7

Travel and Conflict

We had made plans to set up office in the President’s old house in Houghton. By now he had moved to a new house following his marriage with Mrs Machel in 1998. His old house was a large double-storey house that, despite being his home for over five years, was run down and not well decorated. It was empty though and I knew it would be a good place to set up the office because it was close to his new residence too. I also asked Madiba if I could stay there while I found a place to live in Johannesburg.

At first he wanted me to come and stay on his premises but I turned down the offer, knowing too well that I needed the distance and that it would not be welcomed by all of his family. I arranged for my furniture arriving from Cape Town to be delivered at the old house in Houghton.

I started cleaning the only bedroom upstairs that was liveable – Madiba’s old bedroom, which was painted in the ugliest shade of blue one can imagine. I don’t think such things ever bothered him. Everything was blue and even though I loved blue it was too blue. It was a modest room, definitely not befitting for a President, and I was happy that Mrs Machel’s presence in his life had both enlightened his life but also introduced him to a few more materialistic pleasures, like a bigger room and a dignified space to live in to appreciate the sunlight through your bedroom window, and a room that welcomes you as opposed to depressing you. Still in comparison to the luxuries others with similar positions enjoy, his remained modest.

I called the Ministry of Public Works and asked them to send an official to look at obtaining furniture for Madiba’s office, in accordance with government policy. They agreed. They also agreed to speed up the installation of a telephone and fax machine as soon as possible.

In the days to follow I unpacked and settled and started what would effectively be known as our post-Presidential office – the Nelson Mandela Foundation, from where he would continue his public service. Prof. Gerwal drafted an outline of what the office had to focus on and the Foundation’s trust deed provided for him to further his ambitions to build schools and clinics, fight the AIDS epidemic, provide a space for dialogue and a physical building to host his writings and memorabilia. Chaos ensued and soon the entire world was looking for President Mandela, trying and pushing to get him to attend to their causes. I didn’t know how we were going to pay for them but I had to hire help as I simply couldn’t manage by myself. Prof. Gerwal visited regularly and asked one of our former colleagues, Loïs Dippenaar, to help put order in the chaos. One after the other I convinced Lydia Baylis, Maretha Slabbert and Jackie Maggot to join our office temporarily, although the arrangement ended up lasting for many years.

They would sometimes leave me in the afternoon behind my desk when they went home and find me there the next morning. Some nights I didn’t sleep and simply read letters and typed responses throughout the night to be faxed the next morning. My argument was, the quicker we were able to respond, the less people were going to call to follow up on requests, so I was trying to bring down the volume of telephone calls so the pressure would be less. Many times I wanted to give up and leave but I never could. On many occasions I wondered what drove a person to make him/her pick up the telephone or a pen to contact Nelson Mandela. It was all just too much and I was at the brim of my frustration levels, more or less something that had become the norm.

I would only go upstairs and shower at around 7 a.m. in the morning before the other staff arrived back at work, and then continued the day without any sleep. After about three days in a row I would crash for an entire day and then start again.

Soon Madiba started coming into the office more regularly, and in the first few days of conducting appointments in his post-Presidential office he reminded visitors who referred to him as ‘President’ that he was now retired and no longer wanted to be called ‘President’. He wanted to be called either Madiba or Mr Mandela.

Since I called him Khulu, there was adjustment for me only in the way I spoke of him and not to him. I now had to learn to speak of Madiba or Mr Mandela and not the President when I spoke of him. He would often ask people when they called him Mr President, ‘Where were you when I retired?’ so word spread and it eventually stopped. He also didn’t want to be awarded titles like Honourable, etc. He was content with Mr Mandela or Madiba and told people on endless occasions: ‘Just call me Madiba.’ He said a title doesn’t change the person that you are, and that was his way of telling us that he didn’t have to be given titles – even though by the last count he had been awarded 1,177 tributes, of which 697 were awards of some kind and over 120 were honorary doctorates. When people wanted to address him using the honorary doctorate titles he was fast to explain to them that he didn’t study for any of those doctorates and that they were merely honorary titles.

In late 1999 I received a letter from the Presidency promoting me to the post of Assistant Director in the Office of the President. Even though I was still seconded to Madiba, the higher rank could be allocated as a result of the availability of posts within the structures of the Presidency.

It was clear that the Foundation was going to need funding. To run the office we started off by borrowing money with the only surety being the words from Madiba and Prof. Gerwel that ‘We will repay it as soon as possible, please don’t charge us interest.’ Madiba was still an icon to the world, but unlike in other countries former Presidents do not receive funding from the government to allow the person to continue his public life. Yet in our case, the world had the same expectations of him regardless of his official position.

It was clear that Madiba, too, expected things to continue as before. He woke up the morning of his retirement as if nothing had changed. He was as determined as before to bring about change in South Africa, to reform society until it was free from discrimination of any kind. He called to issue a few instructions and when I dropped the call I panicked, not knowing how I would manage to arrange all the things he had expected of me. He did the same with Professor Gerwel, who jokingly told Madiba that he no longer worked for him. Prof. Gerwel was going to serve as Chair of the board of the Nelson Mandela Foundation and even though I was still employed by the state I had no idea how to make things happen without any infrastructure. Yet, Madiba knew how to drive me beyond my limits. I did not recognize or trust that I had the ability to continue with business as usual despite our entire infrastructure disintegrating overnight. He did. He patiently guided me and I am fortunate to have learned from such a great mentor and teacher.

Even so, in August 1999 Madiba said that he was tired and they needed a holiday. That was a challenge. Where do we go? How do we get there? It suddenly dawned on me that we had lost the luxury of the private plane and that it would cost us over R1 million (today about US$100,000) to travel to the US in a private plane. We didn’t have that kind of money and Madiba would never agree to such expenditure on a holiday. He and Mrs Machel had been invited to the Bahamas by Tony O’Reilly, former owner of Heinz and at the time the owner of Independent News and Media, and his wife Chryss to stay at their house in Nassau. They would take care of us once we got there but I had no idea how we would get there. I was panicking.

Madiba couldn’t go in a small plane as he needed proper sleep and he needed to be able to stand up straight without having to bend his injured knee, and to be able to use ablution facilities on a plane. He had a problem with his knee as a result of a Robben Island injury and as he aged it got worse. He had difficulty climbing stairs and couldn’t manage more than just a few steps at a time.

I called Tokyo Sexwale, one of South Africa’s richest businessmen and an old comrade of Madiba’s and whom I knew had connections to people with private planes. He put me on to a few people but none of them could help us. I asked all the wealthy people in South Africa with private planes, the Oppenheimers, the Ruperts and even called up Michael Jackson abroad to ask if we could borrow his plane. None of the planes were available as they were all chartered out or being used by their owners at the time. The only solution in the end was using a commercial scheduled flight. I don’t know how we did it, but we managed. As time went by we perfected the art of commercial travelling with Madiba. As long as first class provided a proper flat bed for him to sleep in and the airport had the facilities of a passenger assistance unit that could elevate him to the level of the plane, avoiding the climbing of any steps, we could fly commercially. We just had to keep passengers and crew at bay and avoid him having to sign menus and other items throughout the flight. It was a nightmare at first.

So we set off to the Bahamas on holiday, our first holiday in five years. Madiba, Mrs Machel, Josina Machel (Mrs Machel’s daughter), me, security and a doctor. We were all nervous but it all worked out well. We transferred in Atlanta and went on to Nassau. One had to find a way of both accommodating Madiba’s needs but also taking facilities at airports and their supporting staff capabilities into account. It was negotiating and compromising all the time. At every airport, disembarking after long flights, people wanted to take photographs with him or ask for autographs. After a sixteen-hour flight an eighty-one-year-old just shouldn’t be asked to have photographs taken or sign autographs. He needed space to breathe and to regain strength at every opportunity, and although one didn’t want to be nasty to people I would go to great lengths to explain that he was elderly and needed space and shouldn’t be bothered with autographs. In most instances people understood although the die-hards always persisted.

*   *   *

After the Bahamas trip we travelled the world trying to raise funds for the newly established Nelson Mandela Foundation. In Germany Madiba met with the Chancellor of the time Gerhard Schröder to ask for support for our Foundation. From Germany we went to Tunis to see President Ben Ali to also ask him for support. He had the most beautiful palace decorated in the finest mosaics.

From Tunis we went to Tripoli to visit the Brother Leader Gaddafi and ask for his support for the Foundation. The leaders from the West turned a blind eye to Madiba’s association with Gaddafi. It was always entertaining to see the Brother Leader. One waited for days and days to receive word from him and then suddenly everyone had to jump and move to where he was hiding, sometimes in the desert, always fearing surprise attacks by the West in retaliation of the Lockerbie bombing. On this particular visit he invited us to dinner, and during our audience with him in the afternoon he asked what he could have prepared for us that night. By then I had been with Madiba when he had seen the Brother Leader on a few occasions and your face becomes familiar. He treated me with great respect and made me feel at home.

Earlier in the afternoon Madiba and I had a discussion about camel meat as we drove past camels and, when asked by the Brother Leader what we wanted for dinner, Madiba felt it was appropriate to ask for camel meat. ‘Of course,’ the Brother Leader responded. (He never wanted to be called President as he felt it was an invention by the Westerners which he refused to accept. To the end, we referred to him as the Brother Leader.) The camel meat tasted exactly like lamb. I was later told that they had to slaughter baby camels as the meat became tough the older the camel grew. I was not going to encourage the slaughter of baby animals so I never wanted to eat camel again. But it was a rare occasion that a head of state would ask Madiba what he wanted for dinner and I quite liked that Gaddafi was so considerate. Conversations were limited to pleasantries and a general view on whatever was happening in the world at the time. They always dwelled back to Lockerbie and the Brother Leader’s unhappiness with the West for not delivering on its promises to lift all sanctions. And whenever Madiba travelled to the US, it would be a point of discussion there too.

*   *   *

Back home we were soon in the swing of things and attending to business as usual. We would attend a South African Chamber of Business and National African Chamber of Commerce dinner the one day, and the next take the Afrikaans Trade Institute to rebuild a school in Qunu. Prof. Gerwel remained our anchor and adviser on everything we agreed to. He remained central to our decision-making process. We were also attending farewell functions, although it wasn’t clear where we were going because business was continuing as usual. One such function was the welcoming ceremony hosted by the Qunu community and King Dalindyebo, the King of the Thembus of which Madiba was a clan member. They were hoping that Madiba would return to Qunu in retirement but we realized that even there he would never retire fully, as people would constantly approach him with their problems, considering him as the solver of all their tribulations no matter how mundane – from arguing about someone who stole his neighbour’s chicken to serious traditional affairs and differences between the respective clans. Madiba was never overly traditional but he respected the tradition and culture of his clan.

