The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

epresentatives on the Nelson Mandela Museum council. 279 Kathrada was seemingly
given the portfolio of managing Mandela’s biography in national museums.
As part of the management of Mandela’s biography, the NMF made a decision to enjoin
Mandela’s legacy with that of Cecil John Rhodes to create the Mandela Rhodes
Foundation, “an historic amalgamation of resources to boost initiatives in education and
other fields”. This almost unlikely initiative to bring together “the names of two immense
figures of Africa” in a biographic pact signalled (in Mandela’s words) “the closing of the
circle and the coming together of two strands in our history”. 280 The NMF Chair, Jakes
Gerwel, who was also the Chair of the HSRC’s council, enlisted the HSRC’s assistance in
the compilation of Mandela’s speeches in an 85 th birthday, celebratory publication, “as an
enduring legacy for South Africans and the world”. Produced with attention to biography,
Mandela’s speeches were accompanied by a series of tributes by “leading national and
international figures” in many fields. 281
Finally, the NMF also ensured the redeployment of HSRC researcher, Thembeka
Mufamadi, who specialised in biographical research, to assist Mandela on a full‐time basis
with writing a book on his presidential memoirs as a sequel to Long Walk to Freedom. 282 At
the end of 3003, rumours began to circulate in museum circles that the NMF had
expressed a desire to have Mandela’s gifts taken from the Nelson Mandela Museum’s
Bhunga Building in Umtata and brought to Gauteng, where they could display these in a
more prominent, visible location, perhaps one such as Nelson Mandela Square. Some
expressed objections to the NMF’s claims to be a collecting and display institution in
respect of Mandela’s legacy, and worried that it may be claiming a responsibility best
suited to an official museum. However, this seemed to be an indication that the NMF had
begun to position itself more deliberately as a memory custodian in the cultural economy
279 Nelson Mandela Museum Publicity Folder (Umtata, c.2002). The other council members
representing the Mandela family were Jakes Gerwel, the NMF Chair, Fink Haysom, one of Mandela’s
lawyers and Mandela’s wife, Graça Machel.
280 Michael Morris, ‘Rhodes Scholars to hold meeting of minds in city’, Cape Argus, 24 January 2003.
281 Kader Asmal, David Chidester and Wilmot James (eds), Nelson Mandela: From Freedom to the Future –
Tributes and Speeches (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2003).
282 Thembeka Mufamadi, personal communication.
288