David Turnley is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer who has worked in more than 90 countries covering many of the most important international news events of the past 30 years. In 2008 his book, “Mandela: Struggle and Triumph,†was published by Abrams. He spoke recently with Shreeya Sinha, an editor at The New York Times foreign desk. The conversation has been edited.
When did you start covering South Africa?
I arrived in South Africa in 1985 and was based there for several years in the middle of some of the most explosive years of protest in the unraveling of apartheid. I was kicked out of the country in 1988, by the apartheid regime, which was a big compliment in those years. I was then invited to come back to the country a week before Nelson Mandela was released, and I have been working in South Africa each year since.
What was South Africa like when you go there and how did it evolve through the years?
When I arrived in South Africa I knew very little except who Nelson Mandela was and his aspirations, his commitment, his dedication and his incarceration for life for what he believed.
I was very familiar with the photographic work of Peter Magubane, a black South African photographer. I remember going to a National Press Photographers Association seminar in Akron, Ohio, in about 1979 and seeing this black South African gentleman, very soft-spoken, humble, showing his photographs and speaking about the realities of life under apartheid in South Africa. And his photographs were so incredibly powerful. But not only were his photographs powerful â€" he was incredibly poignant. I was really changed by the experience of listening to Peter.
David C. Turnley It was common during apartheid for even middle-class white South Africans to have at least one black domestic worker. 1986.So when was the first time that you actually saw Mandela?
I was asked by Life magazine in 1985 to do a photographic essay looking at the lives of Winnie Mandela and her daughters, Zindzi and Zenani. I was accompanied by an amazing Life reporter named Chris Whipple. We were introduced to Winnie by Peter Magubane, who is like family to the Mandelas, and we were immediately accepted. And over the course of the first six months from the time we met, not only did we accomplish a quite amazing project looking at the lives of Winnie and her daughters in photographs with Chris’s writing, but I became a family friend. And on a regular basis Iwould visit the family in Soweto. And often, when I wasn’t working, I would stop by to talk.
In the course of that time, I would speak to Winnie about her visits to see Nelson in prison. And I remember asking one day if she would allow me to accompany her when she went to Pollsmoor Prison, on the edge of Cape Town.
I went along under the guise of being a lawyer and went into the waiting room. And we sat together, and then Winnie was taken from the room and led somewhere where she would actually go and sit with Nelson Mandela. And I remember she came back to the waiting room, and as she got to the door, she motioned â€" she stopped and she very quietly, with her hand, motioned for me to come to the door. And as I got to the door, she said, “look to your right,†and I stuck my head out the door, just enough that I could look down the corridor. And probably 15 yards down the corridor, under a bare light bulb, was a very tall silhouette. I couldn’t see the man’s face; I could see th! at he was! wearing prison garb. And it was Nelson Mandela. On either side of him were two prison guards. And that was the first time I saw Nelson Mandela. I remember when we got outside, as we got into the car, as we were driving through the parking lot, Winnie said, “Look up at a certain window on the top floor of the prison,†and as we did, you could see a face, and you could see a hand that was motioning goodbye. And she said, “He always comes to that window when I leave.â€
That was the first time that I saw Nelson Mandela. It was a powerful experience.
The next time I saw Nelson Mandela was on Feb. 11, 1990, at about 4:20 in the afternoon, after standing in the same one-foot by one-foot spot for about 11 hours, as we waited for Nelson to emerge from Verster Prison, where he spent his last year, as he walked through the prison gates holding his fists in the air next to his wife, Winnie, as the world â€" for the first time in 27 years â€" really saw Nelson Mandela.
David C. Turnley Apartheid became a formal, state-sponsored system of racial segregation in 1948 at the instigation of the National Party, which ruled until 1994.What happened next was really fascinating and kind of amazing. The crowd broke. I had time literally to make three frames. Fortunately, they were in focus. And probably three of the happiest frames of my life.
He was rushed into a motorcade, and as this immense crowd broke, I dove for my car. The motorcade was racing into Cape Town, which was about an hour away… the sun was setting â€" it was just unbelievably cinematic.
People lined the highway, screaming, waving. As the motorcade got to the city hall, there were probably a couple hundred thousand South Africans waiting. I somehow managed to park my car and jumped! out in t! his immense crowd of people, and it was the first time I thought I’d be crushed to death in a crowd. The crowd was so frenetic from the unbelievable excitement and happiness, joyfulness of the idea that Nelson Mandela was in this motorcade that they started to jostle the cars, and it really was frightening.
And in that moment, with the sensation that I could be crushed, I climbed above the shoulders of the crowd and literally walked across this sea of people to the balcony of the city hall of Cape Town. Jumping on to the balcony and running down the corridor thinking, “I’m completely out of position; I have to find a door that I can enter so that I can at least see from a window if he appears.†When I opened the door, I had just fallen into the reception committee for Nelson Mandela. Inside was Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Alain Boussac, who was a very powerful activist during the anti-apartheid movement, Jesse Jackson was in the room, Walter Sisulu â€" essentially the prisoner who spent 27 years n Robben Island and at Pollsmoor Prison with Madiba, who was his best friend â€" and Walter Sisulu’s wife, Albertina Sisulu. As they saw me, they all sort of motioned for me to come and be quiet.