We would welcome visits by groups of children from the organization Reach for a Dream when terminally ill children expressed their last wish as being to meet Madiba, have luncheons and dinners with old friends and comrades, fundraise for schools and clinics and even for the Bushbucks soccer team, the regional team that represented the area where Madiba came from. They weren’t doing too well in the soccer league but he nevertheless felt obliged to help them because they were his ‘home team’. He would see families of late warders, attend his grandchildren’s graduation ceremonies, and in between try and find time to spend with Mrs Machel. He could fly to Botswana to receive an honorary doctorate and back at home that evening have dinner with Helen Suzman, his long-time supporter and friend from the Progressive Federal Party, now sadly departed. The pace was never a consideration to him. He wanted to continue doing as much as possible and squeeze a twenty-six-hour programme into a twenty-four-hour day.

A month later we were on our way abroad again. While we had the full support of a Foreign Affairs department before and the backing of diplomatic services, I now had to deal with negotiations from programmes to VIP rooms at airports to courtesy cars from foreign governments to accommodation needs etc., all by myself, in addition to asking for meetings with presidents, heads of state and people of importance. While at home in Johannesburg I started preparing for the next trip abroad. I also think Madiba just loved travelling, so he accepted invitations for no good enough reason and invented visits because he was determined to fundraise for the Foundation now. He looked for opportunity in everything.

If I ever thought of saying ‘I’m sending someone else with you’, the suggestion would be met with hostility. Not because of favouritism but only because he trusted that I would know what to do in any situation he would find himself in. I was not scared to tell a minister or a senior official when to stop as I could read his face and the unspoken gestures became easy to read. I constantly had to fend off media requests while abroad and my defence mechanisms were in overdrive. I was playing the role of that actress I’d wanted to become; doing things I could never do for anyone else but the position and the person in question required it.

Madiba called Prof. and told him about his intentions to visit the Middle East. They had discussed this for a while and strategized about the countries to be visited and what agenda to push for. As much as Madiba was our true north, Prof. was Madiba’s true north politically and when it came to planning any strategy. Madiba admired Prof.’s intellect and insight apart from the fact that he considered and treated Prof. more like a son.

Our first stop was in Iran. I covered myself out of respect for the Muslim culture and kept my distance as far as possible. We then set off to dinner at the residence of President Khatami. As we entered his residence, a complete palace as one would expect, I fended off some photographers who used flashes while photographing Madiba. It is a known fact worldwide that Madiba’s eyes were sensitive as a result of the bright reflection in the quarry where he’d had to dig out limestone on Robben Island for most of the eighteen years of imprisonment on the island. When his eyes were exposed to too much flash light they became red and teary to the extent where he had to wear sunglasses, even indoors and at night. We were all very protective over his eyes and therefore knew to fight off any photographers, with authority. So, of course, I assumed that position even though I was the only woman in sight, fending off the photographers.

President Khatami saw me fighting off the photographers but after Madiba entered his residence I kept to the back of the delegation so as to not offend anyone sensitive to the presence of women and left them to go upstairs alone for dinner. There were no other females present in President Khatami’s residence. After about ten minutes at table and our food being served already, I got called by a panic-struck butler to follow him upstairs to where the President and Madiba were seated. I thought Madiba had purely called me as he usually would to introduce me, which he did, but then he said that President Khatami insisted that I sat at their table. I was extremely uncomfortable and didn’t know how to behave; it was similar to how I felt being seated next to Queen Noor in 1995. The only difference was we were the only three people in the room this time and I was exposed to the scrutiny of two politicians: a serving and a former president.

President Khatami kept on asking me questions about my upbringing and the Afrikaans culture, almost as if Madiba wasn’t even there. I kept on referring questions back to Madiba but Madiba was determined to let me answer and he peacefully enjoyed his meal, just nodding occasionally giving his approval to what I was saying, or then saying, ‘Zeldina, what do you think?’ To try and stop the enquiry launched at me, I thought of saying, ‘Well, I actually just don’t think anything,’ but that was impossible to conceive. That must have been the least Madiba spoke during any dinner ever.

I remember from our state visit to France in 1995 I was intrigued that presidents could discuss the prices of import and export items, limited to oranges and bananas, and how many Boeings South Africa was willing to order from France, but here in Iran the entire conversation was limited to the Afrikaans culture. Madiba thoroughly enjoyed the grilling I was getting and only now and then would he come to my rescue with a supportive smile. For years after he would remind people of my importance, of course jokingly, teasing me by reciting this story, telling people that the President of Iran insisted on inviting me to his table, and I would respond by saying that Madiba merely wanted to enjoy his food and therefore put me on the spot that night. Such was the teasing and joking with Madiba; always a story and a moment to remember.

I had to ensure, when drafting programmes for visits like these, that we were seen to do the politically correct thing. We would have to include a wreath-laying ceremony at the memorial site of the late Ayatollah Khomeini. As a youngster I remember a prayer for the people ‘behind the iron curtain’ and when asked what the iron curtain was, reference was made to the people who lived under the oppression of the Ayatollah Khomeini or the communist regimes. Now I was arranging wreath-laying ceremonies at the Ayatollah’s grave. Then we would visit former President, Ayatollah Rafsanjani, as well as His Eminence Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran. As I was the only female at all these events the Supreme Leader noticed me amid a full room of photographers taking pictures of the two eminent people sitting together. The Ayatollah asked out loud: ‘Who is that young lady at the back?’ Madiba, knowing that I was the only woman in the room, answered excitedly, knowing that he would embarrass me and of course without even looking at me, ‘Oh that’s Zeldina. My secretary.’

I wanted Madiba to make eye contact with me so I could signal him with my eyes ‘don’t call me, please’. But he also knew when to ignore me because he knew I would be signalling to please not embarrass me. He avoided eye contact. I felt out of place but took the Ayatollah’s instructions to sit next to Madiba, closer, where he could see me. Somehow my presence amused these people and they were intrigued by me, possibly not knowing what to make of a white lady being with the famous black freedom fighter.

I didn’t bother about who I considered to be politically right or wrong in any discussion or who seemed progressive in their ideals; I was purely concerned and obsessed with the next five minutes, followed by the next twenty-four hours of Madiba’s life, making sure that everything was organized for him in a way that would make life easier for him. Although my general understanding of the world improved I didn’t have the space to absorb or understand the intricacies of these countries we visited.

From Iran we went to Damascus in Syria where we met the elderly President Assad. This was only a few years before he passed away. We also met his son who was an impressive young man at the time. The young President Assad clearly also overstayed his welcome and right now he is being challenged by rebels in his own country to force him to step down from the Presidency. Madiba would often say, when referring to people who served in such positions for too long, that ‘leaders got drunk with power’, and often when a head of state is being challenged like this, I think of those words, whether they apply to his situation or not.

From Syria we flew to Israel, via Jordan. Due to the strains between Syria and Israel we were not allowed to leave Syria and fly straight into Israel. Whenever I shared my frustrations with Madiba about these political difficulties we faced, trying to do the right thing, he would always say to me: ‘No Zeldina, you see they just make life interesting’, trying to encourage me to bear up. But sadly, in that moment, they were not so interesting to me.

Upon arrival in Israel we were rushed to our cars like sheep through a crush pen by Israeli police. They nearly left me and Charles (the doctor) behind. I was irritated by the way they handled us and this was one of the many times I had to try and justify my position and why the doctor and I had to be close to Madiba in such a way that they didn’t think it was only because we simply wanted to be close to him. That was the challenge of travelling without a delegation, just me and the doctor and security. You had to fight your way open on the spot. There was never any back-up plan and your only concern was for Madiba: you thought of yourself and the rest when you were already in the situation. I am not a confrontational person in my private life but in situations like these I became another person, playing the actress I’d wanted to be trying to defend us all.

We stayed at the King David Hotel, and on the first night I ordered meat for Madiba’s dinner and salad with cheese for myself from room service. Shortly after I put in the order a butler rang my doorbell. ‘Madam,’ he told me, ‘we wanted to come and explain to you that this is a Kosher hotel and that you cannot have cheese and meat in the same room. You are not allowed.’ I really didn’t have the capacity to argue about food too. I lost the battle and sat with Madiba during dinner and then went to my room to have my cheese salad. The next morning we visited the grave of Yitzhak Rabin, the person who was believed could have negotiated a settlement between Israel and Palestine had it not been for his assassination. From there we visited President Weizman and then Prime Minister Ehud Barak. I liked President Weizman. Prime Minister Barak appeared somewhat intolerant of Madiba and I didn’t enjoy their interaction.

We walked on the Via Dolorosa in the Old City of Jerusalem. It was touching for me as a Christian when I was told that Jesus carried the cross along this road. They made a huge fuss over Madiba walking the Via Dolorosa and hardly allowed him enough space to comfortably walk on the cobbles. We were all nervous as he could trip on the cobbles with his problematic knee and then injure it badly. He was already unstable on his feet. I touched the ancient cobbles and then asked our guide once again, ‘So you mean that Jesus walked on these exact cobbles?’ ‘No,’ he responded. There are apparently around seventeen storeys of building on top of the original road, but this is more or less the road he followed. I was very disappointed.

We then went to the Holocaust museum. One leaves it feeling traumatized and deeply disturbed. As we exited the museum a microphone was pushed in front of Madiba’s face and his impressions of the museum were asked for, despite me explaining to journalists outside that he was not prepared to answer questions. He never liked to be pushed into a corner and he was irritated by any surprise factors. His response was simple: ‘This is a tragedy that happened to the Jewish nation, but one should never lose sight of the fact that this burden is carried by the German people too. The current generation of Germans suffer to rid the stigma they have had to carry as a result of these events for which they themselves cannot be held accountable at this time and age.’ These comments were not appreciated by the Israelis. I sensed some hostility and I was uneasy. (When we arrived back home Madiba had received several letters of complaint from Jewish friends from as far as America about these comments.)

We had a meeting the next day with the President and Prime Minister. They discussed politics and Madiba stuck to his guns around a solution to the Middle Eastern conflict. These conditions had to be adhered to by both parties before any settlement could be reached: 1. Israel had to acknowledge Palestine as an independent country. 2. Palestine had to acknowledge Israel within its clearly defined borders. 3. Parties had to identify a mediator that would be trusted by both. Madiba repeated this over and over again but it fell on deaf ears. There was no chemistry between Madiba and Ehud Barak or the Minister of Foreign Affairs, David Levy. President Weizman was older, however, and a bit more lenient and less aggressive in his response to these suggestions.

From Israel we went to Palestine and met with Yassar Arafat, whom we had encounters with on a number of previous occasions. He was very respectful towards Madiba but by now I was getting irritated by people’s general feeling of victimization in the region. Everyone was a victim and I decided that that was half of the problem in the region for me. People should start feeling pride and dignity regardless of the past. The Palestinians were as unreasonable in their approach in solving the Middle Eastern conflict as were the Israelis.

