Studies of Nelson Mandela continue to be dominated by celebration of a person, the character of whose greatness is not probed. There are areas of great complexity attaching to Mandela’s life that are hardly examined. Mandela is justly admired and honoured, but we owe it to him to interrogate his legacies, to make sense of these and form opinions from which we and others can learn.

One of the areas that needs attention is that of gender, that is, his relationship to women and men in the context of growing up in very patriarchal societies as a young boy and later as a man. I use patriarchy in the plural because its character varies in different milieux, and in Mandela’s case in his early years in Thembuland compared with the Witwatersrand.

When we assess Mandela’s gender politics and practices, we are asking how he related to women and other men. We are asking how, within the social milieu in which he grew up, being a boy en route to manhood was understood, and how he came to understand being a man at various stages of his life.

Did he see masculinity as requiring toughness and aggressive displays of strength, as was found in the war games that he played with other boys, excluding girls in his youth?

How did he understand being a man and how did it change over time? How did he relate to women, especially those who were married to him? Were his wives consigned to the home and subjected to his power? Did he ever practise gender violence?

To answer this let us consider the words of Evelyn Mase, his first wife. In the 1950s when Mandela was first married, he also became a public figure, both as an attorney and an ANC leader. How did this affect his relationship to Evelyn? 

Important evidence on his relationship with Evelyn is presented in neglected interview material of Fatima Meer in her biography, Higher than Hope: Rolihlahla We Love You. Nelson Mandela’s biography on his 70th Birthday, 1988. 

In Evelyn’s words, Mandela did not follow patriarchal conventions and regard his wife as being there to minister to his needs. He often did the shopping, cooking and caregiving. Adelaide Tambo speaks of other wives envying Evelyn who had a husband who was so involved in home-making. Evelyn also tells Meer of the tenderness Mandela displayed towards his children with whom he often played and bathed.

He encouraged Evelyn to participate in trade union activities and also to advance her qualifications by training to be a midwife.

But Evelyn repeatedly claimed that Mandela was unfaithful, suggesting that he had affairs or fathered children, notably with women working in his legal firm, co-founded with Oliver Tambo. I heard some of these claims. Possibly because I did not know the validity or otherwise of these claims, I did not try to raise these with anyone nor would I have been well positioned to raise it with Mandela himself in the early years after his release, despite interacting fairly extensively with him.

Domestic violence

I have learnt since then that there is evidence in Mandela’s own words that is in an unmarked box in the archives, in a deposition signed by Mandela. The deposition, as reported by Paul Landau, suggests that Mandela did in fact assault Evelyn, at one point knocking her to the ground (Paul S Landau, Gendered silences in Nelson Mandela’s and Ruth First’s struggle auto/biographies, in African Studies, 2019, 290-306)

That Evelyn makes no reference to this in her later interviews with Fatima Meer does not negate the importance of Mandela assaulting her, and no matter what preceded his assault, it cannot be excused in the behaviour of any man or human being.

There is a problem insofar as this evidence only emerged after Mandela’s death, so that there was no possibility of hearing how he viewed the assault and whether he had any message for others who may use their fists in domestic conflicts.

But even though there appears to have been no discussion with Mandela on domestic violence, even if the assault statement was not known, an opportunity was missed, as far as I am aware, to dialogue with Mandela on such issues.

It is troubling that this evidence or rumours were never raised with Mandela before his death, even if the statement was not yet in the public domain. It remains an unresolved issue since we have no subsequent statement of Mandela.

His marriage to Winnie Madikizela was interrupted by his having to go underground, being on trial and then for decades in prison. Winnie was already a professional social worker. When they met, Mandela encouraged her to pursue political activities, although he was anxious when she was pregnant and later when he was in prison, and she suffered greatly at the hands of the apartheid government.

Winnie carved out for herself a distinct political role which included illegal and militant resistance against the apartheid regime. Some of this became controversial with Winnie being convicted of kidnapping.

However, Mandela, after his release stood by her – loyally - in this trial. He recognised her contribution and what this had cost her. Some disagreed with Mandela accompanying Winnie to court every day, but Winnie had not been convicted and she was never convicted of some of the charges she faced. Not to stand by her would have been to fail to recognise her public role in the Struggle, and to be there for her, as a husband, even if he may have disagreed with some of what she had done.

In the case of Graca Machel, she obviously had a well-established public persona before Mandela met her and that remained and widened. Mandela was quite comfortable with Graca’s independent public presence.

Mandela’s masculinities: worthy of emulation?

In his early life, as he writes in Long Walk to Freedom, what it meant to be a man had a measure of clarity, being socialised into expectations of what manhood entailed, referring for example to the gendered division of labour - what was “women’s work” and what work was reserved for boys and men.

He learns from an early age what comprised the qualities of boyhood, leading to manhood. He refers to what he derives from constantly keeping company with boys and learning behaviour expected of boys, and norms and skills acquired through relationships between boys. The Thembu were a conquered people, but retained and celebrated a warrior conception of masculinity, and boys played war games in preparation for becoming men.

The key moment of transition, that of initiation, included the significant practice of circumcision. Mandela describes this as a trial of strength for one was not supposed to cry out in pain, but instead shout, “I am a man”. (Mandela admits that he felt such pain and failed this test in being slow to shout the words. In so doing, as an elderly man, he gives his readers - who may have included young boys - permission if they are to be circumcised to also fail this test of strength. (Long Walk to Freedom, chapter four).

When Mandela came to the Witwatersrand in 1941 at the age of 23, he still retained an affinity for toughness, as exemplified in his regular training as a boxer, depicted in many accounts of the time which assimilated Mandela’s boxing imagery to that of his political work, seeing him not just as a freedom fighter but one who would “beat up the Boers”. (See Part three of this series: https://www.polity.org.za/article/imagery-and-identities-in-mandelas-leadership-part-3-2025-08-18).

Many times, he was reprimanded for statements that were out of line with the non-violent Struggle pursued by the ANC at the time. Mandela nevertheless became the leader and one of the founders of Umkhonto we Sizwe. He was imprisoned with the image of a military leader, unrepentant and ready to fight to the end until the country was free.

But, decades later, when people’s resistance to apartheid was difficult or impossible to contain, the apartheid government in 1985 offered Mandela his freedom on a conditional basis, the rejection of “violence”, a condition that he spurned because he saw the armed struggle as a response to the violence of the government.

He also set down conditions needed to secure peace in a letter read by his daughter Zindzi Mandela to a UDF rally. He made it clear that he was not able to make agreements while being a prisoner and that he was subject to the discipline of the ANC.

Mandela did not see military activities as desirable in themselves, and grasped the opportunity to seek peace through reaching out to initiate talks with the apartheid regime. As indicated, this was controversial.

Raymond Suttner served 11 years in prison and house arrest. He was in the UDF, ANC and SACP leadership until the Jacob Zuma era. Suttner worked closely with Mandela in the early 1990s. He is currently an emeritus professor at UNISA