Nelson Mandela wore the mantle of saint reluctantly

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Protesters demonstrate in Johannesburg, South Africa, on Aug.16, 1962, demanding Mandela’s release after his second arrest. His wife, Winnie, whom he had married in 1958, joined the protests. Mandela was sent to a penal colony off Cape Town, where he spent 13 years laboring in a quarry. (Dennis Lee Royle / Associated Press)

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Mandela and other African National Congress activists were freed in 1990. On Feb. 11, Nelson and Winnie Mandela march through Paarl with a cheering crowd. (Alexander Joe / AFP/Getty Images)

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South African anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela waves to the media and guests after making a joint statement with President George H.W. Bush on the White House South Lawn on June 25, 1990. (Kevin Larkin / AFP/Getty Images)

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Mandela attends a service at First United Methodist Church in Los Angeles in 1993. (Axel Koester / For The Times)

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Mandela and President F.W. de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, for their leadership of a negotiated transfer of power from South Africa’s white minority to the black majority. (Jon Eeg / Associated Press)

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Nelson Mandela listens to speakers at a campaign rally at Soweto Stadium before addressing the crowd himself on April 23, 1994, three days before national elections. (Walter Dhladhla / AFP/Getty Images)

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Mandela casts his ballot April 27, 1994, during South Africa’s first democratic election, marking the first time he -- or any black person in the country -- had been able to vote. (Walter Dhladhla / AFP/Getty Images)

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Nelson Mandela and regional African National Congress leader Allan Boesak, right, greet the crowd at a campaign rally on April 17, 1994, 10 days before South Africa’s first all-race national elections. (Guy Tallim / AFP/Getty Images)

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Nelson Mandela dances with Imilonji Kantu choir members at a victory celebration on May 2, 1994. (Los Angeles Times / Los Angeles Times)

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South African President Nelson Mandela addresses the United Nations General Assembly on Oct. 3, 1994. (Jon Levy / AFP/Getty Images)

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President-elect Nelson Mandela waves to the crowd with his two deputy presidents -- Thabo Mbeki, left, and Frederik de Klerk -- after the inaugural sitting of South Africa’s first all-race parliament on May 9,1994. Mandela was elected South Africa’s first black head of state by the post-apartheid assembly. (Alexander Joe / AFP/Getty Images)

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Palestinian Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat speaks with Mandela in Tunis in 1994 during an African summit. Arafat was an observer at the summit. (WAFA / Associated Press)

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President Nelson Mandela walks with Pope John Paul II after the pontiff’s arrival at Johannesburg airport September 16,1995. This was the Pope’s first official visit to South Africa. (Walter Dhladhla / AFP/Getty Images)

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Queen Elizabeth II pays a state visit to South Africa in 1995, the first by a ruling British monarch since 1947. (Adil Bradow / Associated Press)

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South African President Nelson Mandela speaks before a special session of the U.N. General Assembly on Oct. 23, 1995, in which he appealed to the U.N. to redefine its role in the world and reshape its structure. (Timothy Clary / AFP/Getty Images)

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President Mandela at his Pretoria residence with Percy Yutar in 1995, who as a state prosecutor 31 years earlier sentenced Mandela to life in prison. (Adil Bradlow / Associated Press)

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President Mandela and Vice President Al Gore after a meeting in Cape Town, South Africa in 1997. (Sasa Kralj / Associated Press)

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President Mandela greets Britain’s Princess Diana during her 1997 visit to Cape Town, South Africa. (Sasa Kralj / Associated Press)

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In Libya, President Mandela visits with leader Moammar Kadafi in 1997. (Enric Marti / Associated Press)

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South African President Nelson Mandela takes the arm of British Prime Minister Tony Blair as they chat while strolling on the grounds of the Royal and Ancient St. Andrews Golf Course during a break in the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting on Oct. 26, 1997. (Johnny Eggitt / AFP/Getty Images)

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Presidents Mandela and Clinton look out from a cell on Robben Island in Cape Town’s Table Bay in 1998. Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in this prison cell during apartheid. (J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)

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U.S. Rep. Richard Gephardt, left, House Speaker Newt Gingrich and President Clinton welcome President Mandela during a 1998 visit to Washington. (Paul J. Richards / AFP/Getty Images)

