Nelson Mandela's favourite photographer

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/08/nelson-mandela-favourite-photographer

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Nelson Mandela recalled that, during his long imprisonment, what he missed more than anything was the sight and sound of children. As a father, he was deprived of watching his own children grow up – except in a series of snapshots delivered to Robben Island by his wife Winnie. These precious pictures were taken by Alf Kumalo, the late Sowetan photographer who chronicled the Mandela family for 60 years.

"He asked me to do pictures for him, maybe twice a year, every six months, showing the kids," Kumalo said. "I would give them to Winnie to take to him in prison. All he looked at was pictures of his children that I used to take."

But one year, the pictures stopped coming. Kumalo had temporarily moved to the United States, where he discovered a photographic subject even more famous than Mandela: Muhammad Ali. He said: "When I came back, Mandela's wife said he asked, 'Why are you no longer sending pictures?' So I included a picture of myself and Muhammad Ali in the next lot I sent. And that picture became a hit in prison. Everybody came out and said, 'Hey, we saw your picture with Mohammed Ali.'"

Kumalo was a court photographer when he first met Mandela in the 1950s. "He was defending somebody and my early ambition was that of wanting to be a lawyer. So … seeing a black lawyer looking well dressed and tall and quite impressive, I felt very good when I first met him. But my admiration of him was of him as lawyer, not as a politician, and he wasn't well-known then. He wasn't very known at all."

Kumalo went on to cover the defining events of the anti-apartheid struggle, enduring harassment, police interrogations and several spells in jail. "The Sharpeville massacre [in 1960] really does stand out," he said. "You've never seen people just lying there all over the place. I remember the following morning I wanted to wish I was dreaming: maybe it was just a nightmare, I didn't actually see this. But I couldn't. I was trying to get it out of my mind, but I couldn't. That's how bad it was. But that was actually the turning point in terms of South Africa's politics."

Kumalo enjoyed unrivalled access to Mandela after his release in 1990. He photographed him performing one of his most extraordinary gestures of reconciliation: a visit to Betsy Verwoerd, the widow of apartheid architect Hendrik Verwoerd. "It's that kind of legacy that people will remember. That's why they call our country a miracle. It's because of him that happened.

"He was less angry than he was before he went into prison; understandably so. You know, when people mature and get older they soften up. Most politicians do that."

Kumalo, who continued to work into his 80s, added: "He had lots of humour and whenever we met he said: 'Alf, when are you going to retire?' He always asked me that and at one stage said I should give him a job, he'd like to join me.

"He has said a lot of humorous things. We were travelling in Botswana one time and a journalist said: 'Mandela, just tell us what is this thing that you would think of when you were in jail? Just give us a single thing that you thought of most of the time.' He said: 'Well, if this woman wasn't here, I was going to tell.'"

<em>• 8115: A Prisoner's Home by Alf Kumalo and Zukiswa Wanner will be reissued in paperback by Michael Joseph in early 2014. Alf Kumalo died in October 2012.</em>

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