(Author: Lana Jacobson, Vol. 68, No. 2, Rosh Hashanah 2013)
In his foreword to Jewish Memories of Mandela (published by the SA Jewish Board of Deputies and the Umoja Foundation in 2011), Ivor Ichikowitz wrote:
The Jewish connections in the story of Nelson Mandela are quite remarkable… Jews were part of Mandela’s life from the time he first came from rural Transkei to the city of Johannesburg and embarked on a career that would change this country forever. In good times and bad, danger bordering on despair and the ultimate triumph, his Jewish friends and colleagues were at his side… They have come together in identifying with Nelson Mandela’s journey through life and are today united in their support and admiration for everything he represents.
There is indeed an ongoing relationship between the South African Jewish community and Nelson Mandela. His iconic status has now been visually explored in a major art exhibition, We Love Mandela: Art Inspired by Madiba, curated by Natalie Knight and sponsored by entrepreneur Alan Demby. 22 artists from the Cape to Limpopo Province exhibit their art which has been inspired by Madiba. In addition to the organizers, eight of the artists are Jewish. Demby offered Knight the opportunity to showcase her annual Mandela exhibition at South Africa House in London. They discovered that they had a mutual passion – both loved Mandela.
We Love Mandela: Art Inspired by Madiba previewed at the Peacemaker’s Museum and the Stephan Welz Gallery. Both venues are part of the empire being forged by Demby at the Nelson Mandela Square in Sandton. The show opened on 18 July 2013, Mandela’s 95th birthday, and ran until the end of August. The London show which is the start of a global tour (2-16 October) takes place at South Africa House, Trafalgar Square.
Demby’s connection to Mandela is through gold medallions. A chance opportunity to trade three Kruger Rands when he was a young man in the army led him to buy out the SA Gold Coin Exchange twenty years later in 1992. Demby opened his first retail coin shop in Sandton City in 1995 and he now has 35 shops (called Scoin) throughout SA and one in London. He comments, “I wanted to democratize coin buying. In previous years dealers treated clients like suspects instead of prospects”.
The Mint of Norway created the Nobel laureates programme in 1995. Some ten years later, the South African Gold Coin Exchange secured the worldwide marketing and sales rights. The worldwide sale of Nobel Laureate medallions in gold, silver, platinum and palladium now exceeds 100 000. Demby gives a percentage of the profits to the Nelson Mandela Foundation, the Nobel Institute and Liliesleaf. He proudly talks of attending three Nobel Peace Award ceremonies, and meeting and sharing the same dance floor with Michelle and Barack Obama and the King and Queen of Norway. Perhaps his proudest moment was when he presented Aung San Suu Kyi with her own Nobel Laureate gold medallion (see below).
In line with the Nobel awards, Demby created the Peacemakers Museum in Nelson Mandela Square in Sandton to honor South Africa’s four Peace Prize laureates. This is the only museum in the world situated in a shopping mall.
It was a short step to combining coins and art and in 2012 Demby bought Stephan Welz & Co, the auction house which was established 45 years ago. With this synergy in place he approached Natalie Knight, who was in the process of curating a major Mandela show for the Origins Gallery at Wits. This was the follow up of the Mandela@94 show held in the same venue in 2012, where George Bizos shared his memories of Mandela.
Knight was concerned about Mandela’s state of health and the show at Wits was cancelled. Several of the 22 artists had already completed their work and she regarded Demby’s offer as serendipitous. A show was planned for South Africa House in London in May, but this was also postponed as Mandela’s health deteriorated. It was only after discussion with the Centre of Memory at the Mandela Foundation that they received a positive directive to hold the exhibition on 18 July. The Centre of Memory also supplied some photographs of Mandela for the show.
The work of the eight Jewish artists in the exhibition varies considerably in style, medium and content.
