温妮与纳尔逊·曼德拉：神话建构及其对南非解放斗争的影响

Jonny Steinberg is the author of nine books, most of them about South Africa’s present and recent past. His books have won the National Book Critics Circle Award for biography, the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize and have been three-time winners of South Africa’s premier literary award, the Sunday Times Non-fiction Prize. His work has also been shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize, the Wellcome Trust Prize and the LA Times Book Prize for biography. Steinberg taught at Oxford for nine years where he was Professor of African Studies. He currently teaches part-time at Yale University’s Council on African Studies and at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (Wiser) in Johannesburg. He was born and raised in Johannesburg.

乔尼·斯坦伯格著有九部作品，大多关注南非当下及其近现代历史。他的作品曾获美国国家书评人协会传记奖、温德姆-坎贝尔文学奖（Windham-Campbell Literature Prize），并三度荣获南非重要文学奖项《星期日泰晤士报》非虚构作品奖。他的作品还曾入围沃尔夫森历史奖（Wolfson History Prize）、惠康信托奖（Wellcome Trust Prize）和《洛杉矶时报》传记类图书短名单。

斯坦伯格曾在牛津大学任教九年，并担任非洲研究教授。目前，他在耶鲁大学非洲研究委员会以及约翰内斯堡威特沃特斯兰德大学社会与经济研究所（WISER）兼职任教。他在约翰内斯堡出生并长大。

From the beginning of their relationship, Nelson and Winnie Mandela used their style and their beauty to craft their marriage into a myth powerful enough to embody South Africa’s struggle for freedom. They were extraordinarily successful, refashioning the meanings of themselves and their marriage throughout the apartheid era, culminating in their triumph as the most famous couple in the world in the late 1980s. I argue that this mythmaking made possible the role Nelson Mandela played in securing his country’s transition to democracy. But there was a darker side to their success. As the couple became more famous, so they became increasingly estranged. And their marriage came to embody the struggle’s deepest disagreements – over whether apartheid should end violently or peacefully, for instance – as well as the violence, suffering and psychological damage inflicted on black South Africans. The Mandelas became a much more faithful symbol of their people’s journey through the twentieth century than they would have liked.

从两人的关系伊始，纳尔逊·曼德拉与温妮·曼德拉便凭借各自的风格与魅力，将他们的婚姻塑造成一个强有力的公共神话，这段婚姻象征着南非争取自由的斗争。他们成功地不断重塑公众对自己以及这段婚姻的理解，到20世纪80年代末，他们已成为世界上最知名的一对夫妇。

我认为，这种神话塑造为纳尔逊·曼德拉推动南非实现民主转型创造了条件。然而，这一成功也有阴暗的一面：两人的声名愈盛，彼此却愈加疏离。这段婚姻也逐渐成为自由斗争中深刻分歧的集中体现：例如，种族隔离制度究竟应以暴力还是和平方式终结；它也映照出南非黑人所遭受的暴力、苦难与心理创伤。最终，曼德拉夫妇成为一个比他们本人所愿更为贴切的象征，映照出南非人民走过的整个20世纪历程。