Nelson Mandela Was Betrayed by Wife to Apartheid Police: Book

Nelson Mandela, the iconic anti-apartheid leader who brought multiracial democracy to South Africa, was indirectly betrayed by his wife, Winnie, to the apartheid police, according to a new book.

In Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage, Jonny Steinberg claims that Mrs. Mandela, who was apparently in the midst of an extramarital affair, told the apartheid regime indirectly where to find and arrest her husband.

Journalist and author Rian Malan, in his review of Steinberg’s book, describes the events as follows:

The first of these [affairs] involved Brian Somana, a young comrade tasked to look after Winnie and her daughters after Nelson went underground. Somewhere along the line, Somana became a police informer, and also Winnie’s lover.

The sequence isn’t exactly clear, but Jonny says Nelson came to believe that Winnie shared the secret of his whereabouts with Somana, and was therefore responsible for his capture. Adding insult to injury, she moved Somana into the Mandela home just two weeks after he was handed a life sentence at the Rivonia Trial.

According to Jonny, Nelson was initially of a mind to divorce her immediately, but he calmed down in time and began to send her tender love letters, assuring her that he was willing to let bygones be bygones.

Winnie Mandela was abused by apartheid police throughout her husband’s imprisonment. But she herself became embroiled in human rights abuses carried out by her loyalists in South Africa’s black townships.

Nelson Mandela divorced his wife shortly after his release from prison in 1990, and before he was elected president. He later married Graca Machel, the widow of the late Mozambican leader Samora Machel.

Mandela, who passed away in 2013, shared the Nobel Peace Prize with F. W. de Klerk in 1993 and remains an international icon, both for his struggle against racism and for his efforts at reconciliation after apartheid.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.