Memories of Mandela

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/06/world/africa/memories-of-mandela.html

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Following are memories of Nelson Mandela by former Africa correspondents of The New York Times:

Mandela Behind Bars

The blacks I knew who had suffered most seemed to laugh best, while the whites who had suffered least were always lapsing into self-pitying laments about the tragedy of their dilemma and how grievously they were misunderstood. Winnie Mandela laughed when she spoke about her visits to her husband, with whom she had not had a truly private moment in twenty-one years; how on her last visit he had upended himself on the other side of the Plexiglas window in the prison visiting room in order to show her a toe that had required an operation because of an ill-fitting shoe. “I saw the foot for the first time in twenty-one years,” she said, laughing.

Joseph Lelyveld, Johannesburg correspondent from 1965 to 1966 and from 1980 to 1983, in his book “Move Your Shadow: South Africa, Black and White” (Times Books, 1985).

An Act of Kindness

On a Day of Adulation

It was late afternoon on one of the sky-blue summer days common in the verdant landscape of South Africa’s Western Cape, during a return visit nearly a quarter of a century ago, that I first glimpsed Nelson Mandela as a free man, walking to his destiny through the gates of Victor Verster prison after 27 years as the world’s most celebrated political prisoner.

The day following his release, when Mr. Mandela met hundreds of reporters for his first news conference in nearly 30 years in the terraced garden of Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s residence in Bishopscourt, in the lee of Table Mountain, his message of reconciliation found its most powerful expression.

Seated beneath a quinine tree, he spoke of what he had encountered along the highway after his release, saying that the adulation of the crowds had been “breathtaking” and adding: “I was absolutely surprised. I expected that response from blacks, but the number of whites who seemed to think that change was absolutely imperative surprised me.”

But it was an act of particular kindness that remains lodged most powerfully in the memory. As the news conference unfolded, a white reporter stepped forward and identified himself as Clarence Keyter, the chief political correspondent of the Afrikaans-language service of the state-run broadcasting monopoly, SABC.Sensing Mr. Keyter’s unease, Mr. Mandela shook the reporter’s hand and thanked him, saying that in his last years in prison, when he had been given a radio, he had relied on Mr. Keyter’s reports to learn “what was going on in my country.” Mr. Keyter, stunned, had tears welling in his eyes.

John F. Burns was the Johannesburg bureau chief from 1976 to 1980.

A Hero, Everywhere

And Nowhere

From the moment of my arrival in South Africa in late 1983 to my enforced departure at the insistence of the apartheid government in early 1987, Nelson Mandela was everywhere and nowhere: a name on protesters’ lips, but unseen and unheard, a potent refrain in the clamor for liberation, a hidden presence in a remote prison cell, the anchor on a dream of freedom.

In an era long before YouTube and Twitter, his enduring commitment to what people called the struggle — and his refusal to dilute or compromise the principles that earned him a life sentence in prison — was woven by example and word of mouth through the years of protest and emergency rule in the mid-1980s that pressured the white authorities toward capitulation.

When I did finally meet him during a visit he paid to Cairo in May 1990, those monumental themes seemed distilled into a characteristic graciousness.

“How are you?” he asked, as if it were far from our first encounter. From my point of view it was not: for me, as for many others, this colossus seemed part of our moral landscape; and now a handshake and a courtesy had turned a myth into a man, magnifying both of them.

Alan Cowell was the Johannesburg bureau chief from 1983 to 1987.

Statesman, Dandy, Flirt

Nelson Mandela was quite a dandy, really. Those shirts that he wore were made of silk. He carried a comb in his back pocket. And the one time I got to travel with him for the day, boarding planes and helicopters, he carefully combed his hair each time before stepping out to greet the crowds. The schedule he kept that day was grueling. When he got on the plane, the flight attendant would help him take his shoes off and lift his swollen feet onto pillows. But when the door opened, he was smiling and waving and willing to dance his trademark jig when there was music.

The first time I saw Mandela up close, was early in my tenure when the executive editor of The New York Times was visiting.

The editor, Joseph Lelyveld, did most of the talking, which seemed appropriate to me. Mandela never looked at me once, and I couldn’t figure out a way to join in. I thought he had not even seen me, really. But then, at one point, he leaned over to Joe, assuming that we were a couple. He nodded his head in my direction and said: “You know, in my day, if you had a wife who looked like that, you would be embarrassed. In my day, a woman needed a little more meat on her bones.”

Suzanne Daley was the Johannesburg bureau chief from 1995 to 1999.

(Almost) Meeting

Mandela

I never interviewed Nelson Mandela, but toward the end of my time in Johannesburg, he spoke at the annual dinner of the Foreign Correspondents Association. At the end, everyone got in line to shake his hand as he exited. Normally, I don’t buddy up to important people — I think it’s compromising. But this time I was telling myself off: “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Donald, stop being such a prig. It’s Madiba, he’s a living saint, and he’s 80 years old. He’s not going to be around much longer. Get in line and shake his hand.”

So I did. He came down the line, taking people’s hands and saying a few words to each person — he was very warm.He got to the person just to my right. I tried to think of what to say, but couldn’t come up with anything better than “Nice to meet you.” He probably just wants to get this over and get out of here, I figured. It was my turn. He turned, glanced up over my shoulder — and just glided right past me, taking the hand of the person next to me with both hands.

“Now you must be a basketball player,” he said. I turned to look, and realized that I was standing next to a stunningly beautiful woman who was about 6-foot-2 in her heels.

Donald G. McNeil Jr. was a Johannesburg correspondent from 1995 to 1999.

The Power of a Man Speaking Truth

I will give away the story of my only encounter with Nelson Mandela by saying my wife was just pregnant at the time with our second child. We saddled this small creature with the very big name of Nelson, and here is why:

A bunch of us reporters were waiting at the airport in Arusha, Tanzania, on Jan. 16, 2000, for Mandela to arrive as mediator to end the civil war in Burundi. Mandela, even at 81, seemed the only one who could right it.

But the man who limped off the plane with his swollen feet seemed spent. I seem to remember that his laces were untied. I hated to think it, but he seemed doddering, unfocused, in short, old.

He walked into the convention hall in a gold dashiki, the task before him both surreal and insurmountable: The murderous factions had sent their delegates, in suits, in theory to talk peace.

But however feeble he had seemed, a very different Mandela took full control of that room. My skin prickled.

I can’t remember if I called that night or told my wife when I got home: If this is a boy, I’d like to call him Nelson.

Ian Fisher was the Nairobi, Kenya, bureau chief from 1998 to 2001.

A Living Symbol

And a Presence

By the time I arrived in South Africa in 2008, a frail and declining Nelson Mandela was rarely seen in public anymore, and yet his presence was everywhere, his name on every set of lips and his face never far from any mind’s eye.

He was the living symbol of the nation’s liberation, and people spoke of him as if he were the beloved grandfather always found at the head of the family dinner table — as if he were still somehow presiding over the future.

I felt his hovering presence most greatly in April 2009, on Election Day. It was a chilly morning, and I waited with people preparing to vote in Diepsloot, a massive and impoverished squatter camp north of Johannesburg.

They were celebrating their citizenship with patience. Many had begun their wait in the predawn.

These people were most certainly not voting their pocketbooks. Most were desperately poor, living in flimsy shacks without electricity or running water. Their prospects were dreary.

They wanted change. And yet they were proudly loyal to the African National Congress, the same political party that had run that troubled government for the previous 15 years. It was, after all, the party of Nelson Mandela.

Barry Bearak was the Johannesburg bureau chief from 2008 to 2011.