While Madiba explained to me that the current conflict was started back in 1967 during the Six Day War (when Israel captured and occupied the Golan Heights, West Bank and Gaza Strip) I could clearly see myself that it had escalated to levels to which we won’t see solutions in our generation. To me it visually presented a worse picture than apartheid. Families living 500 metres apart have not been able to visit one another in over thirty years, separated by barbed wire. Wherever there was a blade of green grass it was declared Israeli ground and protected by heavily armed guards. Wherever there was nothing, it was declared Palestinian ground. I found it difficult to understand but, with credit to the Israelis, it was clearly beyond a reasonable fight. The Palestinians lack the leadership to come to a resolve. They tried to compare their situation with that of South Africa but people were generally being extremely unreasonable in their thinking.

Madiba was scheduled to address the Palestinian parliament on the day before our departure. Prof. Gerwel edited the speech back in South Africa and emailed the new version to me. I didn’t have time to read it and somehow a virus of some sort crept into the computer program. The last sentence of the speech ended with a mathematical formula. Madiba also didn’t read the final edits and as a result he read out the maths at the end of the speech. It was in letters and, although I cannot remember the exact words, it was something like: ‘For every two equals four minus seven times eight. I thank you.’ We were all puzzled but after his speech the entire Palestinian parliament rose to their feet in resounding applause. The speech was translated simultaneously and either the translator didn’t translate the maths formula or translated it into something profound. We were all surprised by the occurrence of this virus but amused by the fact that no one picked up on it. Prof. and I had many laughs about this incident for years to follow. The right thing would have been for us to proofread the speech prior to Madiba delivering it, but that was one of the disadvantages of travelling with a non-existent delegation and working at the pace and pressure we were subjected to.

*   *   *

From the Middle East, we travelled to Washington to meet with President Clinton. He was still in office and it was the first time I entered the White House. President Clinton was his charming self to Madiba, respectful and relaxed. He listened to Madiba’s assessment of the Middle East and generally agreed with his suggestions. He was determined to try and help find a solution to the conflict. In our minds President Clinton was the right person to spearhead a peace process there as he had the trust of both parties. Or so we thought.

On the night of our stay in Washington we stayed in the Watergate Hotel. I felt weird as it was the Watergate scandal that saw the end of the Nixon era and I also believed that Monica Lewinsky, the woman who gambled with the future of the Clinton administration, also stayed in the Watergate apartments.

We had dinner with Madiba’s old friend Morgan Freeman and the next day we set off to Dallas in Texas with Prince Bandar. The Prince had bought the Dallas Cowboys football team and we attended a real American football game with him. What an experience, but it was a chaotic day to say the least and it felt like every American in the stadium wanted to shake hands with Madiba. The following day Prince Bandar took us to a proper Texan café where we had tacos and tortillas, something Madiba had never eaten before and I am sure if questioned about it afterwards he would not have remembered what it was. It was very strange to him. What we ate and such traditions never appealed to him like they appealed to me. He liked his simple Xhosa home-cooked food. He was more interested in Prince Bandar’s company and conversing with him, discussing the world’s problems and probably on a few occasions successfully concluding how to bring about world peace.

From there we travelled to Atlanta to do a CNN interview, and from Atlanta we travelled to Houston to address the university. Our schedule was tight but Madiba loved every minute of it. He would never agree on doing something if he didn’t feel up to it, and if there was an open space in his diary he had to find a cause to fill it. Security was tight on this visit because of Prince Bandar’s involvement and this was probably the closest I ever came to assaulting a bodyguard. As we arrived at the university the car in which the doctor and I were travelling got cut off by security guards. We tried to tell our driver to insist on passing through the same entrance as Madiba’s car, but he adhered to the traffic police instructions. As a result, Charles and I had to get out of the car and start making our way to Madiba. It was about a 600-metre walk. While we didn’t mind the distance we did mind Madiba disappearing somewhere where we were not able to find him again.

Charles had his heavy medical bags to carry and I had my flaming temper and we walked at a fast pace. As we approached the building we could see that Madiba had already entered with Prince Bandar. A bald-headed, massive American bodyguard stopped us; we told him that we needed access as we were part of Mr Mandela’s delegation. He point blank refused. He didn’t give an explanation nor was prepared to listen to an argument; he just said ‘no’. Charles kept me calm and said wisely that eventually Madiba would look for us. As if he knew, the next minute Madiba appeared in the door again. He had come outside to look for us – something very unusual for a person of his stature. Ironically, the black man came to look for his two white servants, to rescue us. We could see him standing on the steps and he could see us, but the bodyguard was facing us and refused to turn his back on us to see for himself that Nelson Mandela was standing on the steps of the building calling us.

I was tempted to plant a flat open hand on his bald head when Prince Bandar’s bodyguard, Neigfh, came running towards us to ‘rescue’ us. Due to previous interactions with Prince Bandar we knew Neigfh and he was an extremely kind gentleman. I turned round to the bodyguard and said: ‘Are you happy now? Did it take Nelson Mandela to come outside to come and fetch us? You can bloody well hear we don’t have an American accent. You can see the doctor has medical equipment . . .’ I guess looking back at events today, he was just doing his job and I was being unreasonable, but sometimes people are just not open to persuasion or then even attempting to find out whether there may be any truth to your story.

People would always comment on the unlikely event of Madiba appointing a white fiery Afrikaner as his assistant, and Prof. would say, ‘She has a good healthy mind’, and Madiba would add, ‘with logic and simplicity’.

I was feeling responsible for Madiba’s well-being and I got the sense that he knew it, always enquiring where we were and looking out for us. Our presence made him feel secure in a way as he knew we would deflect any surprises or challenges. It was a professional co-dependency. We equally felt insecure not knowing where the other one was.

Because of all our travels together Charles and I had become close friends and, being the same age, we could relate well during our experiences in this world unknown to anyone else. Like many of the other doctors Charles deeply cared for Madiba too but people would jokingly refer to him as my slave. Madiba only once or twice fell ill during all our travels abroad and Charles was therefore on stand-by most of the time, not having much to do himself. We worked well together as a team and I would often ask him to do small things, like help to fetch laundry, or search for a newspaper or check up on a room service order for Madiba, wrapping a gift, finding a printer, etc., and from there his title as my slave was born. We had much teasing about it.

I sometimes didn’t have time to unpack myself, or as soon as I sat down to make a telephone call back home there would be a foreign protocol person or hotel staff knocking at my door – President Mandela this and President Mandela that. I was the only point of contact in our delegation, for everything, and Charles sometimes had to man my door to enable me to just finish one thing at a time. The pressure was relentless. It sometimes felt like I was going crazy not being able to deal with the pressure but then people like Charles eased the pressure by helping with the mundane issues. He was the only other semi-permanent fixture to our team. Doctors rotated to travel with us too, but because of our hectic travel schedule not all of them wanted to sacrifice their medical day-to-day practices to accompany us. Our security teams also rotated and it was not often that the same team accompanied us on consecutive trips abroad. And when you spend that much time with someone it starts feeling like family.

We were very tired when we returned to South Africa but had the luxury of Prince Bandar’s plane in which we all had proper beds to sleep on. It was always a big spoil to be hosted by him as he spared no expense to ensure that we had the best food and service possible. He was a gracious host, very tolerant of Madiba’s age, and he had great respect for Madiba as a person, something which I in turn appreciated and valued.

Returning home, Madiba called a few influential Jewish people, such as Elie Wiesel, in the United States, warning them about the risks they were facing in that prominent American Jewish leaders were clearly agitating for America to take sides with Israel. Hoping then to bring about peace in the region was not going to happen as long as the mediator clearly took sides.

We heard that President Mbeki was not happy with Madiba’s visit to the Middle East. Our visit there interfered with the South African government’s diplomatic agenda. It is one of those situations where you are doomed if you do and doomed if you don’t. Madiba wanted to try to help along the Middle East peace process and was continually asked to lend a hand, but in the end it seemed that sensitivities with the South African government prevailed. Thinking back it was also not the right thing to do for him to jump on a plane and try and resolve the Middle East war. Prof. Gerwel had to intervene, like on so many occasions, to neutralize the situation. It was clear that the external pressures from people were going to cause a lot of conflict for us in South Africa but ultimately Madiba’s loyalty to his friends is what caused us to be in such situations.

*   *   *

On 6 November 1999 Nelson Mandela nearly died. Along with his team.

We were in Postmasburg, a small town in the Northern Cape. It was mid-summer and it was extremely hot. Gauteng (where Johannesburg and Pretoria are found) has a summer rainfall and the area is known for its intense thunderstorms in the midsummer afternoons. Despite trying to finish our work on the ground early, we took off later than we would have liked. We were travelling to Waterkloof, the military airforce base in Pretoria, on a King Air, a twin-propeller light aircraft. It was an ongoing battle to try and persuade the government to allow Madiba to use jet aircraft and they were running out of aircraft due to the busy schedules of President Mbeki and his deputy. Madiba was no longer priority but on this particular day a bigger plane could not be used because of the length of the landing strip in Postmasburg.

About thirty minutes before landing back in Pretoria the pilot turned around and called me to the cockpit. He told me that both Waterkloof and Johannesburg International airports had been closed as a result of thunderstorms and that we might have to go and land elsewhere. I relayed the message to Madiba. He sat calmly, strapped in his seat watching the every move of the pilots. Soon we started hitting turbulence and the atmosphere in the plane was becoming tense. From where I was seated I could both see Madiba’s face and hear the pilots’ communication. It was growing urgent as the pilot was informing the control tower that we were not able to circle for much longer since we were running out of fuel and that they were being forced to decide where to land. All neighbouring airports were closed. As we dived through the clouds the turbulence was getting worse and at intervals the pilot had to let go of the steering column of the plane completely to allow the plane to be guided by turbulence. It was terrifying.

Madiba had a frown fixed on his forehead and was pouting his lips in dissatisfaction and Wayne Hendricks, one of the bodyguards, made a few jokes to try and ease the tension. At first he was funny but then I started getting angry at him out of panic. Wayne always had a charming and funny way to ease tension with his sense of humour and under the circumstances, even though he failed dismally, it was nice that he tried.

Madiba didn’t say a word. One of Madiba’s grandsons, who was also on the plane, looked half-sick when we hit an air pocket which threw the plane a few metres down. The contents of my handbag flew across the plane and we were holding on for dear life. The grandson’s cellphone flew from the top pocket of his shirt across the plane and Wayne caught it mid-air in the front like bodyguards do. I could hear the pilots panicking but they were determined to try and land the aircraft at Waterkloof. Emergency services were being called on standby at the airport and by now tears were streaming down my face uncontrollably. I was crying reprehensively. Wayne was comforting me, trying to tell me that we were going to be OK but I couldn’t see us emerging from this alive. At last we landed. The pilots were perspiring as they brought the plane to a standstill on the ground. Madiba put his hand on my shoulder and said: ‘Don’t worry Zeldina, we are safe now.’ We disembarked, got into our cars and proceeded to Houghton.