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At Mandela’s Pretoria residence in 1998, he and Graca Machel examine a birthday card for him from his former prison guard. Mandela and Machel were married later that day in Johannesburg. (Adil Bradlow / Associated Press)

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Nelson Mandela shakes the hand of Pope John Paul II during a visit by Mandela to the Vatican on June 18, 1998. (Paolo Cocco / AFP/Getty Images)

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President Nelson Mandela shows off his just-received honorary degree from Harvard University on Sept. 18, 1998. (John Mottern / AFP/Getty Images)

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Mandela, then the outgoing president, casts his ballot at a Johannesburg polling station during South Africa’s 1999 election. (Peter Dejong / Associated Press)

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South African President Nelson Mandela and Deputy President Thabo Mbeki wave to well-wishers after Mandela’s last major address to Parliament on Feb. 5, 1999. (Obed Zilwa / Associated Press)

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Nelson Mandela receives Michael Jackson for a visit on March 23, 1999. (Anna Zieminski / AFP/Getty Images)

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Mandela, standing behind Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, joins a royal gathering at St. James’ Palace in London on Oct. 31, 2002. to mark the centenary of the Order of Merit. (Kirsty Wigglesworth / AFP/Getty Images)

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Former President Nelson Mandela and his wife, Graca Machel, join United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and President Thabo Mbeki on stage at the World Summit on Sustainable Development on Sept. 2, 2002. (Pedro Ugarte / AFP/Getty Images)

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Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz walks past a photograph of Nelson Mandela as a political prisoner on Robben Island during an official visit to the country on July 6, 2002. (Anna Zieminski / AFP/Getty Images)

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Nelson Mandela speaks at an AIDS conference on July 14, 2003. (Jean Ayissi / AFP/Getty Images)

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Former U.S. President Bill Clinton shakes hands with former South African President Nelson Mandela during the inaugural Nelson Mandela Lecture at the Johannesburg Civic Centre, on July 19, 2003. The lecture coincided with Mandela’s 85th birthday. (Rajesh Jantilal / AFP/Getty Images)

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Nelson Mandela holds the Jules Rimet World Cup at FIFA headquarters after South Africa won the right to host the 2010 World Cup finals, the first to be played in Africa, on May 15, 2004. (Franck Fife / AFP/Getty Images)

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Nelson Mandela celebrates his 89th birthday flanked by former President Jimmy Carter, right, and former United Nations chief Kofi Annan, during the launching ceremony of the group known as the Elders -- a brain trust of elder statesmen -- on July 18, 2007. (Alexander Joe / AFP/Getty Images)

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Lithographs by Mandela are displayed as part of an exhibition of his works at Belgravia Gallery in London in July, 2008. (Sang Tan / Associated Press)

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A group of schoolchildren participates in a program at the Nelson Mandela Foundation on the eve of Mandela Day on July 17, 2011. (Stephane de Sakutin / AFP/Getty Images)

By Robyn Dixon

Dec. 5, 2013 5:17 PM PT

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — An irritable man who got cross when he couldn’t have his favorite brand of mineral water? A fusser who obsessively folded his daily newspapers just so, who got annoyed if things weren’t lined up in their precise order? An aloof man who nonetheless flirted with any pretty young woman he met?

Could these accounts really tally with one of the world’s most beloved men, Nelson Mandela?

In his lifetime, Mandela always insisted that he wasn’t a saint, and by all accounts was quite irritated with the gilded view of him as an almost mystical figure.

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He even asked the Nelson Mandela Foundation to avoid using images of his face, which had become a kind of trademark, and focus on other things, such as his hands. He ordered them to make room for other people’s voices and memories. But the idolatry endured.

The myth had a price, said Verne Harris, project leader at the Nelson Mandela Center of Memory, a unit of the Nelson Mandela Foundation.

“In the process, all the complexities of this human being, all the flaws and elements of his characters and his life which don’t fit just get left out,” he said. “There’s a lot of ignorance. After all, he led an armed struggle. By many definitions he was a terrorist. That’s been washed away.”

Even though he rebelled against his status as an icon, Mandela was complicit in the narrative that was stripped of the warts and all, a myth-making process that had its origin in the anti-apartheid struggle.

