{"id":24624,"date":"2011-09-06T00:03:13","date_gmt":"2011-09-05T22:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.whalecottage.com\/blog\/?p=24624"},"modified":"2011-09-06T00:03:13","modified_gmt":"2011-09-05T22:03:13","slug":"toffie-food-festivalhunger-for-freedom-a-gastro-political-tribute-to-nelson-mandela","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chrisvonulmenstein.com\/blog\/cape-town\/toffie-food-festivalhunger-for-freedom-a-gastro-political-tribute-to-nelson-mandela\/","title":{"rendered":"Toffie Food Festival:’Hunger for Freedom’ a ‘gastro-political’ tribute to Nelson Mandela!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>One of the\u00a0highlights of the Toffie Food Festival and Conference was the entertaining and informative talk by Dr Anna Trapido, author of \u00a0‘Hunger for Freedom –\u00a0The Story of Food in the Life of Nelson Mandela’,<\/em>\u00a0 which\u00a0came alive for all of us through\u00a0a most unusual lunch.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Inspired by Dr Trapido’s book, TASTE<\/strong>\u00a0 magazine and Woolworths had created a 19-course meal,\u00a0each course individually packaged and numbered, and packed in a\u00a0 paper bag with a legend, referencing each item with a phase in Madiba’s life.\u00a0 The idea was that the delegates were to collectively eat their food from the packet as Dr Trapido talked us through each of the\u00a0stages of\u00a0Madiba’s life, and explained the meaning of food to him in each of these stages.\u00a0 It was a tremendous amount of information to comprehend in the hour, and I was very fortunate to obtain Dr Trapido’s notes after the presentation.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Dr Trapido told us that her book is not a cookbook, but rather a ‘gastro-political biography’, and demonstrated that one comes full circle to one’s beginning through\u00a0the food one eats. Foods we like says who we are, she said, and food can be used to express love, dislike, wealth, poverty, protest, celebration, and reconciliation.\u00a0 A number of women were important in Madiba’s life in preparing food for him, but are not recognised in his biographies.\u00a0\u00a0 Madiba’s fellow prisoners have been interviewed, and tell the same story over and over again.\u00a0 Telling the story of Madiba’s life via his food is unique.\u00a0\u00a0She quoted Madiba as saying: “I was not born\u00a0with a hunger to be free.\u00a0 I was born free. Free in every way that I could know…. It was only when I learnt that my boyhood freedom was an illusion … that I began to hunger for it.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Madiba’s story commenced in Mvezo, born as Rolihlahla Mandela on 18 July 1918,\u00a0and here his mother Nosekeni\u00a0gave him\u00a0Amasi to drink, still his favourite sour milk drink.\u00a0\u00a0‘Amasi is the ricotta of Southern Africa’<\/em>, said Dr Trapido.\u00a0 Madiba wrote about amasi:“I long for amasi – the food for which I loved to sharpen my teeth and to stretch out my tummy, the act that I really enjoyed, went straight into my blood and into my heart and that produced perfect contentment.”<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n

As a teenager Madiba’s father lost his job as headman, and he therefore sent his wives and children to their respective traditional homes.\u00a0 Madiba spent his teenage years in Qunu, his mother’s home, and here he met Winnie Matyolo at school, who became his\u00a0first girlfriend.\u00a0 This was a posh family, eating with cutlery.\u00a0 When he went to eat at her home, they tried to discourage the courtship by preparing a half-cooked chicken and giving Madiba cutlery, which he had never previously used.\u00a0 The chicken went flying off the plate.\u00a0 The girlfriend’s sister mocked his inability to eat with cutlery, to which the girlfriend replied that she would teach him.\u00a0 Each delegate had a chicken wing in their lunch pack, and was challenged to eat it with the plastic knife and fork in our pack!<\/p>\n