I immediately left to go home but as I drove around the block I got a call from Xoliswa, Madiba’s long-serving chef at the house, saying that Madiba wanted me to return to have coffee with him. I returned and he called me into the lounge. His grandson was still sitting with him. Madiba made me sit down and he could see I was visibly still in shock. He said: ‘Zeldina, today was a terrible experience. But we should forget about it as soon as possible and the best thing for us would be to get on to a plane again as quickly as possible.’ He was comparing it to like falling off a bike. The best you can do is to get back on again as soon as possible. He continued: ‘I never want to fly in a small aircraft like that again and I never want to travel with any of my grandchildren again.’ What he implied was that it was too risky for him to fly in a propeller aircraft and if anything ever happened to him he didn’t want to risk his grandchildren’s lives as well. From that day we refused for him to travel in propeller aircraft again. It created a lot of trouble for us with the airforce as they did not have a large fleet of jet-engine aircraft and they often had to charter. It contributed to the strained atmosphere between us and the Presidency but it was not something I was willing to compromise on after this experience.

Years later we were also in a helicopter incident. Madiba travelled to a rural area in the Transkei on one of our schools and clinics building visits and on our way there the pilots had expressed their concern over something in the engine overheating. They were convinced though that they would be able to fix it once they landed and they were not overly concerned. They thought they had managed to fix it but we were nervous before our return. We told our security on the ground about our concern, and as soon as we took off again after the event they left by road for the direction of Mthatha, where we were heading. About fifteen minutes into the flight oil sprayed all over the outside of the windows. We could no longer see through the window and you could clearly see it was oil spill, which obviously created a fire hazard. The pilots told us that we had to land and they slowly manoeuvered the Oryx helicopter to the ground.

They landed in a piece of open velt and, since the entire region was rural, there were no houses or people in sight. While we landed I called the security men on their way to the airport to tell them that we had had to do an emergency landing. We didn’t land too far from the road and if they approached us they would see us in the velt. They arrived about twenty minutes later, but before they arrived I was concerned about our presence in the region, with the community not knowing why a military helicopter with heavily armed bodyguards outside it had landed in the middle of nowhere. The pilots tried to find the problem but they were unable to fix it. We subsequently got into the cars and drove to Mthatha where our flight back to Johannesburg departed from. Madiba was inclined to think that there may have been deliberate sabotage involved but I managed to convince him otherwise.

*   *   *

Huge parties were being planned around the world for the turning of the millennium and South Africa was bracing itself for the same celebrations. By now tension appeared to be growing between Madiba and President Mbeki. We heard rumours that the President seemed to be of the opinion that Madiba was conducting himself like a head of state. Madiba was doing what he always did – responding to ad hoc requests and trying to please everyone possible. Even though we sometimes disagreed with such decisions, he was the captain of his fate, the master of his soul (as he recited the poem ‘Invictus’ from his prison years) and he wanted to continue what pleased his soul. It was very difficult to focus on what we had hoped his post-Presidential office and its focus would be. Then there was always the feeling of entitlement from people across the world. They felt entitled to him in a way because some of them supported the struggle against apartheid and they expected him to do certain things, and he would eagerly oblige also feeling the need to repay dues. Secretly I think he also just loved travelling, and having been incarcerated for such a long time I do think that it was normal for him to want to travel and almost make up for lost time. The result of these influences, whatever its purpose was, is what constantly guided his actions and landed him in trouble from time to time.

I was not sure how deep the so-called rift was between Madiba and the President and how much it was imagined in other people’s minds. For example, in November 1999 Madiba received a call from President Mbeki asking him to lead negotiations in the war-stricken Burundi. Personally I thought that Madiba couldn’t take on more work but he agreed. Because of Madiba’s intervention in Zaire (now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo) during his Presidency, I assumed that President Mbeki thought it would be easier for Madiba to try and broker peace against the backdrop of what happened in the DRC. President Mbeki’s agenda was also to try to bring about peace in Africa, as it would have economic advantages for South Africa. I also felt that it was perhaps a way for the government to keep Madiba occupied elsewhere and that giving him such a task would fully occupy him and distract him from being tempted or persuaded to interfere as he had done in the Middle East, or in what was going on at home for that matter.

I felt somewhat for President Mbeki. He was expected to fill the shoes of an icon in history. Yet I also believed that the ANC was responsible for creating this icon, identifying him as the symbol of freedom for the oppressed and it was wrong for ANC people to now feel that Madiba was behaving out of line. Publicly Madiba remained firm, saying that South Africa had never had a better President or Prime Minister in its history than President Mbeki. Sometimes I thought that President Mbeki probably felt that Madiba was patronizing him but Madiba believed in what he was saying, and years later his vision in this regard became apparent. Our country has never been economically as stable as after the Mbeki Presidency, and as a result we were completely shielded from the worldwide economic meltdown of the late 2000s.

There was never any ill intent or deliberateness in anything Madiba did and therefore no reason in my mind why people would feel that Madiba was upstaging the President. It was these prophets of doom’s own insecurities that showed. Whether it was really the President himself or his staff that were responsible for this perception I will never know. Madiba would often ask to speak to the President and was told that the call would be returned and it never happened. I felt people were becoming intolerant of the elderly Madiba. We would ask for appointments and were told the President was too busy. What the ANC should have done was to set out an agenda for Madiba but I understand it was difficult precisely because Madiba had such a strong will and determination to do what pleased his heart.

Alan Pillay, who was the administrative officer in our office during Madiba’s Presidency, was one of President Mbeki’s private secretaries and unless Alan acted as go-between, communication was extremely difficult between the two. Somehow when Alan helped, things happened and worked out fine without politicking.

It was difficult to manage that publicly though. Madiba was making a concerted effort to make sure that he spoke well of the President. Whenever Madiba and the President were together I had the task to ensure that Madiba showed the necessary respect by following protocol and ensuring that we were not seen to undermine protocol and the President in any way. It was difficult because people and the public would still give Madiba the standing ovation, the loudest welcome, and make a big fuss about him.

The President and Madiba were scheduled to be together on Robben Island for the turn of the millennium. At first a verbal invitation was extended and when we heard that the President would be there, we declined, precisely because we feared that Madiba’s presence would put the President in a difficult position. We then received a call from the Presidency confirming that the President wanted Madiba to be there. Madiba refused again. We had to convince him by telling him that all his old comrades would be there, and it would be necessary for him to go to see them as there would be a live broadcast worldwide. He eventually agreed.

It was a beautiful evening on Robben Island and I remember chasing people back into the tent to try and force them to show some respect for the President, and not follow us as we were preparing to leave, deserting the tent to follow us while President Mbeki was still inside. I was becoming increasingly unpopular no matter what I did. While I was trying to be loyal to Madiba, I assumed the duty that he had to appear respectful towards the President, but the public and people made it difficult. I would also have to do it in a way not to make Madiba feel inadequate in any way but that he still got afforded the respect he deserved. Every little action therefore turned into a complex situation of thinking about scenarios and analysing everything that got proposed, and it took a lot of energy and emotional capabilities to please everyone and do the right thing. But then you have to stand firm and do whatever the person who employs you expects of you and take criticism and politics on the chin. I had to learn not to be a coward.

People would often write to Madiba to ask him to intervene in matters that were clearly the jurisdiction of a President. And then when I corrected them and referred them to the President’s office I was often blamed for overprotecting Madiba and/or controlling him. I was called his ‘minder’ and I joked to say yes I don’t mind. Yet Madiba himself didn’t want to be involved in many things. He wanted to continue raising funds for his charities, to build his schools and clinics, but also to have the freedom to speak out on issues for which he was well known – issues of morality and human rights. People insisted on Madiba’s attention and personal intervention and it was a lost battle no matter what one did.

*   *   *

Madiba was well known to be an outstanding fundraiser. He raised millions of dollars for the ANC following the unbanning of the party in the 1990s. Now he was focusing on his charitable causes. The ruler of Dubai had agreed to support his Foundation but due to interference from a South African diplomat in Dubai this particular effort was fruitless. We were only able to speculate as to the reason for the interference and on whose behalf the diplomat acted.

Madiba often boasted about his fundraising abilities. He said as long as it was for a good cause it was easy. Relentless in his approach, and because he never asked for money for himself, it was easy for him to put pressure on someone by arguing the importance of the cause. At first I couldn’t figure out how it was so easy for him but after seeing him in action I understood that if you believed in the cause you fundraised for, it comes naturally.

Something which has puzzled me over the years is a story Madiba often repeated and went to great effort to report to President Mbeki and other ANC officials. Madiba was never a great administrator and he genuinely trusted people until the contrary became apparent. It would amaze me how he recited his fundraising efforts and the simplicity with which he considered the process. During his fundraising days for the ANC the moneys would simply be handed from one official to the next and he never mistrusted anyone in the process.

It was an arrangement I thought sounded practical and made sense. Madiba would receive the money, hand it to Tom Nkobi, the Treasurer General of the ANC at the time, to have the moneys deposited. (In our fundraising he refused to receive money personally and would insist that it be deposited or given directly to the Foundation or the Children’s Fund, whichever he was trying to help at that stage.) Madiba was removed from society for twenty-seven years and he knew very little about banking or investments. I would then ask Madiba, while he told the story, whether anyone ever kept a record of the money. I was not suspicious of anyone but found it surprising that Madiba himself did not know how much money he really raised.

There was no doubt in his mind that the money reached its final destination, but then he would add that Tom Nkobi later suddenly died of unknown causes. I don’t know how this related to the fundraising but it puzzled me and I would lie awake many nights trying to imagine what had happened. Madiba told us how he was sent from pillar to post when he tried to find a reason for Tom’s sudden illness and that when he managed to visit him in Durban he was not left alone with him. Madiba said there was an ‘awkward fellow’ present, the Indian male nurse who was looking after Tom. Tom lived in Johannesburg, yet when he got ill he was sent to Durban, whereas we are supposed to have some of the world’s best medical practitioners in Johannesburg.

In recent years, when the South African businessman Schabir Shaik was charged with corruption and fraud I simply noted the coincidence that his company was called Nkobi Holdings. Madiba, however, was concerned about then Deputy President Jacob Zuma’s friendship with Schabir Shaik. Call it a sixth sense, I don’t know. Part of Shaik’s fraud charges were that he wrote off more than US$150,000 of loans made to Jacob Zuma. In South Africa, the donor of money to a private individual is liable to pay tax if annually that amount exceeds about US$10,000. It was argued that these amounts were paid to Jacob Zuma to influence the outcome of tenders around a controversial South African arms contract to supply the government with world-class artillery.

Shaik was found guilty of corruption and in the court proceedings the judge said that a ‘corrupt relationship between Jacob Zuma and Schabir Shaik’ had been found.

