Zelda La Grange
The white woman behind Nelson Mandela
It was 1991. My first year of school. The first time a black child was allowed to put on the same blue pinafore dress, the same white shirt underneath, and the same brown shoes slipped on her feet. In the same classroom, she learned how to write in cursive, to draw in pastel. She stood next to me in line when we competed in long jump and passed the baton in relay for the first time. M – our surnames started with the same letter.
She stood there because on the other side of the city, about 13km from Valhalla Primary School, the balance of power in the hallways of the majestic Union Building in Pretoria had already started to shift. Apartheid had ended. South Africa was changing. It would be another three years before the man we credit for that change would walk its hallways.
It was there that Zelda la Grange – a 23-year-old white Afrikaans typist – would meet Nelson Mandela, the country’s first democratically elected president. It was there she would become his closest confidante.
In 1994, La Grange applied for a job in the president’s office and all the while, settling into his ‘‘relaxed and stately office’’, she never expected to meet him. Two weeks later, as she stood in front of the man who had spent 27 years imprisoned for fighting for freedom, she felt responsible. She felt guilty. She wanted to apologise.
‘‘Growing up in Apartheid South Africa, you didn’t question what was happening. You’re on the receiving end of privilege because of the colour of your skin: you didn’t care about the liberation struggle and people suffering because you had a good life,’’ she said.
‘‘We lived Apartheid, we bought into it and we supported it. By default – people get very angry with me for saying – but we were all racist. We were supporting a system that propagated racism.’’
From the moment Mandela greeted her, he held her hand. And while he spoke her language, she cried. He put his other hand on her shoulder, and told her to relax.
‘‘It was a life-changing experience. You would expect him to have anger and resentment toward whites, yet what I experienced that day was completely the opposite. I felt respected, and in those short five minutes, I felt he really cared for my wellbeing,’’ she said.
‘‘He spoke to me in Afrikaans, which is my home language, the language of the oppressor, and the people who imprisoned him. Over the the years, Mandela said: ‘If you speak to a man you speak to his head, but if you speak his language you speak to his heart’. That’s what he did, he spoke to my heart and he opened me up to change. The kindness of this man was so overwhelming. I wanted to do something for what my people had done, the guilt I felt was the most vivid emotion I felt that day.’’
Despite holding the ‘‘most junior position’’ in the office, La Grange threw herself into her job. She’d organise Mandela’s travel, write his letters, read the newspapers for him and even help him with language pronunciation. She was dedicated.
‘‘It was unthinkable to me that the president would call me and I’m in a movie theatre, so I just didn’t go to the movies or to an area where there was no cellphone reception.’’
Mandela and La Grange shared a sense of urgency. They had the same sense of humour. They had forged a strong bond and trusted each other implicitly.
‘‘He started pulling me into his private business more, and then in 1999 when he retired from government he could choose one person to go into retirement with him. He chose me,’’ she said.
She accepted the job as his personal private secretary without hesitation. Over the years, La Grange became the one constant in Mandela’s life. As they travelled, his security detail would rotate, the doctors would rotate, but she was always by his side.
‘‘It was just the two of us. You spend so much time with each other that we were co-dependent. The relationship changed into a more grandfather, granddaughter relationship because you start caring for someone when you spend so much time together and you go through so much.’’
Over the next 19 years, La Grange and Mandela shared many moments together. There were the big, public moments – the time the Springboks held the Webb Ellis Trophy up high in 1995, and a meeting with Princess Diana five months before her death.
And Mandela’s final official public appearance as he closed the Fifa World Cup in 2010 – the end of an era where he saw how well-loved he still was. They make La Grange feel happy, but they’re not among her highlights.
‘‘It was about the private moments, and the private jokes. Those are the things that are important to me,’’ she said.
It has been 22 years since Mandela first walked through the doors of the Union Buildings. It is three years since his death, and now La Grange says she would ‘‘not hesitate’’ to say Mandela would be ‘‘very concerned’’ with how South Africa has changed since then.
The majority of South Africans live in severe poverty, service delivery is at an all-time low, jobs are scarce.
‘‘When we were in government things, maybe prematurely, seemed possible. We thought things were quite achievable . . . but somehow we got distracted along the way. There is a lot of tension in society as a result of the economy suffering. I can’t say it would all be happy days, he would be quite concerned.’’
La Grange last saw Mandela on July 11, 2013 – six months before he died. By then, he was already very sick and was being treated in a hospital’s high care unit. She would not be allowed to see him
‘‘It was a life-changing experience. You would expect him to have anger and resentment toward whites, yet what I experienced that day was completely the opposite.’’ Zelda la Grange
again. ‘‘It was very hurtful. At the time I didn’t understand it, but now I’m so happy that my last memory of him is where he could still wake up, he smiled at me, he recognised me. That’s my highlight with him. That day. I was just not allowed there, but so were the people who spent so many years with him in prison. I think if you deal with a complicated family like that, that’s the way it is. I think they tried to uncomplicate the situation.’’
La Grange has faced criticism from many people for sharing her memories in her book, Good Morning Mr Mandela. But, he taught her she’d never please everyone she met. He taught her despite the negativity, to always look to a person’s character, to find a connection that surpasses their achievements or flaws.
It’s those memories and those lessons that La Grange is passing on, most recently in Auckland when she spoke to members of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand at a breakfast to promote diversity.
‘‘I have such stories of fondness to tell about Mr Mandela. In about 2010 or 2011 I realised I was becoming forgetful. So I started dumping my memory, for close to six months I sat in front of my computer everything that I could remember of my life.
‘‘A friend of mine said I had an obligation to share the person that I knew. Everyone expects a tell-all. There is nothing to tell-all, it is what it is. It’s this beautiful story of how he changed my life.’’