At the Clerksbury Boarding School Madiba often was given a scone with apricot jam by Mrs Harris, the headmaster’s wife, a ‘royal feast’ for him at the time, and a taste he did not forget.\u00a0 In 1938 he went to study at Fort Hare University, but was expelled the following year for supporting a strike by the kitchen staff.\u00a0 Madiba moved to Johannesburg, living with the Xhoma family, and through them he met Walter Sisulu, an ANC activist, and a number of later leaders of the ANC Youth League, Oliver Tambo being one of them.\u00a0 Through Sisulu, an estate agent who brought lots of conveyancing work to the law firm Witkin, Sidelsky & Eidelman, Madiba was employed as an articled clerk as a favour to Sisulu.\u00a0 Saving his money to buy candles with which to study through UNISA at night, he was often hungry at work.\u00a0 His colleague Nat Bregman shared his pastrami sandwich, by asking Madiba to pull it, as we did with our neighbour at the Festival, and this represented the Communist Party, which shared everything, Madiba was told.\u00a0 In Johannesburg he met the Naidoo family, and Manonomany Naidoo made a meal of crab curry and rice, the first time that Madiba ate\u00a0curry and crabs, disliking\u00a0the taste initially, but he became fond\u00a0of Indian food generally, and crab curry specifically, over time.<\/p>\n

In Johannesburg Madiba met Walter Sisulu’s cousin Evelyn in 1944, and they married a year later. They were married for twelve years and had four children.\u00a0\u00a0In this period he became a lawyer, father, and political activist.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Evelyn was a nurse, and kept the family afloat financially initially.\u00a0 He loved having his own home, and inviting guests, unannounced to his wife, for dinners.\u00a0 He planted a peach tree in the garden, the fruit of which went into many favorite dishes.\u00a0In 1952 a Defiance Campaign for the Defence of Unjust Laws was initiated by the ANC, and Madiba was its Volunteer-in-Chief.\u00a0\u00a0 In five months after its launch, 8000 people were imprisoned for\u00a0using ‘Whites only’ facilities.\u00a0\u00a0It led to\u00a0a six-month banning order, and Madiba was not allowed to leave Johannesburg,\u00a0or talk to more than one person at one time.\u00a0 His wife was happy to have her husband at home for dinner more often!\u00a0 Madiba and Oliver Tambo opened a law firm in 1953, and many cases related to\u00a0food, drink and land, e.g. women brewing and selling beer in Cato Manor, and prison labourers exploited on potato farms.\u00a0The ANC’s Freedom Charter was adopted in 1956, but led to the arrest of Madiba and many others, to be released on bail. \u00a0It was Madiba’s political commitments and Evelyn’s religious dedication that led to the failure of the marriage, and they divorced in 1957.\u00a0 Madiba and the Rivonia trialists were served Besan Ladoo by Thayanagee Pillay for the five years of the trial, as were we as delegates.\u00a0 Black persons were not allowed to drink alcohol, so George Bizos, their lawyer, served small tots of alcohol,\u00a0in case there was a police raid.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Madiba met Winnie, the first social worker in Soweto\u00a0and a very attractive socialite, featured in DRUM <\/strong>magazine, and it was love at first sight, in that Madiba asked her to marry him at the first lunch they had at a Johannesburg restaurant, one of only two at which Black persons were allowed to eat. She was less enamoured with the lunch, as they were served curry, a dish she had never eaten before, and it made her eyes water and her nose run.\u00a0 They married a year later. For the wedding at Winnie’s family home in Bizana, Madiba and his friends had to obtain special permission to have\u00a0the conditions of\u00a0their banning order relaxed,\u00a0to attend.\u00a0 Winnie removed the top layer of the wedding cake, and wanted to take it to Madiba’s family in Qunu, but\u00a0as they\u00a0only had 6 days\u00a0before returning to Johannesburg, Winnie returned with the wedding cake. For the next thirty years it accompanied Winnie:\u00a0For me, it became a symbol of our love.\u00a0 I kept it in memory of\u00a0our wedding and in hopes of a life that never was.\u00a0 There I was, the most unmarried woman.\u00a0 I had never lived with him…The cake was really all I knew about marriage… I clung to the cake…”.<\/em>\u00a0 In 1988 the cake was destroyed, when the family house burnt down in Soweto.<\/p>\n