Madiba went to great lengths to try and discuss this with several ANC officials and on more than three or four occasions we were running around after officials trying to find time for Madiba to raise this matter and ask that it be looked into. No one ever got back to him and I was slowly introduced to the hypocrisy of politics. They would sit in front of him, listen to him and sometimes even agree with him, but then as soon as we left the matter disappeared. On tens of hundreds of occasions I heard him saying to crowds and in speeches that people must guard against only doing what serves their best interests but remain loyal to the cause and to their conscience. More and more even today, you see the hypocrisy that he warned against. As if he could see it coming. Some people have lost the passion for the party, the purpose of the cause: representing the people. It has become a selfish, self-righteous war in South African politics where self-interest is the only agenda, and that has become the cancer of corruption.

*   *   *

We visited Arusha in Tanzania for the first time as part of Madiba’s negotiations in the Burundi peace process. After Arusha we went to New York. It was my first trip to New York too. We stayed in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel and I remember being impressed by the size of the room, although we were guests of the late US Ambassador to the UN, Richard Holbrooke, and didn’t stay in the ordinary part of the hotel. My experience of New York was limited to having a proper Waldorf Salad in the Waldorf hotel and visiting the UN. As we had no protocol or media liaison people around us – it was just me – I became even more adamant not to leave the hotel, in case anything happened or Madiba needed me during my absence.

Madiba was interested in engaging with Ambassador Holbrooke to help us raise funds but also to discuss the issues he touched on during his visit to Israel and Palestine the year before, as well as briefing him about Burundi. During our visit Ambassador Holbrooke hosted a reception in his apartment. It was the first time I met Whoopi Goldberg, whom I was told by Madiba did a lot to oppose apartheid during his incarceration. She made a powerful speech during the well-publicized ‘Free Mandela Concert’ at Wembley Stadium in England in 1988.

I fondly recall meeting Robert De Niro for the first time too. He brought Grace, his wife, and his lovely sons to meet Madiba. Madiba was completely at ease but one of the boys didn’t want anything to do with him. Over the years I’ve come to the conclusion that Madiba has almost been turned into a fantasy character as a result of media exposure. Children do not know how to react towards him and then usually they don’t react the way parents expect them to. It’s similar to children’s reactions when they are confronted with Santa Claus or someone dressed in a Disney character suit. Robert pulled his son to the side and said: ‘You will regret this for the rest of your life . . . now behave.’ The little boy of about seven years of age had little understanding of that statement and both Madiba and I were amused by Robert’s efforts to get his son to react in a way that would be valuable to him in future. The child just refused to co-operate.

It was impressive to visit the United Nations, a body for which Madiba had great respect. We met with Kofi Annan, the then Secretary-General, and I couldn’t help but feel the aura of respect between the two men.

Madiba was scheduled to have an interview with Larry King on CNN. In my negotiations with the producers I asked them countless times to provide us with a set of questions or topics to be discussed as Madiba wanted to be prepared for the interview. They refused and said that Larry never provides such material before an interview. I let it go. Not one of the best interviews Madiba had ever done and it was to Larry’s detriment. Madiba closed down and his answers were short and to the point, very unlike him as the warmth of character got lost. He answered the questions he was asked but he didn’t really engage. It was clear that the producers were more interested in adding Madiba to Larry’s interview CV than getting really good content had he been prepared for the interview. It was a very different experience when Madiba appeared with Oprah. She was warm and friendly and supportive of his work and her team had no problem providing topics beforehand; as a result Madiba responded better.

People always asked very similar questions of Madiba, whether they met him for interviews or extended interactions at functions. They would usually ask him one of a few things and his responses would be standard, sometimes adapted to fit the circumstances during the interview but usually more or less the same: to ‘What do you consider the characteristics of a good leader?’ he would respond, ‘A person who serves his people’ and elaborate on that. To ‘Do you have no bitterness or regret after spending so much time in prison?’ he would respond: ‘Regret is the most useless of emotions because you cannot change anything. I made the choices I did because they pleased my soul at the time.’ They then frequently asked, ‘How would you like to be remembered?’ and he would say without hesitation: ‘One would leave that to other people to decide how they want to remember you.’ I found that funny. He could have said ‘a humanitarian’, ‘a person that served his people’, or whatever, but he simply wanted to leave it to others to decide and not be dictating history.

When he passed away in 2013 I noticed how many people had stories to tell about Madiba – some of them so unbelievable and sometimes a bit out of character that made them hard to truly believe for those who knew Madiba well. Yet, at that point I was reminded of his wish that people should be left the freedom to remember him as they wanted and I specifically made a point in an interview, when asked about it, to say that people should be left to do exactly that. Whether their memories were good or bad or even fictional, it really is about what happens in the heart when you hear his name, providing that such stories do not betray his legacy.

We also visited the estate of George Soros, as Madiba asked him for a donation for the Foundation. Sadly nothing happened and we returned to New York empty handed. I heard later that Mr Soros wasn’t completely clear on the strategic direction of the Foundation, hence his hesitation to support it financially, which I thought was fair. The Foundation tried to cater for Madiba’s changing agenda. First it was schools and clinics and his post-Presidential office, then the latter remained but its focus shifted to AIDS and education, and later dialogue was added too. It was confusing to the public.

We often found ourselves (me, the doctor and security) waiting for Madiba in these palaces, grand hotels and houses we only ever before saw in movies. On the first few occasions you admire other people’s success in life and I think then you are envious, but later a house becomes a house and you don’t even notice any longer. The grandeur loses its charm. The only concerns I had was that there should be no stairs to where Madiba was supposed to go, as he had difficulty climbing them, and that he should never be left alone where he could be caught in any situation where he felt compromised and we were not close enough for him to call on us when necessary. I usually settled him in at the meeting and then started monitoring the watch. He never wanted to stay longer than thirty or forty minutes anywhere and usually got to the point of his discussion pretty fast. After thirty minutes, if I was not inside the meeting (which I usually tried to avoid to be able to do other things while waiting outside), I would go in to remind him to watch the time. He would then jokingly tell his hosts, ‘No, you see, this is my boss and I have to listen to her otherwise I would lose my job’, and people would look at me with strange expressions, from ‘oh that’s funny’ to ‘oh yes the whites were the apartheid regime so I’m sure they still do that’, totally confused with such remarks. I usually laughed at his comments to try and ease the tension one felt in the room as not everyone got his sense of humour immediately. So whether it was funny or not, I forced a laugh to try and show people that it was just a joke. If he was still there twenty minutes after my first announcement, I would then remind him again and he would without fail get up and announce that it was time for him to leave.

He expected to be ‘rescued’ sometimes as well. In some meetings he would call me to ask ‘how much time do we have?’ and that would be an indication to me that I should watch the time and not allow things to drag on for too long. Time was therefore always a matter of great contestation between other people and myself. Not to Madiba, but to outsiders who felt he should or could stay longer or that he was being disrespectful. To try and please so many people one needed a thirty-six-hour day and it was simply impossible. He was, however, never someone who would do anything against his will. He was a born leader and the person who wanted to remain in charge even when he made others feel that their input was of vital importance to his decision-making process. He had an excessive need for discipline but then also a very very strong will that bordered on hard-headedness sometimes.

*   *   *

On 28 April 2000 we visited Bujumbura in Burundi. It is one of the most beautiful cities in Africa, surrounded by trees and beautiful landscapes. Sadly the roads and infrastructure have been damaged by the civil war and clearly much had to be done to repair not only the infrastructure but also faith by potential foreign investors. It was tense in the area and although the Burundian people were very happy to receive Madiba, one had to be very careful not to be aligned to any one party involved in the negotiations. We travelled right into the war zone where Madiba addressed refugees and gave them the one thing people needed: hope.

On 3 May we paid a one-day visit to London in order to appear in the royal court in London, following Madiba’s appointment as a Queen’s Counsel by his friend Queen Elizabeth. We really tried to convince him not to travel to London for one day but he insisted. He wanted to honour his warm friendship with the Queen. I think he was one of very few people who called her by her first name and she seemed to be amused by it. I was entertained by these interactions. When he was questioned one day by Mrs Machel and told that it was not proper to call the Queen by her first name, he responded: ‘But she calls me Nelson.’ On one occasion when he saw her he said, ‘Oh Elizabeth, you’ve lost weight!’ Not something everybody gets to tell the Queen of England.

We travelled like businessmen who often go to Europe for one day. It was however difficult as Madiba was growing old and the logistics weren’t as straightforward or simple as hopping onto a plane for a one-day visit overseas. We could only stay for one day as we were scheduled to attend a farewell dinner for Madiba’s close friend Dr Mamphela Ramphele at the University of Cape Town the next evening. She had been appointed to the World Bank and was leaving Cape Town. She was the first medical doctor to attend to his health after he was released from prison and she referred him to some of the best cardiologists in South Africa at the time.

Life also continues to happen even when you are this busy. Madiba’s good friend and colleague Dr Ismail Meer passed away and we flew to Durban to go and pay our respects to the Meer family. I noticed that more and more of his friends were passing away and he clearly noticed it too, which must be unsettling for any elderly person. He knew so many people and frequently we found ourselves attending funerals over consecutive weekends. Still it was also something that was expected of him and little consideration was given to what impact it must have on an elderly person to be attending funerals almost weekly.

In May 2000 we travelled to Monaco upon the request of South African billionaire businessman Johann Rupert. Johann provided a private plane to fly Madiba to Monaco where he attended the first ever Laureus Sports Awards. We also met with the now late Prince Rainier and young Prince Albert. It was the first time we met the singer Bono, who was introduced by Naomi Campbell. I had to take time to explain to Madiba who Bono was, that he boycotted South Africa with his music during apartheid and that he was a musical legend to my generation. I was sad to leave Monaco, being a Grand Prix fan, as it was only a day before the qualifying rounds in Monaco. We could hear the Formula 1 cars being tested in the streets and I left feeling disappointed that I came so close to attending a Grand Prix, but I simply couldn’t stay.

Then in late 2000 Madiba was invited to visit Australia to attend the ‘What Makes a Champion?’ conference. He was also scheduled to receive honorary doctorates from the University of Sydney and the University of Technology. Whenever we had to prepare for an honorary doctorate we had to send his measurements in advance for the particular university to prepare his academic robes, including his head measurements. Whenever I would ask to take his measurements he was tolerant but he was eager to get it done sooner than later. He was not the most patient person when it came to fiddling over him. He would agree but urge me to be quick.

By now I had changed so much and I was comfortable around him. He had managed to destroy all my prejudices about black people. I had a deep sense of caring for him like one would care for your own elderly grandparents. Whenever I didn’t see him for a day or two, I would kiss him when I saw him again as we greeted. Later it became every day even if I saw him consecutive days. How much I had changed! I started missing him whenever a day passed that we didn’t work. He often held onto me when he walked or took my hand when climbing up or down stairs. I could touch his hair without thinking anything of it, trying to push down on disorderly hair whenever the wind or a hat rumpled it. I had come such a long way and felt angry about the prejudices we were brought up with.

