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Matthew Willman / Nelson Mandela Foundation
It was Matthew Willman’s job to document Nelson Mandela’s face and mood at key moments in the last decade of his life. Yet, as he framed image after image, he found himself repeatedly drawn more to the power of Mandela's hands — their unspoken language of reconciliation and peace.
“I’ve learned a huge lesson about following a dream,” said Willman, a commissioned photographer for the Nelson Mandela Foundation. “Yes, have a goal, have a dream, but it’s not always reaching the goal that makes it worth it. It’s the journey to it. That’s what it was with Mandela.”
Willman was a young man when Mandela was elected president. He saw hope at the historic crossroads that filled many other white South Africans with fear.
"The heart and soul of South Africa is about reconciliation," Willman said. "Whoever you are, whatever traditional heritage or background, we are reconciled through a man like Mandela. No, he wasn’t the be-all and end-all. But he set the bar high.”
A year after Mandela’s death, the 35-year-old Willman marvels at his good fortune — invited behind the curtain by a giant of history, and trusted to stay. But his road to the anti-apartheid hero’s inner circle didn’t come easy. Willman made countless attempts to reach Mandela. It was the 18 months he spent living on and photographing Robben Island, where Mandela spent 18 of his 27 prison years, that eventually caught the attention of the Mandela Foundation — and ultimately became the backbone of a 10-year project of creating the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory in Johannesburg.
In October, Willman spoke at the One Young World Summit in Dublin, Ireland. The summit, founded with the mission of finding the next Mandela, annually brings together young leaders representing 190 countries. America Tonight caught up with Willman to talk about Mandela, the private man behind the public persona. Questions and answers are edited for clarity.
You were 14 years old when Mandela was elected president of South Africa. Tell me about that time and how it ultimately led you to him.
As a young boy, you look to heroes. For me, it was Nelson Mandela. I didn’t know his politics. I didn’t know anything outside of the grandfather figure I saw. People were running away; I ran to it. It wasn’t just running to Mandela. It was running to the problems – going into the townships, going into the rural areas, ensuring that I, as a young South African, was identifying with this country.
What was it like when you finally did get to meet Mandela?
People say, "Where were you on 9/11? Where were you the day man walked on the moon?" The 13th of August 2004 was an extraordinary day. It was a day I dreamt of for nine and a half years. Mandela, the global icon, the statesman, the man who transcended boundaries, and here I was, a little boy from a town on the east coast 600 kilometers away from him with this dream to meet him. Little did I know that the first meeting would transpire into an incredible journey with him and with the Mandela Foundation.
I was so nervous. We give Mandela many honorary titles. We can call him Khulu. We can call him Dalibhunga, or Madiba. These are honorary words that we use in his culture. Because he’s an elder in the community and he’s of royal lineage, we can call him these names. So I had in my head all the time, what will I call this man? Mr. Mandela? No, too formal. We know he’s too friendly for that. Will I call him Nelson? Never. Only Queen Elizabeth II had the privilege of calling him Nelson. And he called her Elizabeth.
How did Mandela introduce himself?
Before you even see him, you hear him. He was always the loudest man in the room. That’s what is so beautiful about that man: He always gave you that confidence. Whether he was talking to a group of five people or 500 people, he was the loudest man. He was so interested in smallest person in the room.
I had been sitting in the corridor. He came in with his [assistant] Zelda la Grange. I went straight up to him, I put my hand in his hand and I shook it. Without letting it go, he looked at me. And I said, "How are you, Mr. Mandela Madiba, sir?" I didn’t know what to call him. So, I called him everything. I said, "Mr. Mandela, it’s taken me nine and a half years to meet you." He looked at me and he said, “Yeah? And why did you not just phone me?”
Was it difficult to photograph Mandela up close?
I got to be in the space around Madiba. It was privileged. It was private. It was intimate. When you are working with someone, you are always looking for something creative and curious about the person, particularly when you are a fly on the wall. You become invisible.
Photography is a funny game. You get taught the principles of photography: lighting, location, composition, use of thirds. But all of the sudden you take a picture that breaks all those confines – like chopping a forehead off or placing the portrait dead center in the middle of the picture – and yet the image works. It works beautifully. I don’t know if it’s because it’s Mandela, if I could have done that with President Obama. Everything about Madiba that I documented was legacy-building, memory shots. They weren’t always the formal official portrait. It was this idea that we had to create memory images.
Who was Mandela behind closed doors?
He loved to make jokes about anything and everything, just to put you at ease. He hated decorum. We always say he left the building a long time ago.
Children were his outlet. Children didn’t judge him. They didn’t really know who he was. Here, he was held up as this great statesman, this icon. Children accept, and they are very truthful about their emotions. Mandela loved children because he could just be a grandfather like he loved and yearned for with his own family.
People often ask me, what was Mandela really like? I’m not anyone of great stature who can make a statement about Mandela. But the man you saw in public was the same man in private. When you dissect that comment, it really goes to the very heart and soul. It’s a beautiful thing to say about a person: As you are in public, you are in private. That means you are at peace with yourself, you follow your principles and you do not waver in those. That was Mandela.
And as a nation and as the world, we could be comfortable with who Mandela was. He could be friends with Muammar Gaddafi and still entertain American aristocracy. That is a beautiful thing.
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