The article about Nelson and Winnie Mandela's unusual love story, "Life with him was life without him", published in the Sunday Times on April 8, included a 1958 wedding picture credited to an unknown photographer.
The picture was taken by Eli Weinberg, a photographer and former political prisoner, who died in exile. It is gratifying to be able to set the record straight for Eli, who was uniquely placed to document oppositional politics and politicians with his camera.
I got to know Eli in Amsterdam in 1978 - which is when I took the picture of him on the left - when the anti-apartheid movement brought him to Europe from Dar es Salaam to print the negatives he had with him when he left South Africa in 1976. It was then he told me that he had taken wedding pictures for Nelson and Winnie Mandela.
These photographs were taken a few days after the actual wedding, in the house of Michael and Ray Harmel. This was confirmed for me by their daughter Barbara Harmel. Eli lived across the road but the Harmels had a larger living room, which is why the photographs were taken there. Ray Harmel was a seamstress and she made Winnie's wedding dress as well as the dresses for the four bridesmaids. Barbara said her mother hung that curtain especially as a background for the photographs.
Nelson and Winnie got married in Bizana in the Transkei but there don't seem to be any pictures from the actual wedding. Neither the Harmels nor Eli could attend the wedding because of their banning orders.
Another of these photographs appears in Anthony Sampson's authorised biography of Nelson Mandela. Michael Harmel is identified in the photograph but, again, Eli was not given a credit. Another Weinberg photo of the wedding was reprinted in Drum in 1995.
Only once does it appear that a photograph taken from this series credits the photographer as Eli Weinberg. This is in the book Nelson Mandela: The Struggle is My Life, published by the International Defence and Aid Fund in London in 1978.Eli was a struggle veteran who took photographs for the Guardian and later Ruth First's New Age paper. In 1981, a book of his photographs called Portrait of a People was published by the International Defence and Aid Fund in London.
Eli died on July 18 1981, Nelson Mandela's 63rd birthday, and is buried in Dar es Salaam. It would be a great shame if his legacy as a great South African photographer were to go unacknowledged...