After the treason trial collapsed in 1961,\u00a0Umkhonto weSizwe was formed, with Madiba as Commander-in-Chief, and the High Command included Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki and Joe Slovo.\u00a0 \u00a0Madiba went into hiding at Lilliesleaf Farm in Rivonia.\u00a0 Winnie was smuggled in on occasion, and was very upset when her husband cooked her a lovely steak and pea, and fruit platter lunch, it looking far too perfect, and made her suspicious as to who had taught Madiba.\u00a0 In 1961 Madiba went on a\u00a0trip through Africa, to collect monies for the ANC.\u00a0 On his return, he went to Durban to report back to Chief Luthuli, head of the ANC.\u00a0 Madiba ate at the home of the Naidoo’s, who made him a feast of chicken and mutton curry.\u00a0 On his return, Madiba was arrested.\u00a0\u00a0In 1962 Madiba was charged with inciting a strike and leaving the country without a valid travel permit.\u00a0 He was sentenced to five years on Robben Island.\u00a0 Food rations were very sparse.\u00a0 Prisoners went on a hunger strike, and they were punished with hard labour.\u00a0 A raid of Lilliesleaf Farm led to the arrest of the Umkhonto weSizwe High Command, and Madiba’s link to it was uncovered, and he returned to Pretoria to stand trial.\u00a0 He had lost a lot of weight, and\u00a0fellow trialist\u00a0Denis Goldberg passed him a piece of chocolate, which the judge saw, as it was visible in Madiba’s cheek.\u00a0 In 1964 the accused were sentenced to life imprisonment, and sent to Robben Island.\u00a0 Here food was allocated on the basis of population group.\u00a0 Black prisoners were given a 250g mealie, 250g vegetables, 15g fat, 1 cup of coffee, 55g phuzamandla, 15g salt, and 60g meat per day, without any bread.\u00a0 Coloured and Indian prisoners were served 250g bread, 250g vegetables, 30g fat, 2 cups of coffee, 15g salt, 60g sugar, and 110g meat.\u00a0 Only 16 years later the meals at Robben Island were ‘de-racialised’.\u00a0 Warders and prison gangsters stole the meat and the warders urinated at their food when they worked outside.\u00a0 Offences by prisoners were ‘rewarded’ with meals being taken away, and rice water only was served to prisoners in the isolation cells (we received some too in our lunch pack, but were advised not to\u00a0drink it, due to its awful taste).\u00a0 Food was smuggled in, e.g. by\u00a0 a Hindu priest, who dropped some chillies on the floor, from which the prisoners used the seeds to plant on the island, to spice up their food, mixed with olive oil which they could request for ‘constipation’ from the hospital, to make their food more palatable.\u00a0\u00a0Dullah Omar’s wife Farida regularly tried to smuggle in food via his briefcase, but it was usually found and confiscated.\u00a0 She did manage to get bananas through on one occasion.\u00a0 Messages were transferred from studying prisoners, who had access to cellotape, and sealed messages with it at the bottom of the pots.\u00a0 At Christmas the prisoners earned the right to buy sugar, dried fruit and cocoa from the prison shop.\u00a0 Using pieces of bread, cocoa, sugar and currants soaked in phuzamandla, they made themselves a Christmas cake.<\/p>\n

