In 1958 US congress designated May Day to celebrate the casting away of chains by the workers of the world. In the same year elsewhere Nelson Mandela who unshackled millions from chains of apartheid had divorced Evelyn and married Winnie (Madikizela). Mandela’s personal life was as turbulent as the public struggle he led. David James Smith’s book Young Mandela is an attempt to piece together a portrait of the man behind the myth.

The book, in the author’s words, is to retrieve Mandela “from the dry pages of history, to strip away the myth and create a fresh portrait of a rounded human being, setting his political achievements in the context of his natural character.” For this he interviews his family and members of the ANC close to Mandela and researches a number documents and diaries.

Unsurprisingly, the picture that emerges shows some very human failings. More than a touch of vanity – he patronized a Jewish outfitter and some very stormy relationships with women. There are allegations of womanising and more seriously of domestic violence. There is an inescapable note of small town gossip in a few of the interviews. Salacious gossip about the less flattering tales of Mandela’s personal life has been aired before. But accounts of his personal life have been sparse in most biographies. The focus of most published biographical pieces and books is on the historic movement that Mandela led.

Though Mandela himself in his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom has talked extensively about the struggle for civil rights. Young Mandela digs deeper into the personal accounts of Mandela’s comrades in arms. Smith interacts with Ahmed Kathrada, Ruth Mompati and Fatima Meer - all ANC activists to evoke the danger and the fervour of anti-apartheid movement in the fifties and early sixties.

What emerges starkly in Young Mandela is the huge price that the public movement extracted from Mandela’s private life.

The most engaging part of the book are extracts from Mandela’s letters from jail to his daughter and Winnie. These give the reader a glimpse of the storm within the man. And the deep regret he felt for denying his family a normal life. Some might complain that the author in his zeal to strip away layers from a public personality might have let his enthusiasm tarnish an undoubted hero.

The complex image -- a bundle of greatness, pettiness, altruism, selfishness, compassion and indifference is fascinating. The man viewed through a prism of family and close friends results in a narrative that certainly does not detract from the greatness of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela.

by T. Suresh Gopalaswamy