Madiba was always well groomed and took great care in making sure that his skin was well moisturized, and I remember how I sometimes had to struggle during his Presidency to get a particular lotion that was not available on the South African market at the time – simple Palmer’s Body Lotion that he used while he was imprisoned. I think the company may have stopped manufacturing it in South Africa for a while and we had to ask people in the United States to buy it in bulk and send it to us in South Africa. The same with the eye drops he preferred: Refresh Plus, the blue and white box. He was just so meticulous about certain things.

In Australia he was scheduled to have meetings with Prime Minister John Howard as well as the famous and rich Packer family, concerning a donors’ internet portal to raise funds for the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund and Foundation. His meeting with the Prime Minister was merely a courtesy call. The attempt to persuade the Packer family to donate to his charities was one of the efforts that never realized a donation and I don’t know why.

The flight to Australia was tiring but the captain of our commercial plane offered Madiba the crew rest room for him to be able to have a flat bed to sleep on. I thought it was very kind and we were extremely grateful.

Arriving in Sydney we settled in, and after adjusting to the time difference we took Madiba to Sydney’s famous zoo. We were allowed to feed giraffes, hold baby kangaroos and koala and watched dingos being fed. I am convinced that we would not have had these privileges if we were not in the company of Nelson Mandela. We toured past the Opera House on a boat and went to have lunch at Prime Minister Howard’s residence. I liked him. He was really a kind man and without any pretence. They debated the Aborigines’ issues and Madiba was under pressure to speak out against the government for their treatment of the Aborigines. Madiba maintained what he had said for a long time – that he would listen to the grievances of people but that he would not interfere in the domestic affairs of another country. While he acknowledged and respected them he refused to be drawn into any controversy. It was shortly before the Sydney Olympics and we visited the South African team in the Olympic village, where Madiba addressed them and wished them well.

From Sydney we went on to Canberra where we were hosted by the Governor-General, the equivalent of a head of state. We stayed in his beautiful guest house where one could see the kangaroos through the window while having breakfast in the dining room. On these occasions and while we shared meals Madiba would recite all the knowledge he had about a particular topic. On kangaroos he gave me a long lesson about their pouches and he freely offered knowledge until I asked a question that he didn’t know the answer to. That was usually the end of that particular conversation. He didn’t like me asking difficult questions.

We also visited Melbourne and it became clear to me that unless one experiences another country by moving around with the ordinary people, it would always be difficult to figure out why so many South Africans move to Australia to start a new life there. Staying in government guest houses and being hosted by them never gives you a real sense of life in another country.

*   *   *

Back at home the pressure was on the increase. Madiba was more in demand than ever before. He was becoming the saviour of everything and everybody. Whenever people didn’t get satisfactory responses from government they would turn to him. He was seen as the person who could intervene in anything and resolve any problems anyone had. People elevated him to a saint-like status and he would remind them: ‘A saint is a sinner who keeps on trying.’ I loved that saying.

Often people wrote to him from pure frustration when they didn’t get solutions from government. We could never interfere with service delivery or matters that could be seen to tread on government territory. We had no desire and we had no time, and sometimes it was really a blessing in disguise to be able to say ‘we simply can’t’. One had to understand though, that when a person turned to Nelson Mandela it was almost in a last desperate attempt – no matter how frustrated we as administrators became with the endless paperwork involved. Even people writing to him from prison had to be given the dignity and consideration they deserved of a response, even if it was just an acknowledgement of their existence. Something I didn’t ever want on my conscience was a person committing suicide or something happening to someone as a result of our ignorance: if we didn’t respond to a letter or simply ignored it.

Being a public figure and making that choice to be in public like Madiba, one has an obligation to the public. It drove my colleagues insane that I would insist on acknowledging people’s correspondence even if we couldn’t help or weren’t interested. Floods of letters were being received from people who needed schools, clinics, medicine, financial assistance, scholarships and every kind of help imaginable. Sometimes it was as simple as: ‘Dear Mr Mandela, Can you please buy me a bike.’ Madiba was, according to the writer of every letter, their only hope, whether it was poverty, education, social issues, disputes, he was still their President and President to the world.

How we agreed upon things came down ultimately to what he essentially felt like doing. He was, however, never able to turn offers down personally as he never wanted to disappoint people, and if someone had to do that, it was me. I often relied on Professor Gerwel to give us guidance and input but things were pretty much left to Madiba himself to decide. But often Madiba would be convinced to do something by someone who saw him at a meeting and talked him into taking another trip. Madiba was equally to blame. He could say no, but secretly I think he just loved travelling. It was bordering on the ridiculous, though. We were all exhausted. No other person of Madiba’s age followed such a gruelling travelling schedule loaded with formal engagements as he did. Yet he would never complain about being tired and always look for another opportunity to travel or do more. His duties were never going to come to an end.

Apart from the Burundi peace process and the schools and clinics project (as well as trying to please the entire world), Madiba was also depended upon by leaders from the rural area he came from. So he received a call from the head of the Pondos, King Thandizulu Sigcau, one day. The call was short and to the point: ‘I want you to arrange two bursaries for my daughters to study in the United States’, and that was the end of the conversation. There were no other words in that conversation and Madiba, the subject, knew what to do. So he arranged the two scholarships through Coca-Cola. His relationship with the Pondo King was strange and I had great difficulty trying to understand and comprehend traditional affairs. Whenever we travelled to Qunu over Christmas, King Thandizulu would appear with a sheep as a present to Madiba for Christmas. This gesture meant a lot to Madiba.

The King’s daughters successfully completed their studies in the United States and they really made us all proud. They’ve become role models in their own right and didn’t waste the opportunities they got, but grasped them and worked hard. Sadly the King passed away in 2013 while Madiba was hospitalized and we were unable to reach out to them in time to pay our respects. I nevertheless maintained contact with them.

*   *   *

In 2000 I turned thirty. It was an emotional time for me and I felt as if my youth was over. Silly as one can be at that age. Madiba made fun of me, understandably, and teased me. He would repeatedly ask how old I was supposed to turn in October with a broad smile on his face, and I would respond every time saying thirty!! He would laugh and say, ‘Oh no, you are still very young.’ He would deliberately pretend to forget just for the sake of teasing me. I didn’t feel young and every time he asked I would be upset. He knew that but he loved teasing me, though there was no cruel intent from his side. He would also always ask: ‘How many boyfriends do you have now?’ And I would come up with any number. Sometimes he would ask when arriving in the office whether I had called all my boyfriends and I would play along and say I couldn’t get hold of one or two of them but the rest were all taken care of. My responses in playing along created great laughs on both sides. He had standard questions to all the female staff and teased people in different ways. His humour never failed.

I reflected on matters over the years and decided that even today, in my forties, I am emotionally immature as a result of the stress and pressure of the years. It was a young age for me to have experienced the things I did and absorb the pressures I did. I never had a normal relationship after I started working for Madiba: I was working all the time and when I didn’t work I was resting. I never got in touch with mainstream youth apart from my colleagues but I was also never in the same place for long enough to even maintain stable platonic friendships. As a result, I still lack the emotional capability to deal with very ordinary things. But I was becoming good at understanding politics, how the world operated, taking care of Madiba, and perfecting the art of dealing with logistics and arrangements around the most famous person on earth, and that was my only concern at the time. Still I would never exchange the experience and opportunity of working for Nelson Mandela for any other privileges.

*   *   *

Again, we got called by former President P. W. Botha. He seemed insistent on holding Nelson Mandela personally responsible for his grudges and grievances with modern South Africa. Many people who have not accepted the new South Africa do that. Whenever something goes wrong, it is put on Madiba’s shoulders. People inherently want a scapegoat or someone to say ‘I told you so’ to when something doesn’t go their way. For whites to have surrendered power they were always going to be over-critical of a black government, and when things no longer pleased them it would be blamed on the fact that blacks were inefficient and unable to run the country as they insisted they could. Some people just love complaining, they make a life of it. There is a difference between really being concerned about service delivery and incompetence and just complaining for the sake of it. It is just part of human nature but the racial issue complicated matters.

One day I received such a call from Mr Botha’s residence and was told that the former President wanted to speak to Madiba. I returned the call and connected them. I was never Mr Botha’s biggest cheerleader and because he didn’t address Madiba in a respectful manner to my liking I was always on the back foot when he called. Whenever someone referred to Madiba as ‘Mandela’ or ‘Nelson’ my neck hair raised. Yet Madiba was always overly friendly and courteous to Mr Botha. I was reminded of a well-known statement Madiba made saying that it is easier to change others than it is to change yourself. I had to work on my perceptions about Mr Botha. Madiba truly and honestly didn’t hold grudges. He had, as a result, no reason to be anything but friendly with his former enemies.

They spoke briefly, after which Madiba asked me to get the Minister of Police. He told me that Mr Botha had complained about the number of bodyguards he was given while he (Madiba) and former President de Klerk received a full contingent of security personnel, yet they were all former presidents. To me, the older you became the less the threat level against you, and the less you moved in public the less security you needed; I also didn’t see how this was Madiba’s problem. I nevertheless did as I was told.

We called the Minister and Madiba asked him to look into the matter. Madiba had also promised Mr Botha that I would call him back in a few days and give him a progress report. Two days later Mr Botha called again: ‘Juffrou [Miss], when am I supposed to get a report from Mandela?’ Not ‘how are you?’ or anything, just that. I deliberately over-emphasized titles in my response, saying: ‘Mister Botha, Mister Mandela has spoken to the Minister and we are awaiting feedback. I am sure that Mister Mandela will respond to you as soon as we have a response from the Minister.’ He insisted that I remind Madiba to talk to ‘them’, implying the government. It was a common occurrence among white South Africans to talk of ‘them’ and ‘us’. ‘Us’ referred to white South Africans and ‘them’ or ‘they’ referred to black people more specifically. The more tolerant I became of certain things such as people’s diversity and allowing them to believe what they want without the urge to force my opinion on matters, the more intolerant I was growing to the use of language that demonstrated lack of respect from my own people.

In the old South Africa people used the ‘k-word’ (kaffir) to refer to black people. It is a derogatory term and now considered hate-speech in our new constitution. Strangely, in my immediate surroundings or whenever I was in their presence family and friends who sometimes used the ‘k-word’ stopped doing so or avoided it whenever I was around. If they did use it I would reprimand them and possibly avoid seeing them again. It is something that became unbearable to me. And not only the use of that word but also people’s generalizations and judgements when it came to black people. Those generalizations were baseless and unjustifiable and I often found myself in heated debates with whites about issues around respect. I would point out the same to black people on social media whenever they used derogatory terms towards whites too, but it could easily get out of hand as I, being white, would cause a furore for trying to reprimand black people, which distracted from the initial argument.

