when he told them about their arranged marriages to two local girls. Mtirara was one of the girls. The announcement took both Mandela and Justice by surprise. Lobolo or the dowry would be paid and the marriages were to take place immediately. Not only was the marriage going to affect Mandela’s studies at Fort Hare, it meant that he was forced to marry someone he never spoke to or had a romantic relationship with. It would mean an end to the “flings” he had with other young women he met at the university as a student.
The Chief was acting according to Tembu law and custom in which arranged marriages were a normal occurrence. Tembu is the clan in which Mandela is a member.
“Everything was in such a hurry but both men were just not into it and the Chief would not hear any of it,” Mtirara recalls.
Mandela later wrote: “With all due respect to the young woman’s family, I would be dishonest if I said that the girl the Regent had selected for me was my dream bride…at that time I was more advanced socially and politically, while I would not have considered fighting the political system of the white man, I was quite prepared to rebel against the system of my own people”.
After days of pondering and soul searching, the two managed to escape the arranged marriages and boarded the first available train to Johannesburg where Mandela found a job as a police man in the mines. It is here that he later met African National Congress (ANC) stalwart Oliver Tambo who helped him pursue his dream to become a lawyer. It is also through Tambo’s and Walter Sisulu’s influence that he joined the ANC.
But Justice, who also found a job at the mines, would later return to Mqekezweni to reunite with the girl his father had wanted him to marry. The two had six children but unfortunately, Justice, who was four years older than Mandela, died in 1974, leaving Mtirara with two sons and four daughters. As for Mandela, he reunited with his sweetheart from church, Winnie, but after he had already married and divorced Evelyn Mase, a strongly religious woman he met in Johannesburg through Tambo. Mase apparently disapproved of Mandela’s political beliefs.
“I was doubtful that my marriage with Justice would work because Mandela had made it clear that for his part he was not returning to that arrangement and I believe it’s something of a fairy tale if you can call it that. I believe God has kept me and Madiba to tell these stories,” says Mtirara, who just celebrated her 89th birthday.
Today, the woman, who had become so close to Mandela, said she would remember the former President of South Africa not only as someone who escaped with her “potential husband”, but as a man whose noble intentions had changed the world.
“Imagine if they had stayed here and allowed the marriages to take place at that time, he probably would not have ended up in Johannesburg and he probably would not have involved himself with the politics of the day…it was a blessing in disguise”.
She respects Mandela for standing up to the Chief and not allowing himself to be united with the woman he never loved. “Even though my husband and I ended up getting married, what was meant not to happen did not happen and our marriage was probably destined to take place but not at that time”.
But like many South Africans, Mtirara holds Mandela with high regard and respect for the work he has done to ensure that not only the people of Mqekezweni or Qunu were free to exercise their freedoms but that South Africa as a whole changed for the better.
“He was and will always remain an amazing man, both him and I can rest assured that we have traveled our road and told our story and most importantly there is peace in the world because of men like him.” – SAnews.gov.za
