S’African Novelist accuses late Nelson Mandela of assaulting wife, Evelyn

The late South African president, Nelson Mandela, has been accused of physically abusing his wife, Evelyn, in the presence of their children and some other kids.

The allegation was made by a popular South African novelist, poet and playwright, Zakes Mda, who was reacting to a damning revelation by a poet, Mukoma Wa Thiongo against his father.

Mukoma had claimed that his father, Ngugi Wa Thiongo, a famous Kenyan author, physically abused his mother multiple times.

Mda applauded Thiongo for speaking up against his father, despite the possible repercussion.

He also added that his childhood was traumatised because the father figures in his life made physical and verbal abuse against women seem normal.

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While commending Mukoma, Mda wrote, “This is the bravest thing any son of an icon can do. Ignore those who are denouncing you. What is more important is your truth and your healing. Many of us need such reckoning with the truth of our past.

“My father never physically beat up my mother – to my knowledge. But his words were abusive to her most times. I never said or did anything about it. I thought it was normal, it was how real men talked to women.

“It was the same when I saw Nelson Mandela slap his wife Evelyn in the kitchen in the presence of us kids. Here too I thought it was a normal thing that men should do occasionally – discipline ‘their’ women.

“It was only on looking back as a young adult that I realized that what I saw growing up had left me traumatized. It was only after I had written about these incidents in my memoirs that I felt the relief, and I came face-to-face with my humanity once again.”