Dean Simon is known in the Jewish community through his recreations of shtetl scenes. He has the remarkable ability to draw a scene with such detail that it could be a photograph. As the first Jewish war artist, he captured events on the border of South West Africa which were impossible to photograph. He has produced many works about Mandela, and the work on this show is one of the most controversial. It is based on the composition of The Last Supper. Simon depicts Mandela in the central role, surrounded by peacemakers of various eras, as a rebel and freedom fighter against oppression. He has made an edition of fifty prints, each signed by Mandela (the Mandela Foundation owns one of these). He is currently preparing a major one man show accompanied by a book.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row] Dean Simon: ‘Last Supper’. The figures in the work are Nelson Mandela in the middle. To his left are Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks (The African American Civil rights leader, as Mary Magdalene), Robert Sobukwe, Haile Selassie. Behind them are Oliver Tambo and Steve Biko. To his left are Gandhi and Desmond Tutu, behind them are Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah, Albert Luthuli. Explains the artist, “the figure of Judas has been left incomplete as it could be filled by any one of a number of corrupt leaders who came before, who are in power now and unfortunately will be in power in the future.” Simon’s hyper- realistic style in stark black and white is in direct contrast to Susan Woolf’s work, which is an exuberant burst of color. Woolf is working towards a PhD based on her codification of taxi hand-signs for both sighted and blind people in Gauteng. Mandela’s fist is not an aggressive one – it has become known as the symbol of amandla, which incorporates power and peace. Woolf has also depicted the clenched hand in a manner which, when printed in a raised form, can be ‘read’ by blind people. She met and was photographed with Mandela at the Mandela@ 90 exhibition held at the Constitutional Court, recalling of that occasion, “Even at 90 years old, Madiba’s warmth, inner strength and generosity of spirit is something I experienced in his presence. It is easy to be inspired by a man who has such conviction, stands steadfastly by what he believes to be right, but also has a capacity for kindness, forgiveness and acceptance of others.” Mandela’s name Rolihlahle literally means “pulling the branches of a tree” (or, colloquially, “troublemaker”). Several of the artists on the show, including Loren Hodes, have used the metaphor of a tree to describe Madiba. Says Hodes, “Both Nelson Mandela and the African Baobab (the Tree of Wisdom) are iconic and larger than life, legendary in their own but similar ways. Unique in Africa and the world, both are repositories of strength and of hope. Symbolic of growth, of life and renewal, unceasingly strong and consistently able to overcome, endure and to thrive in the midst of the bleakest of environments. They do not withhold or discriminate. Larger than life, the baobab dominates the African landscape as Nelson Mandela dominates the minds of all who strive for justice and equality. Majestic, noble and dignified, the baobab, a symbol of Mother Africa, has its partner in Tata Madiba”. Loren Hodes: ‘Tree of Life’
Mandela recalled in his autobiography The Long Walk to Freedom that “a garden was one of the things in prison that one could control.” Mandela shared the produce with the warders. He was very upset when “a particularly beautiful tomato plant… began to wither and decline and nothing I did would bring it back to health. Sometimes there is nothing one can do to save something that must die.” Woolf draws the tomato plant with sensitivity and delicacy. She provides a way to explore some of Mandela’s emotions during his prison ordeal.
Zapiro, aka Jonathan Shapiro, is South Africa’s best known political cartoonist. He became an anti–apartheid activist in 1983 and was detained by the security police. He is currently editorial cartoonist for the Mail & Guardian, Sunday Timesand The Times and has won many national and international awards. Zapiro’s acerbic cartoons go for the jugular. His cartoons on Israel have been vicious and have upset the Jewish community. By contrast, his works of Mandela have shown that it is not necessary to be nasty to be funny. His obvious regard for Mandela is seen in many of his cartoons. For example, he comments on Mandela’s humility in ‘Icon? Aikona!’ and gives Mandela a quasi-biblical status when he ‘splits the Sea’.
Len Sak began creating political cartoons for the SA Jewish Frontier (1956 – 1964) and at the same time was working for Bantu World. He also created a weekly cartoon called Saklines for the Sunday Times before going to work in London for The Observer. He is the creator of the character JOJO, which is still remembered by his black readers with great affection. JOJO was the mouthpiece of the urban black man, a moral character concerned with the effects of smoking, alcohol abuse and drunken driving. After 1976, JOJO began to reflect more political comment. Sak was a sharp critic of South Africa’s domestic policy and spoke out against injustice and in support of a new democratic South African society. In 1985, SABC TV 2 featured JOJO in a 52 episode weekly series with a live Zulu sound track. In addition to his humorous work, Sak illustrated various books. He particularly enjoys drawing for black readers, finding it a challenge to depict and interact with a culture so different from his own. He caricatured Dr Verwoerd with venom, comparing him to Frankenstein. The works on the show relate to the Mandela era, published in the Sowetan between 1990 and 1994.
Michael Meyersfeld is a photographer of note. His work is stark, sometimes somber, and contains lonely and edgy imagery. Meyersfeld has won numerous awards, the most recent being a gold at the London AOP awards in 2012. Although he has not produced a portrait of Mandela, his photograph of The Mandela Bridge at Night is a symbol of the way in which Mandela was able to bridge so many disparate elements.
Eric Sher is a graphic artist whose reconstruction of Mandela’s offices at Chancellor House on the corner of Fox and Becker streets was published in Jewish Memories of Mandela (p11). In 2008 his father Norman, an attorney who worked in the same building as Mandela and befriended him, took him to Chancellor House. The building was completely dilapidated and Eric recreated it based on his father’s description. Chancellor House was restored in May 2011. Prints of Sher’s work are displayed at the Apartheid Museum, Constitutional Court, Robben Island and Wits. The original drawing of the building is in the current London exhibition. Sher has also captured other places which have played a central role in Mandela’s life, namely Liliesleaf and Robben Island.
It is fitting to conclude with the insights of South African Chief Rabbi Dr Warren Goldstein with regard to the overwhelming universal response to Mandela, the man who has declared that he is not a saint:
Amidst societies which idolize the powers of the body, Nelson Mandela attests to the enduring power of the soul, the power of principle over expediency, of giving over grabbing, of enduring values over momentary selfish pleasure, of the path to real happiness which only truly comes from living with moral purpose.
Nelson Mandela was a beacon of hope in the dark days of Apartheid. He remains a beacon of hope. The global romance with Nelson Mandela is a sign of hope for humanity; we are still moved by heroes of the spirit.
Lana Jacobson is a journalist and author with 25 years of experience in the media across the board.She has written for popular magazines, most newspapers, and corporations, as well as ghost written books.
