Read an Excerpt

Introduction
The life of Nelson Mandela has been studied in almost exhaustive detail. Countless books, articles, television documentaries, films, websites and school essays have attempted to
understand how a boy from rural Transkei in the Eastern Cape could grow up to become the first black president of democratic South Africa. Many accounts rightly attribute Mandela’s achievements to the extraordinary amount of courage and perseverance he displayed throughout the years he fought in the struggle against apartheid, and during the long and isolating years of his imprisonment. However, there was also another side to Mandela, one that is rarely referenced in any narrative about his life, but which nevertheless played an integral role in shaping the man that he was to become. While he never revealed it publicly, and only rarely referred to it in private to individuals outside of his family and close circle of friends, Mandela’s spirituality and the Methodist beliefs he adopted in childhood were inseparable aspects of his character, and went a long way towards informing his personal philosophy and some of his most important political decisions.

For obvious reasons, Mandela’s political career dominates the majority of discussions about his life. Politics and his commitment to his political party, the African National Congress (ANC), consumed most of Mandela’s existence before his imprisonment on Robben Island, and influenced the way other people thought of him or understood him. For many years, to both black and white South Africans, he was, before anything else, Nelson Mandela the political activist, the man who was prepared to give up his life in
the fight for black South Africans’ freedom. The inherent righteousness of his cause, upon which depended the lives of millions of people, justified this intense devotion to politics and Mandela’s reasoning for putting it first in his life, even if this meant that both his faith and his family suffered as a result. It also fostered a sense of pragmatism in him, which helped to propel his commitment to the armed struggle, even when other prominent members of the ANC, such as the organization’s president, Albert Luthuli,
voiced Christian concerns about using force to accelerate the resistance campaign.

Adding to the lack of awareness about Mandela’s deep spiritual beliefs was his twenty-seven-year-long imprisonment after the life sentence he received in the Rivonia Trial. This was despite the fact that his religious beliefs would grow stronger in the eighteen years he spent on Robben Island, where he was, according to his own admission, “quite religious.”1 The prospect of spending the rest of his life on Robben Island no doubt worked towards developing his spiritual awareness, and religion became an effective and positive means of coping with the hardships he endured there. Even so, the isolation in which he and his fellow political prisoners were kept provided the apartheid state with an opportunity to advance an image of them that was in keeping with the type of Cold War propaganda that circulated at that time, when anyone who questioned or threatened the laws underpinning a Western rule of government was immediately branded an enemy of the state. In such context, Mandela’s opposition to apartheid automatically implied that he was both a communist and anathema to Western ideology and the beliefs that upheld it, including Christianity. But while the South African Communist Party (SACP) claims that Mandela was a member for a brief period, in 1962, this clearly did not prevent him, based on his own testimony and that of his fellow inmates, from participating in religious services during his imprisonment, or from interacting with ministers from a number of churches. To many white South Africans at the time, however, the thought of even placing Mandela’s name next to the word “spiritual” would have been a laughable or absurd notion.

Finally, there is the contribution, or lack thereof, that Mandela himself made towards the small body of knowledge that examines his religious beliefs. As mentioned before, Mandela was too preoccupied by political concerns during the struggle to place any special emphasis on his faith in directing the path he took towards obtaining racial equality, although he did see the value of utilizing church support in advocating the cause among its followers. After his release from prison in 1990, Mandela hardly ever spoke about his religious beliefs in public or to the media. In an interview with Charles Villa-Vicencio in the early 1990s, before he was elected president, Mandela, when asked about whether he considered himself a religious person, denied it: “No, I am not particularly religious or spiritual. Let’s say I am interested in all attempts to discover the meaning and purpose of life. Religion is an important part of this exercise.”

While this statement could be taken as definitive proof of Mandela’s religious outlook, it also contradicts the accounts of a number of people who got to know him while he was in prison and after his release, and who contend that he was indeed a deeply spiritual person whose faith formed the foundation of his policy of reconciliation after his election as president in 1994. Some of these witnesses include Mandela’s personal chaplain, Methodist bishop Don Dabula, Anglican priest Harry Wiggett, who ministered to Mandela for three years while he was in Pollsmoor, and Mandela’s grandson, Mandla Mandela.

