While most of us have two names: a first and sometimes a middle name and a nickname, Mandela, one of the world’s most famous icons, went by more than one names during his lifetime. He was referred to as Rolihlahla, Nelson, Dalibunga, Black Pimpernel, David Motsamayi, Tatomkhulu, Buto, and Madiba.
This depended on environments and circumstances. While a name itself may not be that important in our modern societies, in traditional Africa names were full of meanings. They could give sense to its bearer’s life or sully their reputation.
Furthermore, names were never given without any good reason. Sometimes they were earned like a hunting trophy or despisingly given like a spittle of revulsion.
When Mandela was born in a village called Mvezo, his father named him “Rolihlahla”. In Xhosa, Mandela’s mother tongue, “Rolihlahla” literally means “pulling the branch of a tree”, but its accurate figurative meaning is “troublemaker”.
Mandela did not believe that names could be in control of one’s destiny or that his father somehow portended his future. But in later years, his friends and relatives would ascribe to his birth name all the trouble he had made as a leader during apartheid.
Mandela was among the very few Africans who went to school in the 1930s. Schools being administrated by white people, Africans were indoctrinated with a false propaganda on English ideas, education and culture.
On the first day of school, his teacher, Miss Mdingane, gave each of the students an English name and said that from then on that was the name by which they would go at school. His was “Nelson”. However, he did not know why she gave him that name.
In other analysis, Guiloineau presumes that in 1915, Henry Gadla, Mandela’s father, joined the South African army to fight the Germans in the African South-East. His son, Mandela, was born three years later. So, remembering the great British admiral Horatio Nelson (1758-1805), distinguished for his victories over the French and the Spanish, he named the baby after him.
While much importance might not be given on the true origin of “Nelson”, white racists were either unable or unwilling to pronounce an African name and considered it uncivilized. They addressed Africans whose names they did not know as “John”. So, black South Africans had no other choice but to answer by any name given to them.
As a teenager, Mandela was circumcised. He had then taken the essential step in the life of every Xhosa man. He could marry, set up his own home, and plow his own field. He could also be admitted to the councils of the community because his words would be taken seriously.
At the circumcision ceremony, he was given his circumcision name, “Dalibunga”, meaning “Founder of the Bunga,” the traditional ruling body of the Transkei. To Xhosa traditionalists, this name is more acceptable than any Mandela’s given names.
Actually, “Dalibunga” meant something in Mandela’s life since the way he had chosen was preparing him for the presidency. In the context of apartheid which limited all human rights of black people, Mandela had to fight it underground.
His outlaw existence caught the imagination of the press. Journalists were on the lookout for sensational stories and Mandela was the most wanted man.
But he had been nowhere to be found for almost a year. He was dubbed the “Black Pimpernel”, a somewhat derogatory adaptation of Baroness Orczy’s fictional character “the Scarlet Pimpernel”, who daringly evaded capture during the French Revolution. He would pop up here and there to the annoyance of the police and to the delight of the people.
To succeed in his clandestine life, he had to change his workplace, address, friends, social position but most importantly his name.
Mandela took the alias “David Motsamayi”, the name of one of his former clients when he was a lawyer. While living clandestinely to escape the police, this name gave him the social status of a gardener, a chauffeur, a cook and many more that are not very well considered in so-called modernised societies.
So, he could take part in political activities secretly without bothering about the consequences. Just like him, his comrades-in-arms and future inmates, Walter Sisulu and Ahmed Kathrada also respectively went by “Allah” and “Pedro”. Dennis Goldberg, a dedicated white activist, went by “Williams” and “Bernard”. This is what South Africa during apartheid looked like, a police state.
When Mandela lost his father, the regent of Mqhekezweni, Jongintaba Dalindyebo, raised him as his own son along with his two children and another boy who belonged to the royal family.
These people who were closer to Mandela used to call him by the pet name of “Tatomkhulu”, which means « grandpa » because they said when he was very serious, he looked like an old man.
When he became the first democratically elected president of South Africa, his bodyguards affectionately called him “Tata”, the short form of “Tatomkhulu”.
According to Fatima Meer also, his relatives called him “Buto”.
Yet, Mandela was more affectionately called “Madiba”, his clan name that means reconciler. People would call him so to remind him of his Thembu heritage from time to time, especially people of his clan.
Today even, people keep remembering him as “Madiba” and this name sounds more beautiful than all his other names.
PS: For further reading, also check Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela (Great Britain: Abacus, 1994); Jean Guiloineau’s Nelson Mandela (Paris: Editions Payot et Rivages, 2004); and Fatima Meer’s Higher than Hope: The Authorized Biography of Nelson Mandela (New York: Harper & Row, 1988).
By Mouhamed DIOP
PhD candidate at Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar, Sénégal
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