Food in the life of Nelson Mandela

The most elementary social, economic and emotional truths are revealed in the ways that we cook, eat and serve food. So why not ask those who changed the world what they were eating while they did it?

Nelson Mandela enjoying his 89th birthday celebrations at the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund in Johannesburg. Photograph: Denis Farrell/AP

In his autobiography Nelson Mandela declared that:
"I was not born with a hunger to be free. I was born free. Free in every way that I could know. Free to run in the fields near my mother's hut, free to swim in the clear stream that ran through my village, free to roast mealies [corn] under the stars … It was only when I learnt that my boyhood freedom was an illusion … that I began to hunger for it."
Only the truly food obsessed would read such a statement and consider the stomach from whence it came, but I did and the result is a gastro-political biography entitled

HUNGER FOR FREEDOM, THE STORY OF FOOD IN THE LIFE OF NELSON MANDELA. There are those who might argue that such an evaluation is trivial or even tasteless, but there is nothing innately frivolous or disrespectful about food. We all reveal our most elementary social, economic and emotional truths in the ways that we cook, eat and serve food. So why not ask those who changed the world what they were eating while they did it?

Hunger for Freedom traces Nelson Mandela's journey in food reminiscences and recipes from the corn grinding stone of his Mvezo birthplace and simple dishes like umphokoqo through wedding cakes, prison hunger strikes and presidential banquets into a retirement deliciously infused with the Mozambican seafood dishes of his third wife Graça Machel.

In the course of the research for my book I tracked down the former South African President's schoolboy contemporaries who put on a traditional Xhosa rural feast for me. I shared biscuits and memories of teenage dinner dates with his first girlfriend. I made his favourite spaghetti recipe with Winnie Madikizela-Mandela as she told of a great love lost and thwarted. I wept through ex-prisoners' descriptions of Robben Island prison rations and roared with laughter at his grandchildren's tales of the great man's fondness for Frosties breakfast cereal.

There were Christmas cakes with former jailers and crab curries with comrades past. I was very pregnant throughout much of the research process and to hear Nelson Mandela reminisce about chicken recipes (and offer to deliver the baby) was a huge privilege and an absolute joy.

Looking at Nelson Mandela's personal and political history from the vantage point of the kitchen offered up hitherto unrecorded insights into a man and the society in which he came of age. In apartheid South Africa every dish was served against a backdrop of racial oppression. In the 1950s parties given by anti-apartheid activists saw drinks served in very short tots so as to ensure that if the police raided the event black people would not be found engaged in the illegal act of consuming alcohol.

The guest list for Nelson Mandela's 1958 wedding to Winnie Madikizela was profoundly curtailed by the fact that almost every significant political activist was banned, jailed or in exile. The racially discriminatory food conditions for prisoners on Robben Island and the prisoners' fights to improve their diet mirrored those of their broader struggle.

And yet Nelson Mandela's food preferences past and present reveal the social and political significance of a multi-racial anti-apartheid alliance in which Thayanagee Pillay made coffee for prisoners awaiting trial, Farida Omar smuggled chicken curry to Nelson Mandela at Pollsmoor Prison, George Bizos cooked Greek lamb on a spit to celebrate great victories and Ray Harmel served chopped liver in times of trouble.

The history of South Africa's transition to democracy can be read on a plate from Mandela's first meal of freedom (Lillian Ngoboza's hearty casserole followed by rum and raisin ice-cream at Bishop Tutu's house) through the gastro-reconciliation of syrup-drenched koeksister with the widow of apartheid architect HF Vervoed in the whites only enclave of Orania. Similarly, Nelson Mandela's personal transition from President to pensioner can be tasted in his housekeeper Xoliswa Ndoyiya's chutney chicken recipe and Graça Machel's caranguejo recheado (stuffed crabs).

Mandela media coverage has a somewhat saccharine tendency to deify South Africa's most famous son. Asking what he had for lunch restores humanity to a living legend. It also recognizes that he was not acting alone but rather as part of a social and political team. Besides, the man himself has always been justifiably proud of his edible exploits. On August 31 1970 Madiba wrote to his wife Winnie from Robben Island prison:

"How I long for amasi (traditional South African fermented milk), thick and sour! You know darling there is one respect in which I dwarf all my contemporaries or at least about which I can confidently claim to be second to none – healthy appetite."