Healthy lifestyle: Meals for Mandela

Heather Little-White, Gleaner Writer

Sunday, July 18 marked the celebration of Nelson Mandela International Day to promote peace and social action. It was Mandela's 92nd birthday and the 20th anniversary of his release from prison. The General Assembly of the United Nations set International Nelson Mandela Day to celebrate the South African's legacy of 67 years campaigning for human rights to improve his country through peaceful reconciliation, moving away from racial segregation.

In a moving ceremony in the General Assembly hall last Friday, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said, in a video message, that on the first Nelson Mandela International Day: "We thank him for everything he has done, for freedom, for justice, for democracy."

According to a release by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, Mandela Day is a day of service, where individuals from around the world are encouraged to spend at least 67 minutes doing something good for their local community, in honour of the 67 years that Nelson Mandela dedicated to fighting social injustice.

Meeting this iconic figure in person was a moving experience, one I will never forget. Having met Mr Mandela in South Africa while working as an observer during the first democratic elections in 1994, the interaction is still fresh in my mind. His spirit of forgiveness continues to be a motivating force in my own life.

In South Africa, Mandela is often known as Madiba, an honorary title adopted by elders of Mandela's clan. Mandela was the first truly democratically elected South African president, capping decades of struggle as an anti-apartheid activist and leader of the armed wing of the African National Congress.

References: Wikipedia.org; Supanet.com/lifestyle, Nelsonmandela.org

Food styles

What is Mr Mandela's interaction food? It has been written in Hunger for Freedom: The Story of Food in the Life of Nelson Mandela, a book launched for his 90th birthday.

Author Anna Trapido has presented a "gastro-political biography" in the book, which explores "Mandela's hunger for freedom in a literal and metaphoric way, linking stories from his childhood, his life as an activist, political prisoner and world statesman with the food that he ate and the people with whom he ate".

Trapido, a chef and food writer, has pulled together an anthropological description of new liberated South Africans revealing unsung heroes like the Naidoo family, who cooked every day for the Treason Trialists. The writer's research led her to Mandela's 'foody' prison letters. She posits that "he [Mandela] used food and food metaphors all the time to talk about love and passion and missing people, really because all these letters were being censored … . You don't want to write in a very intimate way if you know that all your love letters are going to be read by somebody else."

Farida Omar's Chicken Curry

Curry chicken, a curry dish, was one of the dishes covertly taken to Mandela in prison.

3 tbsps sunflower oil

3 cardamom pods

1 stick cinnamon

4 cloves

1 tbsp butter

2 onions sliced thin

2 tsps garlic crushed

2 big tomatoes, grated

1 tbsp tomato paste

1 large whole chicken, portioned and skinned

2cm chunk of grated fresh root ginger

3 tsps coriander powder

2 tsps cumin powder

1-2 tsps chile powder

1/2 tsp turmeric powder

1 1/2 cups (about 375ml) chicken stock

6-8 small potatoes, peeled

Method

Heat the oil.

Fry the cardamom, cinnamon, and cloves in the oil until they release their aroma.

Add the butter and the onions and fry until translucent, then add the garlic and stir through.

Once the garlic releases aroma, add the grated tomato and tomato paste and cook over a low heat to form a thick sauce.

When you see the oil coming to the top of the sauce, add the chicken pieces, ginger, coriander, cumin, chile and turmeric.

Braise the chicken curry with 1 1/2 cups boiling water or chicken stock until the chicken is almost cooked through, approximately 20 minutes. Cut the potatoes in half, add and cook them with the chicken until they are very soft, about 20 minutes.

Serve with roti breads.

Yield: About 6 servings

Source: Hunger for Freedom, by Anna Trapido

Eclectic tastes

The book highlighted his life in many ways through food, documenting "what food he ate as a child, what he ate when he moved to the city, what he ate with the people he liked, and the food that he was forced to eat in prison".

Trapido indicated that Mandela's food tastes were broad and eclectic, ranging from pig's head to crab curry, and revealed his interaction with a cross section of southern African society. Another favourite is the traditionally prepared meat of freshly slaughtered sheep and the delicacy Amarhewn (fermented cornmeal). Some of Mandela's personal tastes are breakfast of plain porridge, with fresh fruit and milk, according to Megaessays.com.

Corn-based meals

The book tells about the food life of a legendary figure, providing a reality with which we can all identify. According to Trapido, discovering what Mandela ate for lunch in prison, or what childhood foods he felt nostalgic for, humanises a figure that otherwise seems impossibly far away. During his childhood, he ate Mvezo dishes - simple, corn-based meals like umphokoqo, maize seasoned with sour milk. During his imprisonment, black prisoners were given such scanty rations that food had to be smuggled in.

Homebody

When speaking of the extensive travels he has undertaken since his release from prison, Mandela says: "I was helped when preparing for my release by the biography of Pandit Nehru, who wrote of what happens when you leave jail. My daughter Zinzi says that she grew up without a father, who, when he returned, became a father of the nation. This has placed a great responsibility on my shoulders. And wherever I travel, I immediately begin to miss the familiar - the mine dumps, the colour and smell that is uniquely South African, and, above all, the people. I do not like to be away for any length of time. For me, there is no place like home."

Birthday cake

Mandela enjoyed his birthday cake at the 92nd birthday celebration, as he shared it with members of his family at his home in Houghton, Johannesburg. After singing, "Happy Birthday, dear granddad!", the children were joined in their applause by the man of the moment. After two of his youngest great-granddaughters tried unsuccessfully to blow out the candles themselves, they were helped by a group of older family and friends, many of whom brought gifts and cards.

According to Mandela's foundation, 92 children from two of Mandela's childhood villages in the Transkei travelled to Johannesburg to wish him happy birthday on Sunday. Sixty-seven children were from Mandela's birthplace of Mvezo, and 25 from the village of Qunu, where he moved to later in his childhood.

Wedding anniversary

Mandela and Graca Machel, widow of one-time Mozambique President Samora Machel, were married in 1998. Last Sunday was another happy moment for Mandela and his wife, as they celebrated their 12th wedding anniversary. They were joined at the private celebration by his ex-wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

Early in the day, Graca Machel went to an orphanage in Soweto to help plant a vegetable garden. She said Sunday presented an opportunity for people worldwide to look inside themselves and find those beautiful qualities as any human being has and say: "I am able to make a difference to my neighbour, to someone underprivileged, I can extend my goodness to other people."