I told Mr Botha that Madiba had spoken to the Minister but he ended the call with ‘tell him I’m waiting’. Dropping the phone I thought: I don’t think so. There was really no need for me to report this to Madiba and agitate him. I knew that he was waiting to hear from the Minister and that the Minister would act on it. Two days later Mr Botha called with the same questions and orders. I told Madiba this time and asked whether he could speak to Mr Botha to calm him down; perhaps he then would stop calling me. Madiba said no. I couldn’t believe what I heard and laughed at his response. I thought at first he was joking with me. It was not that he was not willing to help either Mr Botha or myself but he didn’t want to talk to him again. End of story. And I knew when Madiba felt like that about something or someone, there was no use in trying to convince him otherwise. He didn’t often respond like this, so when he did you knew it was the end of the movie. I don’t know whether the matter was resolved but we didn’t hear from Mr Botha again. I left the matter at that and really couldn’t care about how many security guards he had. It was as if he intended to say to Madiba, ‘I started the negotiations around you being freed and the ANC being unbanned and now I don’t even have enough security guards.’ Mr Botha wanted to hold Madiba responsible too. Well, approach determines attitude.

*   *   *

Increasingly, we were working on peace missions around the world. In March 2001 we travelled to Seoul to talk to the Prime Minister of South Korea about the idea of a Peace Park connecting North and South Korea. The Peace Parks Foundation negotiates and establishes conservation areas that stretch over national borders, creating an area to restore ecological communities. Madiba was the Patron of the Peace Parks Foundation, headed by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands and Dr Anton Rupert. Prince Bernhard and Dr Rupert had been friends for centuries and together they established the World Wide Fund for Nature Conservation with great success, followed by the Peace Parks Foundation. On our visit to South Korea President Kim Dae-jung was receptive of the idea but clearly expressed his disbelief that North Korea would come to the party. Our requests to meet with the Chairman of the National Defence Commission of North Korea, the supreme position of power held by Kim Jong-il at the time, fell on deaf ears and we never received a response.

The public probably thought that Madiba would be welcomed anywhere in the world. Well, no. North Korea was one such place. No interest whatsoever. We tried to avoid situations where we felt there was a chance of failure but because of Prince Bernhard’s and Dr Rupert’s involvement in this particular case Madiba wanted to try at least. We sat around in South Korea for a few days, and when we realized that the North Koreans were ignoring us we simply returned home. Strangely, being so far away from home and not attending to official business gave us a bit of a break from the craziness back at home. On this particular visit I was again asked to be in Madiba’s room when the masseuse came to his room for treatments. As usual I tried to give that task to one of the security men, until I noticed that the masseuse was blind. Even though I had told Madiba in Afrikaans that she was blind he was alert all the time during the massage as opposed to being relaxed. I feared that at some point he was going to tell her to stop and I just couldn’t control myself from laughing out loud. It’s not that I didn’t have respect for her or her disability but more about Madiba, who appeared so tense in the situation. She was, contrary to what I expected, exceptionally professional. They say if you are born without one of your senses some of the others overdevelop and I got to see that. It was clear that she was an excellent masseuse and had ‘healing hands’.

Madiba had this strange habit of keeping his watch on local South African time no matter where in the world we were travelling. We had to wake up at the strangest hours in order for him not to adjust his body clock to time difference too much so that he would not suffer from jet-lag when we returned home. And then, wherever we were in the world, in whatever time zone, we had to call Mrs Machel wherever she was in the morning and in the evening. I remember being in Seoul and not finding Mrs Machel immediately and Madiba insisting on staying awake until we did. It was one of those precious things he insisted on, being a husband. She had to be called in the morning before she had breakfast and in the evening before she went to sleep. ‘How are you Mum, how was your day?’ he would say. Upon which I would leave the room to give them a few minutes of privacy before resuming our programme or getting on with business. It would also give me the opportunity to then tell Mum what we were up to during the day.

We were then invited for Madiba to receive the German Media Prize in Baden-Baden and to be flown to Germany courtesy of Mercedes-Benz. By now I had appointed an assistant, Marianne Mudziwa, and Maretha was filling the gaps where necessary. They relieved me of much of the admin pressure. The staff in the office were still relying on me for guidance in terms of responses to people who wrote to Madiba. Since we didn’t have a protocol or media section, all liaison where it concerned Madiba personally was pretty much left to me. So were the media enquiries. Madiba and Prof. Gerwel were my only guides. I would sometimes call Madiba twenty times a day to ask his advice on things whenever he didn’t come to the office. He patiently answered me and told me how to do things, how to respond and where to find answers if he couldn’t give them to me, and then always consult Prof. Gerwel.

He would explain his strategy to me, how he thought it best to approach a particular issue he wanted to raise or what his plans were to achieve an end goal in the greatest detail, and I was expected to ensure that we stuck to whatever strategy he decided upon. And when he spoke, you listened. I always made notes of things he said, of crucial keywords. I would often repeat something to him after he had said it but then he would correct me or go into more detail if it was necessary or he suspected that I misunderstood. Semantics subsequently became a passion to me. It is not easy for someone whose first language is not English to speak it fluently and I realized I had to be extremely careful of what and how I said things. Sometimes I got it right, sometimes I didn’t, but Madiba was patient and he never pointed out mistakes but would find a subtle way to explain things to me differently. ‘No, you see . . .’ followed by the explanation. Most of the time though I managed to get it right. I couldn’t afford to be a liability to him.

The trip to Baden-Baden was approaching in March 2001 and, having a full travelling schedule ahead, I had to focus my attention on organizing the upcoming trip, liaising to ensure that travel, accommodation, planes, trains and automobiles were all organized to not only befit Nelson Mandela but also to his best comfort. The pressure was increasing and for two nights prior to departure I worked right through the night, preparing for the visit and trying to avoid a situation where I left the office behind with a backlog of correspondence.

As flights from South Africa to Europe leave early evening we departed for Germany on a Thursday evening. I usually sat next to Madiba in the plane if the seat beside him could not be left open to afford him more space or Mrs Machel didn’t accompany us, and on this night the Lufthansa flight was full so my seat was next to his. I would usually settle him in once we got on board the plane, making sure he didn’t want anything to eat or drink, and then prepared his bed for the night in the best possible way in a first-class cabin after take off. Generally airlines were great in having specific food on board for him and making sure we had enough pillows and blankets for him to be comfortable. After helping him to settle in I strapped myself in my seat for take off and promptly fell fast asleep, only waking up the next morning as we landed. I had slept right through the night and I deserted Madiba. I hadn’t even brushed my teeth or washed my face, something I never neglected no matter what.

I was angry at myself and questioned the security staff about his comfort through the night. The crew took care of him together with security and he was fine, but it was inexcusable to me as I failed in my task. I felt guilty for days after.

I noticed when I woke up I was covered with a blanket and had a pillow behind my head. When I asked the security who had covered me they said Madiba did. The poor man. Here I was supposed to take care of him but he was taking care of me instead. Madiba was worried that I was not getting enough sleep and he would complain to Prof. Gerwel often that I was working too hard – however it didn’t make Madiba stop calling me or slow down either.

I remember on another occasion on a British Airways flight waking up during the night because of movement around me. Madiba went to the bathroom in the middle of the night, under the watchful eye of security. I lay awake waiting for him to return to his seat to see if he needed anything and when he passed me on his way back to his seat, he stopped and covered my feet with a blanket. These moments touched the most inner part of my heart. I couldn’t remember as a child being tucked in by my parents, yet here the man we all had feared in the late 1980s (when we became aware of his existence) was covering my feet, worried about my well-being. Sometimes when I was tired I would silently weep, appreciating how much this man cared for me. It felt like no one else loved me as much as Madiba did. He treated me like I was part of his people, caring for me like you would for your own. And my history made it almost impossible to accept that I deserved any of this care and love.

There was never really any down time and we spent hours together each day. When we travelled without Mrs Machel or one of the daughters he didn’t want to be alone during meal times and I would therefore often have to sit with him. I wanted to give him space but he would insist on me returning shortly after I left him anytime.

I enjoyed sitting with him at meals while we travelled, listening to his stories but also hearing his views on so many things. He remained adamant that the biggest challenge that faced ‘our people’ was education and the rationale behind his belief made perfect sense. I understood all the challenges the government faced, not having been in power before and having to deal with the financial challenges involved in reworking the financial system and replenishing the funds that were used to keep apartheid going. Few people realized that the apartheid regime borrowed money from the state pension funds to support apartheid and now that a new government was in power no one knew where the money would come from to rebuild those pension funds. It was not something that was revealed to the ANC before they came into power and now they had not only to deliver on their promises to the people but also find the funds to replenish pension funds.

I valued these explanations from Madiba. Simple and to the point and in terms I could understand. It changed my way of thinking and soon I would defend the ANC in debates with my friends. I started withdrawing from my more conservative Afrikaans friends as few of them understood the new political reasoning.

Madiba was everybody’s hero. Black people hailed him for bringing them freedom, and whites simply because he wore a Springbok shirt to the Rugby World Cup final in 1995. He achieved his goal to unite the country, but it didn’t bring relief to the poorest of the poor. While he was acceptable to most white people there were still ‘pockets of racism’ as he described it. And sadly South Africa is still dismally failing its youth. For example, in 2012 some schools in the impoverished Limpopo Province to the north of the country did not receive textbooks for their pupils from the government for an entire academic year, despite being ordered to by the courts as a result of action taken by a non-governmental organization. They just didn’t deliver them to the schools and the books were found in a warehouse. It was precisely during these travels and conversations that I got so much of an understanding about politics, its mechanics and how the ANC operated.

*   *   *

From Baden-Baden we travelled to India, where Madiba received the Gandhi Peace Prize. We also visited Kerala, a province in India. We were taken from Delhi by helicopter to Kerala and although it gave us a picturesque view of India’s landscape I was not completely convinced that we were safe aboard the huge helicopter they transported us in. (I would often invent stories in my mind about tragic headlines whenever I didn’t feel safe. It was stupid but one cannot help but contemplate these things when you travel that much in so many foreign countries, sometimes facing challenging situations. You can’t ever tell your host that you feel unsafe.) It was visibly old and bigger than some planes we had flown in before, yet in the back of my mind I knew that the Indian government wouldn’t risk Madiba’s life while in their country and that made me feel safer.

The Indian people were hospitable and they adored Madiba. If there is one thing Madiba and I shared a love for it was eating biryani, an Indian dish made from rice, spices, meat, chicken or fish. Madiba had loved it before he went to prison, enjoying it with his Indian friends. It is one of the things he greatly missed while being imprisoned, not having the food that he enjoyed. And in India we were looking forward to having Indian meals and had biryani or samosas at every possible occasion. I never knew what biryani was until he suggested I try it. After that, I could comprehend his fondness for it.

On a visit to Ireland in April 2001, while being hosted by Tony and Chryss O’Reilly after being invited to address an event for the Independent Newspaper group, news broke about South Africa’s cricket captain, Hansie Cronje, being embroiled in match fixing. Being the Chairman of the Independent Newspaper group at the time and a great sports man himself, Dr O’Reilly debated this matter with us. Both Madiba and I were adamant that these were merely allegations and that we were convinced that there was no truth in them, but Dr O’Reilly doubted Hansie’s innocence. We called Hansie to wish him strength. In the days to follow Hansie Cronje, who was everybody’s hero in South Africa, was disgraced when he admitted to the match fixing.