Who then to believe? Mandela himself, or the many people who can testify to having witnessed his spiritual side, either while he was in prison or after he became president? It seems Mandela used to say one thing in public about his religious beliefs, and then
something else entirely to individuals he encountered on a personal basis. In the same interview in which he denied being a spiritual person, he offered a possible reason for his public stance on religion in response to a question about his belief in God: “As I have
said, the relationship between a person and God is personal. The question concerning the existence of God is something I reflect on in solitude.”

Mandela’s answer makes it clear that he considered acts of worship and spiritual meditation to be private affairs. Those who engaged with Mandela on an individual level and were able to discuss religion with him confirm that he made a concerted effort to
keep his religious beliefs to himself. Desmond Tutu corroborates this argument, adding that Mandela was “very, very private” about his spiritual life, even when he was given the opportunity to use religion to advance the political cause of the ANC.5 Regardless of this, Mandela still acknowledged the relevance of religion in his own life, as well as its tremendous ability to bring people together and to mediate differences:

Yes, I certainly recognize the importance of the religious dimension of my own life. More important for me, however, is the significance of religion for countless numbers of people I meet both in South Africa and around the world. Religion is important because at the center of the great religious traditions is the pursuit of peace. South Africa needs peace, the world needs peace and I am convinced that if we were to put into practice the central tenets of Christianity, Judaism, African traditional religions, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and other faiths – all of which have a lot in common – there would be peace in the world … I have no problem with religious belief. My problem is that all too often people fail to act on what they claim to believe.

When Mandela said this, South Africa was undergoing a transition from apartheid to democracy, from a system of government that afforded human rights to only a privileged few, to one that would view all people as equals, regardless of race or creed. Mandela was going to be the leader of this new South Africa, and because he recognized the diversity of opinions and beliefs that made this country a “rainbow nation,” he had to ensure that they all obtained an equal standing in the eyes of government and the Constitution. As the living representative of this law, the individual required to uphold it regardless of any constraints, Mandela therefore saw it as his duty to personally stand up for the beliefs of every person it was required to protect. This is why he chose to keep matters relating to his faith private, even if it had been crucial in alleviating many of his anxieties and fears during the long years of his incarceration, and through all the challenges of his presidency.

Christianity had been a vital component of Mandela’s spiritual makeup long before his imprisonment on Robben Island. With his traditionalist father’s approval, he had joined the Methodist Church in childhood. Gadla Mandela’s hope was that his son’s
baptism into the religion of the white people who had claimed authority over his birthplace would present Mandela with opportunities from which many black people were excluded at the time, such as an education. Gadla’s hopes were fulfilled when Mandela
obtained a missionary education that also ended up shaping his political ideology. Mandela would later credit the schooling that he and many of his fellow political activists received at Methodist institutions with creating the kind of independent minds that had
contributed to the anti-apartheid struggle.

But despite the significance he attached to the Christian religion in his own life, there was never any space in Mandela’s worship of it to condemn or undermine other belief systems. In fact, Mandela’s spirituality only strengthened his desire for reconciliation and forgiveness in a country that had almost been destroyed by prejudice
and intolerance. During his presidency, and even while he was in prison, Mandela always found time to worship with different religions and Christian churches in his determination to promote acceptance among South Africa’s various religious groups. The most remarkable product of Mandela’s profound appreciation of Christian concepts, however, was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which he hoped would deal with crimes committed during apartheid without having to resort to Nurembergstyle trials for wrongdoers. Headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the commission determined to confront many of the wrongs that were committed under white rule, but in the spirit of reconciliation and forgiveness.

Years before his death in 2013, Mandela had requested that his burial service observe traditional Methodist rites. With this final salute to the church that had cultivated his spirituality, Mandela had at last provided an answer to those who had always questioned
his religious beliefs, or who had thought of him as an atheist or an enemy of the Christian faith. When his coffin was lowered into the ground, it was his friend, confidant and fellow Methodist, Bishop Don Dabula, who officiated over his burial, performing the traditional Methodist committal, in an act that illustrated the mutual love and regard that both church and follower had always held for each other.