Accounts a man w redefined the imag of greatn

AS WE remember Nelson Mandela on his birthday on Saturday, each of us see him differently. To you, he may have been a smiling president, or a prisoner who survived 27 years without bitterness; a freedom fighter, or a boxer who loved sport; a gardener, or a statesman who could draw bigger crowds than the greatest celebrities on the planet.

These images form only a part of the much more complex character of Mandela, a man who defied categorisation but came to redefine the image of greatness.

I recently read the memoir of his warder, Christo Brand,

and was grateful for his frank, intimate account of those prison years. I met Brand on Robben Island with Ahmed Kathrada a couple of years ago while speaking at a commemoration event – I had been, unusually, a white prisoners’ visitor during the last years – and was impressed with Brand’s straightforward and open discussion.

He writes of the little things that mattered deeply to these model prisoners; of Madiba’s favourite possession, a white hat to protect him from the sun. It had been made especially for him by the longestserving prisoner on the Island, Japhta Masemola (locked up for 28 years). “He was a man,” writes Brand.

Masemola, who could fix anything and everything, writes Brand, would use whatever he could find – pieces of driftwood, paper torn from cement bags. He made the hat for Mandela out of cardboard, coloured with white paint (seen on the cover of compiled by the Nelson Mandela Foundation).

Brand writes: “Mandela wouldn’t go anywhere without it – he wore it in the limestone quarry and when he was gardening. It was among the handful of items that left prison with him when he was released years later.”

Mandela was a rural country boy, born into a chieftain’s family in the Eastern