Reflecting on Greatness

At the immersive Mandela: The Exhibition, visitors can embark on a journey through the life of the inspirational Nelson Mandela. One thing they can't do, sadly, is meet the late, great leader. Peter Morey was by Madiba's side when countless people had that very privilege.

WORDS: CHRIS UJMA

Before she went into his office to meet him, Mariah Carey was perfectly composed and smiling. 30 seconds later – after a short conversation and the shake of a hand – it was like a freight train had hit her senses: she was crying and emotional. Her staff whisked her away, back to her hotel.” It’s a scenario that Peter Morey witnessed time and again at the Mandela Foundation Offices in South Africa. Morey – the official photographer to the family in Mandela’s later stages of life – saw kings, queens, superstars and mere mortals in awe, their poise interrupted.

"That’s the profound affect he had,” Morey says, using the time Mariah met Madiba as an example. “He could wow anybody, but it was not a pretentious ‘wow’ – just a natural charm that made people so overwhelmed in his presence. Meeting him was a life changing event – for everyone.”

Mandela departed us five years ago, and 2018 marked a century since his birth: two timely milestones that prompted the painstaking planning of Mandela: The Official Exhibition – an immersive showcase hosted at London’s 26 Leake Street, Waterloo. Morey’s photography is among the vast collection of images, anecdotes, curios and artefacts from the Royal Household of Mandela, that have been accumulated to illustrate an in-depth journey through the late, great leader’s life.

A series of immersive zones guide visitors through Nelson Mandela’s remarkable ascendance to becoming a globally loved and respected figure. The comprehensively-told story unfurls gradually: Mandela’s childhood in the Eastern Cape, steeped in the tribal traditions that shaped him, through to his political awakening in Johannesburg, all against the backdrop of South Africa’s turbulent struggle against apartheid. It provides insight into his 27-year incarceration, and celebrates his triumphant liberation – which led to an historic term as South Africa’s first black president.

The exhibition, spread across seven galleries, promises to ‘go beyond the Mandela myth’ – and in the 1980s there was plenty of mystery swirling around his reputation.

Decades before Morey’s own formal introduction to Madiba, his involvement was less personal – he was jostling for position in the media pack, as one of a thousand press members on-hand to document a particularly significant event for the newsreel: Mandela’s release.

“To be quite honest, during the 1970s/80s when he was in prison, we knew very little about him. I wasn’t raised in a very political family, and only when I started working for the Pretoria News did I begin to learn more about him," admits the photographer. "As a population, there were varying opinions of who he was, what he stood for – and also what he looked like. When the press arrived to document his release, we had photographs of him from 20 years prior to his imprisonment, but we’d no idea what he even looked like. We just knew he’d be the one surrounded by a swarm of people.”

When Madiba was inaugurated as the nation’s first post-Apartheid president in 1994, Morey was at the Union Buildings in Pretoria. Then, “as time marched on”, he was the official photographer for the Miss World and Miss Universe pageants. When they hosted the events in South Africa, the girls would meet Mandela.

Morey was welcomed into the fold after meeting Mandela’s daughter, and was appointed to document birthday celebrations, formal meetings with presidents and photo ops with Miss Universe contestants, while being entrusted with capturing intimate family moments occurring away from the public eye.

His relationship was with ‘Nelson Mandela, the grandfather and the family man,’ rather than ‘the politician and freedom fighter.’ Countless other monikers have been bestowed on Mandela – revolutionary, father, political prisoner, world leader, statesman, icon of the struggle against oppression. Morey’s definition him, oft-repeated in our anecdoteinfused conversation, is ‘kind’.

“One thing that stands out in my memory is his warmth towards the public,” recounts Morey. “His security guards would tear their hair out, because whenever there was a function and they’d planned the route to a tee, he would deviate in order to greet anyone and everyone. Watching him interact with others bought home how full of kindness and compassion he was, to speak to the ‘ordinary’ person, and give them his time.”

Morey describes the first time he met him as “probably the most significant moment in my life,” and later he had the opportunity to introduce his family to Madiba.

“The first time my children met him they were school-age girls, and kept saying to me ‘Dad, can’t he come to my school?’ and I’d tell them ‘You’re crazy, this is Nelson Mandela, you’re lucky to get two minutes with him!’ The first thing he said to them was ‘Oh what school do you go to? I must come and visit you there’ – and that was his way, knowing exactly what to say to win someone’s heart over.”

The recently-opened London-based exhibition has acquired an assortment of Mandela's worldly possessions, and while there are some (such as an ivorywhite cane) that are synonymous, the item Morey recalls him having to hand is a newspaper. “When I would go to the residence and sit with him in the dining room or the lounge, chatting to him, he always had a newspaper – very often in Afrikaans,” he explains.

“It was symbolic: when he went into prison, he couldn’t speak or read Afrikaans –‘the language of the oppressor’, if I can call it that – but Madiba taught himself to the point that the prison warders used to ask him to read the letters they’d received from their family. He was very proud of himself for that.”

As one would expect of a well-read world leader, Mandela had his finger on the pulse of current events – but had a remarkable propensity for accessing the information seemingly at-will.

“When he met the Miss World girls from different nations, he had something wise or intelligent to say to each one. He met Miss Aruba – I’d never even heard of Aruba – and he shook her hand and said 'Oh, how’s the president’s wife’s foot, has she recovered from her operation?' I was gobsmacked – I didn’t even know where Aruba was and there he was, talking about the president’s wife’s foot,” laughs Morey, with dose of admiration.

“He had a way of starting a conversation and running with it – he spoke to people’s hearts and they gobbled up every word that he said; he never put a foot wrong.”

This latter remark is indicative of the admiration held for the late leader; he’s regarded as a paragon of virtue. (Not that he was by any means perfect; even he remarked, “Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again”).

Still, “A lot of people in South Africa, myself included, regard him as the best we’ve ever had – and probably ever will have,” estimates Morey, from an insider’s perspective.

“There’s a huge legacy left behind – the Nelson Mandela Foundation still collects for kids, families and the underprivileged, and we have Mandela Day on his birthday where everyone, even the corporate companies, make a huge effort to get involved in some small way." Indeed, a portion of the exhibition proceeds will go to the Mvezo Development Trust to support economic development programmes in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. “We still have our problems here, but most of us strive to remember how he would have reacted and what he would have done, guided by his legacy,” Morey adds.

That legacy, written through inspirational moments when he was alive, is why Robert De Niro, Tiger Woods and Bill Clinton were cool yet humbled in his presence, why Sharon Stone absolutely melted and cried, and why Naomi Campbell was over-awed, Mariah Carey-style.

Morey thinks back to the first time he put his camera down and spent quality time with Mandela. “I took a moment of pause to thank him for everything he’s done for our country,” he recalls. “Madiba looked me in the eye, shook my hand and said, ‘No Peter, it’s you journalists we need to thank for everything you’ve done.’ That was so ‘Mandela’ – despite his stature, whenever he was paid a compliment he would turn it right round, and pay it straight back to you.”

Mandela: The Official Exhibition, is now open at 26 Leake Street. mandelaexhibition.com