The following year, on 1 June 2002, I was with Madiba at Shambala, the house built by businessman Douw Steyn on a game farm in the north where Madiba intended to write his memoirs, when I received a call in the early morning from the media, asking for comments on the rumour that Hansie had been killed in a plane crash. I started panicking. I had received a voicemail message from Hansie the week before congratulating me on my birthday, and I still wanted to call him to tell him he was light years away from my real birthday date which is only at the end of October. But I hadn’t. We were friends and I couldn’t believe what I heard.

A few hours later, confirmation was received. I went to tell Madiba of the news and I was very sad when I broke it to him. Hansie was a kind, gentle human being and yes, he’d made mistakes but at some point we all do. The last time Madiba saw Hansie was a few months before, after Hansie had admitted to match fixing and was banned from the sport for life. He was a broken man. At the time we went to Fancourt, a hotel resort with an adjacent estate, for a few days’ rest and Madiba asked Hansie to visit him as Hansie had a house on the estate too. He sat him down and told him: ‘Boy, you made a big mistake. Now you have to man-up and face the consequences. It doesn’t mean we won’t forgive you. You have admitted to your mistake, now move on.’ Hansie was just getting back on his feet again when he died on that cold winter’s morning. I was also taught that no matter what mistakes a person makes, you yourself cannot expect to be forgiven if you are not willing to forgive. It reminded me of a piece Madiba wrote in prison that was later published in the book Conversations With Myself. He wrote: ‘Don’t run away from your problems; face them! Because if you don’t deal with them, they will always be with you.’

It was a very sad winter’s day as I also received a call from my father to inform me that his nephew Ettienne, whom I had been very fond of, had been in a motorbike accident in Cape Town. He was returning DVDs his children had rented and took a quick trip with his motorbike. He hit an oncoming car. A week later Ettienne died in hospital. It was a sad time and I didn’t understand why two such young lives had to end so tragically. All my senses were overreacting and I felt extremely alone that night in that big house. Madiba was never an overly emotional person and it was therefore difficult to lay my sadness out in front of him. He would go quiet and that was his way of dealing with things. I wanted to give vent to my emotions but it sometimes felt reprehensible. I felt very lonely.

*   *   *

Back at home, the normal day of business included time with family and business people. Madiba always had a cause to fundraise for. If it wasn’t a young AIDS sufferer, it was a youngster who performed well at school but struggled to find a bursary, or even relief for areas hit by severe floods. Madiba also insisted on staying in touch with ordinary people and so he went to have lunch at the residence of the family that owns and runs a major dry-cleaning business in Johannesburg. They had been handling his dry cleaning for years, and despite the fact that he insisted on paying for it he felt compelled to have a meal with the family who had looked after his clothes with so much care.

To me it is still one of Madiba’s greatest virtues: his attention to people that not anyone of his stature would usually pay attention to. He recognized and really respected the small people. No one was treated as a servant.

He also didn’t want to be removed from his old colleagues and people of his age group. He would ask to have lunch with the musicians and stars from his generation, like Ken Gampu, Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela, Dorothy Masuka and Dolly Rathebe, and after the lunch he would decide to raise ‘cars’ for the women who struggled financially to make a living with their singing. These women all used their music to convey political messages during the struggle years and Madiba felt that he owed them a gesture that would show appreciation. He felt responsible for everyone around him: his family, his colleagues, his staff and in this case even the people that supported the anti-apartheid movement while he was imprisoned. He found inspiration through their art while being imprisoned and felt a great deal of gratitude towards them. We would then phone all the major car companies in South Africa and convince them to donate cars to these struggle heroes.

A little boy of about eight years of age wrote to Madiba one day, in quite a formal tone, asking for an appointment. His only reason for wanting to meet with Madiba was to discuss matters relating to South Africa. The letter was formal and amused us as he also said that his parents didn’t think he stood a chance in being granted an appointment with Nelson Mandela. I showed the letter to Madiba and we agreed to grant him the appointment. He visited Madiba and he was as formal in his interaction with Madiba as he was in his letter. ‘No, there was no particular reason for my asking for an appointment with you, Sir; I simply wanted to meet with you.’ Madiba was entertained by the young man’s honesty about the matter and it gave us great joy to experience such moments that really made him happy to be in contact with ordinary people without any agenda, just wanting to meet him because they were intrigued by him.

Madiba also had the needs of his grandchildren to cater for. Whenever we left for an overseas trip the boys (the three youngest of his eldest son), Ndaba, Mbuso and Andile, would give me a shopping list of the things they wanted their grandfather to bring them like all children do when their parents go abroad. He then sometimes sent me out on the streets of wherever we were to try to find things I had never heard of before myself. Not having my own children it was quite difficult to even distinguish between animated characters, let alone computer games. When Sony introduced PlayStation, we had to call the Japanese Ambassador to ask him to ship a PlayStation to South Africa as the children could simply not wait for it to be released here. One of the very few privileges of the children having Nelson Mandela as their grandfather was that they would always be the first to have the latest games and gadgets, before many of their peers.

During a visit in Cape Town he was again going from pillar to post trying to oblige with expectations, and after recording a TV interview he felt dizzy and nearly fainted. As he was generally always well these spells whenever he wasn’t feeling well created great concern. Despite that he continued and only the next day, after visiting an area in the Klein Karoo where a school had to be built, did he agree to visit a doctor when we returned to Cape Town. He was stubborn and insisted on going to the school and not cancel it to see a doctor first. The cardiologist examined him and couldn’t find anything alarming. It was pure exhaustion.

Madiba was scheduled to leave for London that night. We protested and begged him not to go, but he insisted. He said he was fine and he didn’t want to alarm anyone by cancelling the visit. We left for London and then went on to visit Morocco (where we saw the King and asked for a donation for the Foundation) and then to visit Sharjah, an emirate within the United Arab Emirates and the cultural capital of the UAE. There we found the same diplomat who was involved in our previous visit to Dubai (when we had failed to secure a promised donation from the Ruler). Before we landed I made sure that the Embassy received our message that we wouldn’t need any diplomatic support and that diplomats were not required to accompany us during the visit. Yet when we landed that same man was there.

Madiba was beyond angry at him but somehow he left it to me to deal with. By now I could read his facial expressions. He was blunt and unfriendly. The diplomat sat around in Madiba’s lounge when we arrived at the hotel. I entered and told Madiba that it was time for him to retire for the day. I told the diplomat that he was free to leave and he announced that he would still stay for a while. He also asked for the programme for the following days. I got irritated and in front of Madiba told him that I had sent a message that while we appreciated he had a responsibility, we would call him if we needed any assistance. Madiba’s eyes went big and years later he would still tease me over the matter and warn people that if they didn’t listen to me, I would deal with them. I really wasn’t that stern but he enjoyed it that I had the courage to set someone straight like that. However, I also think he was only too grateful that I did it rather than him having to do so.

In May Madiba visited a urologist, Dr Gus Gecelter, accompanied by Mrs Machel. He was taken to Parklane Clinic in Johannesburg the following day where some tests were administered, but he didn’t say anything and I didn’t want to interfere or question him over his private matters. I knew from previous experience that if there was anything to share, he would do so.

In June 2001 the head of Coca-Cola in South Africa invited Madiba to address the Coca-Cola group of Africa on a cruise the company undertook through the Mediterranean. By this time the company had built a school in rural South Africa and helped with other donations for projects whenever he called upon them. Madiba felt obliged to respond. I didn’t complain about a trip on a luxury yacht for five days and it also meant we would be away from the pressures in Johannesburg, the endless requests via telephone and faxes being received and considered daily. At least we would have five nights to sleep in one place and on a ship where no one could find us.

When I read some of the guests’ names to Madiba, including the world-famous boxer Sugar Ray Leonard, he became excited. He used to box in his youth and still enjoyed the sport and would often quote Muhammad Ali or Sonny Liston. His favourite quote from Ali was ‘move like a butterfly, sting like a bee’. I would ask him what he meant and Madiba would explain in great detail how important it was to be light on your feet in the boxing ring, and that Ali’s punch stung like a bee. ‘Painful,’ he would say, pulling a face while he said it to make me understand that it must have been really painful if Ali hit someone. He loved talking about all the boxers, some of them names I had never heard before.

The trip on the cruise was pure bliss. The hospitality outstanding. The captain of the ship told me to ‘drink as much champagne as you can, in fact bath in it if you can because you’ll never find another ship with so much champagne on board’. We couldn’t really drink too much however, as we had to be ‘on standby’ for Madiba twenty-four hours a day. Madiba was expected to attend two events while on the ship and to make a speech at one of them, encouraging loyalty and dedication from the employees and congratulating them on the company’s achievements in Africa while he inspired them to continue having the goodwill of the previously disadvantaged at the top of their agenda.

However, Charles, the travelling doctor, and I decided to join the festivities. When Madiba retired to bed at night we sneaked out to go and join the party on the deck. We couldn’t go far because we were stuck on a ship and the security men knew where to find us at all times, so we had a bit of freedom to move around on the vessel. Unlike any of the trips we had been on before. One morning we were the last ones dancing and got back to our respective cabins just in time to prepare to join Madiba for breakfast. Charles had no obligation to be with Madiba during breakfast, but I did. I could hardly keep my eyes open and suffered the entire day. We were cruising and I took Madiba outside to enjoy the view of the beautiful coastline while he sat and read his newspapers, now and then staring across the ocean to the endless horizon. I sat next to him, snoozing on and off from time to time. After five days on the ship Madiba became uneasy and we all started to get ‘cabin fever’. It was time to return to the fast-paced life.

We were scheduled to stop over in Barcelona on our way back to South Africa in support of an initiative for the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund called Frock and Roll. This was a concert and fashion show organized by Naomi Campbell and Bono. The rest of U2 were present too, and while performing their hit ‘One’ Madiba was scheduled to enter. I felt so proud that Nelson Mandela belonged to our country. The crowd first went completely crazy when Bono took the stage and we could hear and see their reaction from the wings until Madiba was prompted to walk on. The crowd erupted with joy to see him. It was not announced that he would be there and he caught the public by surprise. Bono introduced Madiba and it took some minutes for the crowd to quieten down to allow him to speak.

Upon embarking the plane for our departure back to South Africa, Madiba sat down and stared in front of him for a while. He then leaned towards me and said: ‘Zeldina, this Bono chap, it seems to me he is quite popular.’ I couldn’t help but laugh out loud and told Madiba that Bono was one of the world’s music heroes and that he had a following that few other musicians could reach for. Madiba seemed interested in this ‘Bono chap’ and he looked impressed that a young man was so popular among young people. It was the first time he witnessed his following.