Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage

Journalist Steinberg (A Man of Good Hope) vividly recreates the political and private lives of anti-apartheid activists Nelson and Winnie Mandela in this exceptional dual biography. African National Congress (ANC) leader Nelson Mandela and social worker Nomzamo Winifred Madikizela met in Johannesburg in 1957. Already a target of the white ruling authorities, Nelson went underground in 1961; arrested and jailed the following year for inciting a strike, he eventually received a lifetime prison sentence. While cultivating an aura of suffering and martyrdom from his cell, Nelson evolved into an inspirational figurehead for a free South Africa. Meanwhile, Winnie raised their daughters, supported the family, and made a place for herself in the ANC. By the 1970s, the ANC became South Africa’s preeminent anti-apartheid organization and the Mandelas internationally known as its leaders. Privately, their marriage cracked under the strain. Winnie began taking lovers when Nelson first went underground, which he knew and accepted, though he preferred the myth he wove of their relationship. Rumors also circulated about her drinking and violent behavior. Two years after Nelson’s release in 1990, the couple divorced, costing Winnie the last of the power she held with the ANC. The tumultuous decades apart had turned them into “astonishingly scarred human beings,” Steinberg writes. Readers will be mesmerized by the thrumming tension and profound emotional complexity of this intimate portrait of two global icons. It’s a knockout. Illus. (May)