Harris said the original draft of Mandela’s autobiography, “Long Walk to Freedom,” as put together by a collective of senior African National Congress figures at Robben Island prison, had a political objective: international support for the ANC and its vision.

“The ANC decided way back in the mid-1970s to use Mandela as the symbol of the struggle. The concept of the autobiography was very closely linked to the struggle,” Harris said. “In terms of the generation of text, this is the story of an individual but always planned in the context of collective leadership.”

FULL COVERAGE: Anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela dies

Politics called for a portrait of a leader without blemish.

Mandela wrote the first draft in his cell. It then went to senior ANC figures Walter Sisulu, Ahmed Kathrada and Mac Maharaj for successive editing before being smuggled out of prison. After his release in 1990 came more editing. The publishers tried to coax more personal details from Mandela, which he resisted. And he insisted on expunging some elements, like a stray remark in which he’d called someone haughty. In his old-fashioned and rather prim way, he felt the remark inappropriate.

“It is already growing more difficult to go beyond the brittle shell of the official biography, to see Mandela’s imperfections and contradictions — the details that make him human,” Adam Roberts, a former Economist correspondent, wrote at Mandela’s 90th birthday. “Once he has received his state funeral, it will be harder still. As with Mahatma Gandhi or Mother Teresa, the myth will take over and the person will become a mere icon, hollowed out and revered, but little understood.”

In the end, Mandela realized the book played a role in deifying him. The 2010 book “Conversations With Myself,” put together by the Nelson Mandela Center of Memory, took a hammer to the image.

It even includes his comments on allegations that he had beaten his first wife, Evelyn Mase. Mandela said he had wrenched her arm to make her drop the bar she had picked up to attack him, in what clearly was a very unhappy marriage. After his release from prison, she would accuse him of adultery.

In his Economist portrait of Mandela, Roberts mined the small, mundane areas, looking for the flaws that made Mandela real.

“Mandela runs on self-control, structuring his life down to the smallest details. Speak to those who know Mandela best, who are least in awe of the myth, and they make it clear their friend has some less attractive qualities. A common gripe is that he is aloof.

“Mandela can be pernickety [sic],” he wrote. “He insists on carbonated water and complains if he gets the wrong brand.”

He could be dogmatic and stubborn, said his last wife, Graca Machel, interviewed by Al Jazeera television in 2008. “He also gets angry. He is somehow stubborn. You need to convince him. You have to have a very good argument to make him change his mind. And so he has weaknesses.

“He made mistakes in life, towards his family, his friends. He made mistakes even in political decisions.”

In “After Mandela,” a 2009 book about the recent failings of the African National Congress, author Alec Russell told of Mandela’s “masterful” political seduction technique.

“I was one of many correspondents who were unashamedly dazzled by Mandela when he was in office,” he wrote. “Small groups of us would gather at his Johannesburg home for impromptu press conferences when we would sit at his feet, acolytes before a sage.”

Mandela, he wrote, was brilliant at exploiting the world’s infatuation with him. He’d call world leaders, seeking support for a project or position, or even to raise funds for the ANC.

“The otherworldly image of Mandela may have been what South Africa and the world wanted to believe, but great humanitarian as he was, he was always foremost a politician. Reconciliation was not a spontaneous miracle, as some like to imagine, emanating from the magnificence of Mandela’s soul. Rather, the seduction of the Afrikaners was carefully plotted in Mandela’s cell, as a way to win and then retain power.”

As Russell and others have argued, there were some serious blemishes: Mandela’s autocratic streak, his tendency to go it alone when he wanted to without consulting colleagues, and his loyalty to ANC ministers who performed badly, the latter which set the stage for the ANC’s progression into a group of complacent and unaccountable elite that many of its leaders were to become.

But there seemed no end to the world’s obsession with Mandela.

“What more do we want of him?” fellow Nobel laureate and retired Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu said in amazement in early 2011 as journalists thronged outside a hospital where Mandela was being treated for a severe cold, wondering why people clung so to the myth.

“I think it’s a difficult question to answer,” Harris said. “I think it’s what he represents in the popular mind: the way that he suffered so much and forgave his enemies. It’s a kind of redemption story, which is kind of fundamental to humanity, dealing with huge challenges.

“I think part of our job has been to restore the complexity of this human being.”

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Twitter: @latimesdixon

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