Mandela in the Cross Hairs

By Neelika Jayawardane
A lesser man may relish, cultivate, and aid the construction of living icon-hood (see Out of Africa Redux). But in Conversations with Myself, the “sequel” to Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela reveals “anxiety about how his life as leader of the anti-apartheid struggle affected relatives”, insistent that the public should not, in fact, mistake him for a mythical hero:

One issue that deeply worried me in prison was the false image I unwittingly projected to the outside world; of being regarded as a saint. I never was one, even on the basis of the earthly definition of a saint as a sinner who keeps trying.

The book project began with an extraordinary mandate: “Take my personal archives, and do what you want with them,” says Bob Simon of 60 Minutes. Verne Harris, chief archivist at the Mandela Foundation was charged with  presenting former president “warts and all”: Mandela told Harris, “You don’t have to protect me,” and to use material from personal notebooks without asking “Is this too personal … potentially embarrassing?”

Given such a mandate, what a pity that Yuill Damaso, whose re-mix of Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn’s “The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulip” (1632)–in which the South African artist painted Mandela in flat planes of desert browns, dead and undergoing an autopsy–created such a fuss back in July this year: for doing a bad painting that was meant (in the artist’s own words) to get South Africans to see Mandela as a human being – warts and all.

Damaso, recognisable to South Africans from Italtile TV Ads, was previously known for “decorating and painting” a cow for the “National Cow Parade in conjunction with a car hire company”, and for attempting to sell “free” Mandela paintings (while charging R40 for the attached paperclip) in a Rosebank pizzeria, was hardly worth “a press statement” from the National Spokesperson of the African National Congress.  But he enraged the ANC, who, in a tornado of high-drama, condemned Damaso:

“The ANC is appalled and strongly condemns in the strongest possible terms the dead Mandela painting by Yiull Damaso,” said Jackson Mthembu, a party  spokesman. “It is in bad taste, disrespectful, and it is an insult and an affront to values of our society.”

And then Mtembu brought out the now-well-oiled tactic of referring to “African” tradition to drum up support for nonsense, and went into hysteria-land by slapping down the witchcraft-card:

“In African society it is a foreign act of ubuthakathi (bewitch) to kill a living person and this so-called work of art … is also racist.

Mthembu insisted that “stripping [Mandela] naked in the glare of curious onlookers, some of whom have seen their apartheid ideals die before them” violated the revered figure, adding that Madiba was an international icon who should be cherished and respected.

While the group in Rembrandt’s painting seem to be united–their attention focused on the extraordinary revelations of the morbid–those in Damaso’s are plainly disjointed, focus drawn towards their own desires. Rembrandt draws the viewer’s eye with his characteristic use of chiaroscuro – the pale corpse of the executed criminal, brilliant in death, and the illuminated expressions on the faces of Dr. Tulp and his students. In Damaso’s remix, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, current President Jacob Zuma, former president Thabo Mbeki, former finance minister Trevor Manuel, lawyer, businessman, former trade-union activist Cyril Ramaphosa, opposition leader Helen Zille; and AIDS activist Nkosi Johnson, who died of the disease at 12, appear more two-dimensional, featureless landscapes of pales and darks.  Some look on with unmistakable vulture-like intensity, others look away, waiting their turn to pick at the body; Nkosi, in beatific fellow-sainthood, gleefilly dissects Mandela’s left forearm, raising his left hand–signaling, in the unmistakable iconography of western art, benediction and blessing.

Damaso’s dissection of Mandela remained on view despite the subsequent uproar, at a store in Hyde Park Mall (an upmarket Johannesburg shopping center). Damaso maintained that he meant no disrespect, and that depicting Mandela’s mortality was a way of humanizing his image; revealing the flesh and bones “shows that he was a man, just like every one of us,” the artist told journalists. “He achieved great things by working hard, and he has so much influence on the country and the world, but the painting shows that he is just an ordinary man.”

Put aside the ANC’s hyperbole: it may still seem a little insensitive for Damaso to splash out Mandela’s fictional death, considering the failing health of the 92 year-old – in a mall, of all places. But Damaso had a point – perhaps, every public figure elevated to sainthood is eventually stripped naked, while vultures hang about, waiting to reveal the mundane mechanics of how the magic actually happened. Perhaps iconic figures are created for public consumption.

Too bad Damaso’s skill as an artist doesn’t have enough finesse to capture the essential nuances. And too bad that all that outrage focused attention on what was, essentially, a flat painting that could not capture any of Rembrand’s magic with light. Mandela’s own understanding of his life as that of an ordinary man includes his humility, chagrin at the “anguish and suffering” that his family endured, and his famous wit are still sharp as ever in Conversations:

He describes being taken from prison to a hospital to be treated for tuberculosis and presented with a breakfast of bacon and eggs despite being on a cholesterol-free diet. When an official warned him against defying doctor’s orders, Mandela replied: ‘Today, I am prepared to die; I am going to eat it.’

In Rembrandt’s depiction of an anatomy lesson are the clues to what the future of the Enlightenment would bring: ignorance is removed, through the illumination of science. The doctor-scholar reveals the wonderous mechanism of musculature and bone beneath the sheath of skin. However, the possibility of marvel is not erased – though the onlookers now know the intricacies of how this ordinary body worked, and did harm with such hands – we are still in the midst of wonder.  Though Mandela reveals his ordinary foibles, and the extraordinary pain and suffering his choices may have caused, his life remains a marvel to many. That doubling, that complexity maintains the wonder – despite what he says.

* Conversations with Myself, with a foreword by Barak Obama, is out now. The book is dedicated to his great-granddaughter Zenani, who was killed in a car crash in June this year.