David C. Turnley During apartheid, every South African of color was deprived of citizenship and obligated to carry a passbook at all time. Black South Africans, after 1970, were further divided into ten self-governing tribal sections known as bantustans.Within minutes the door opens and in walks Nelson Mandela, and greets everyone in the room as if he’d known them his entire life. Nelson Mandela’s like six feet tall, with wide shoulders and incredible stature and presence. More than that, he has this unbelievable charm and a way of making everyone in the roo! m feel li! ke a million dollars.
He went to every single person in the room, and everyone is crying and hugging, and Archbishop Tutu took a glass and a spoon and he clanked the glass. And standing about three feet from Nelson Mandela, eye to eye, completely locked, he said, “I have to tell you about what you meant to my life.†He started to cry. And he started to tell Nelson Mandela what his life meant to him, and then several people in the room did the same thing. And while this was going on there were thousands people outside not knowing what’s happening, but you could hear the roar of the crowd.
And Nelson Mandela listened. The pride that emanated from this man, the strength, the dignity was just overwhelming. Suddenly, he says, “You’ll have to excuse me, but I have to take care of something.†He opens the window and walks out on a balcony and addresses the world for the first time in 27 years. And as he got to the balcony, the crowd, seeing him, erupted in a spontaneous rendition of the Afrcan National Anthem, and everyone inside the room â€" as the sun was setting through the windows, and the lights glistening on the tears on their cheeks â€" held their fists in the air as this immense crowd was singing this song, and it was just unbelievably powerful.
Then he repeated the words that he spoke on the dock 27 years earlier when at the end of his sentencing he was given the chance to speak for himself. He spoke about his dedication to a world without white domination, without black domination, and he said essentially that it was a vision for which he was prepared to live, but it was also a vision for which he was prepared to die.
How close was your relationship with Mandela’s family after he came out of prison? Did you see him transform during the campaign or when he was president, looking at ways to reconcile?
I was kicked out of South Africa in ’88, so there was a period between ’88 and ’90 when he was re! leased wh! en I really wasn’t in touch with the Mandela family. And then when I came back, I was invited by the South African government just before he was released, unbeknownst to me â€" I didn’t know he was going to be released; but I got a visa and went back and then the events were just so momentous and things happened as Nelson Mandela emerged and as a free South Africa was emerging.
On the second evening after he was released from prison in Cape Town, he had flown to Johannesburg and I was invited into the family dining room when they had dinner together for the first time in 27 years, and I traveled with Nelson Mandela really pretty much anywhere he went.
Over the course of those next four years, I was invited to travel with Nelson Mandela to the United States, for his first trip ever to America. Peter Magubane and myself were invited as the two photographers to personally follow the Mandela family as they traveled America. I was with him the day he voted in the first free elections in South Afrca, when he voted outside of Durban, and I so I photographed him dropping his ballot in the voting box.
You saw him come out of prison â€" how did he change into the man that was to become president?
Honestly, I don’t think Nelson Mandela did change. I think what’s stunning when you’re around Madiba â€"is that he’s not someone that changes. He is who he is. And what he is.
When he walks in a room he will always check the room to see who is the person who needs some attention. The person who’s shy, humble, or perhaps feels like the outcast in that group, he always finds those people. He always does the right thing, in terms of just very simple kindness and consideration. I’ve never seen him be rude to anybody. And it doesn’t matter what your station is in life, he doesn’t make a differentiation in terms of how he treats someone.
What do you remember most from his campaign days? W! hat was t! he moment when he won election like for you?
When he came out of prison, South Africans of color understood that their day had arrived; their leader had arrived. And against the backdrop of the decades of oppression, this was such a monumental hopeful time. And Mandela doesn’t disappoint. When he arrives in front of an audience his presence, his wisdom, his humility, his graciousness, his steadfastness, the sort of iron spirit that you can feel is unwavering, emboldens everyone, in any audience.
There was also a time that required an unbelievable strength of vision, of steadfastness, of real negotiation. There were plenty of occasions when Mandela was in a position where most human beings would have lashed out, would have lost the elevated plane that he stays on, but he never lost that as far as I could see.
You know, it’s really hard at a time like this to really say anything about Nelson Mandela’s life, because anything one might say feels so pale in fac of what he really represents. Something I would like to say, and I feel strongly that Nelson Mandela believes, is there’s a little Nelson Mandela in all of us. And I think that’s the legacy that he would like to leave.
David C. Turnley Nelson Mandela and his wife, Graça Machel, the widow of Samora Michel, the former Mozambican president, in 2005.
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