In 1982 Madiba, Walter Sisulu and some other prisoners were transferred to Pollsmoor, and here the food was much better.\u00a0Dullah Omar’s smuggling of his wife’s samoosas, rotis and curries was much more successful.\u00a0 At this time, then-President PW Botha and Henry Kissinger argued over the release of Madiba over a malva pudding, according to Francois Ferreira, then PW Botha’s chef.\u00a0 A bout of TB allowed Madiba to be sent to Constantiaberg Medi-Clinic, the first Black patient in this hospital.\u00a0 Kind nurses smuggled in ‘real’ food, like pizzas, chocolate mousse, and even arranged a Christmas party in his room.\u00a0 He\u00a0started learning social mores from the nurses.\u00a0 In 1988 Madiba was moved to Victor Verster, and lived in a prison warders’ house (now called Mandela House<\/strong><\/span><\/a>), kitted out with a microwave oven, fridge, stove, toaster, and a personal chef, being Warrant Officer Jack Swart, who taught Madiba to make gemmerbier.\u00a0 In 1989 Walter Sisulu, Ahmed Kathrada,\u00a0and two more prisoners were released, in the same year that FW de Klerk became State President.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On 11 February 1990 Madiba walked his first steps to freedom out of Victor Verster with his wife Winnie, spoke to the people of South Africa from the Cape Town City Hall balcony, and spent the first night at the home of Archbishop Desmond Tutu.\u00a0\u00a0 They didn’t know what Madiba liked to eat, so they prepared Tutu’s favourite\u00a0meal.\u00a0\u00a0Madiba’s first meal of freedom was chicken curry with\u00a0rice, and rum and raisin ice cream with custard.\u00a0\u00a0 Returning to Johannesburg, he re-connected with Mrs Pillay and Mrs Naidoo, as well as his old colleague Nat Bregman.\u00a0 In 1992 Madiba and Winnie divorced, and Madiba moved to Houghton.\u00a0 Xoliswa Ndoyiya is his cook, and has\u00a0been cooking for him for\u00a0the past twenty years, making tripe, oxtail, isophu, umbhakho, dombolo and umxhaxha.\u00a0 Madiba won the Nobel Peace Price with FW de Klerk in 1993. In May 1994 Madiba was inaugurated as the new Present of South Africa.\u00a0 His inauguration dinner was organised by the National Party, and the meal consisted of some non-South African dishes, such as Mexican chicken and Spanish rice, but potjiekos and bobotie were included on the menu, as was the only traditional dish\u00a0umngqusho.\u00a0 The meal was served with Graham Beck sparkling wine.<\/p>\n

Madiba used food as reconciliation, and invited all former First Ladies to a dinner.\u00a0 Betsie Verwoerd declined, but invited Madiba to come for tea in Orania, a White-only community.\u00a0 He accepted, being the first Black person to visit Orania, and she served koeksisters.\u00a0 Mrs Verwoerd commented afterwards that Madiba was a ‘real gentleman’.\u00a0 We laughed when Dr Trapido told a story about a trip by Madiba to the United Kingdon, staying at the Dorchester Hotel, where he missed his traditional food.\u00a0 He demanded that umphokoqo be flown in from home, the container wrapped up to look like a present, so that it could get through Customs. Madiba’s PA Zelda la Grange was on standby to contact then-Prime Minister Tony Blair to intervene, should the important package not find its way to the Dorchester Hotel!<\/p>\n

Madiba met Gra\u00e7a Machel in 1990, and she visited the family home in Qunu with Madiba in 1996 for the first time, making a\u00a0traditional Mozambican Christmas meal, with prawns, crabs and other seafood.\u00a0 The family had never eaten such foods, and craved meat, but over the years they have come to love ‘Aunty Gra\u00e7a’s’ seafood.\u00a0 Since his third marriage, Madiba has been encouraged to breakfast later, and to eat \"\"<\/a>what he enjoys, e.g. Frosties with warm milk, double toffee ice cream, and ribs.\u00a0 Madiba moved to Qunu recently, and is expected to stay there, having gone back full circle to where he started his love for traditional Xhosa food.<\/p>\n

‘Hunger for Freedom – The Story of Food in the Life of\u00a0Nelson Mandela’<\/strong>, \u00a0Anna Trapido.<\/p>\n

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com<\/a>\u00a0 Twitter:@WhaleCottage<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the\u00a0highlights of the Toffie Food Festival and Conference was the entertaining and informative talk by Dr Anna Trapido, author of \u00a0‘Hunger for Freedom –\u00a0The Story of Food in the Life of Nelson Mandela’,\u00a0 which\u00a0came alive for all of us through\u00a0a most unusual lunch.\u00a0 Inspired by Dr Trapido’s book, TASTE\u00a0 magazine and Woolworths had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false},"categories":[3,124,266,528,21],"tags":[12987,13170,13153,1399,7303,12054,13171,13150,13163,32378,13154,13168,13174,13164,13159,13155,13167,13175,1049,5770,226,13166,13169,13162,1457,12377,13158,32392,13152,13156,13172,13165,12383,87,13151,5071,13149,12973,2054,13161,5157,13157,32373,13160,171,13173],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t