Touching bond with Mandela that turned her into a dancing queen

IF NICOLAE Ceausescu was one of the Queen’s most detested visitors, a favourite was undoubtedly Nelson Mandela, whose familiarity with the monarch was recalled by his assistant, Zelda la Grange.

‘I think he was one of very few people who called her by her first name and she seemed to be amused by it,’ she wrote later, adding that Mandela rebutted any attempt by his second wife, Graça Machel, to correct him.

‘But she calls me Nelson,’ he responded. On one occasion when he saw her he said: ‘Oh, Elizabeth, you’ve lost weight!’

The Queen made her first state visit to the new South Africa in 1995, a trip that might have been long delayed, or never happened at all, had it not been for the Queen herself.

Here was a fledgling democracy that had seen terrible violence in the run-up to the 1994 elections, and Sir Robert Woodard, then captain of the Royal Yacht Britannia, recalls that Douglas Hurd had serious reservations about the Queen visiting South Africa so soon.

‘The Foreign Secretary was worried and the Queen overruled him,’ says Woodard. ‘She said: “Mr Mandela is getting advice from lots of people but no one’s actually giving him any help. He needs physical assistance and he needs a show.” She was going to give him one.’

The Queen was not flattering herself. The new South African President had already seen a few politicians and business leaders beating a path to his door, including the then Prime Minister John Major and France’s President Mitterrand. Nothing, though, would endorse his leadership like the razzmatazz of a state visit by the Queen.

One of his first acts as President had been to restore South Africa’s membership of the Commonwealth. His fondness for his guest was reflected in every aspect of the visit. Normal state visit rules dictate that the host lays on various formalities at the start, then leaves the guest to get on with it — as Mandela had done with the French President.

For the Queen, however, it was very different, with Mandela continually reappearing throughout her stay. The presidential staff even spent £20,000 on new tablecloths and napkins. For President Mitterrand, they had used the old stuff.

The following year Mandela came to London. No state visitor in years had drawn the huge crowds that greeted him, with Horse Guards Parade and the Mall packed as if for a royal wedding.

During an evening of South Africaninspired music at the Albert Hall — or, as Mandela called it, ‘that great round building’ — he stood up and clapped along. Other members of the Royal Family followed suit, until the Queen herself was joining in.

No one could recall the last time the monarch had been seen to boogie in public, least of all during a state visit. However, that week the rulebook had long since been consigned to a Palace wastepaper basket. Hence a poignant moment during a lunch at The Dorchester earlier in the day. Abandoning the convention of no speeches at return banquets, Mandela delivered a personal tribute to ‘this gracious lady’.

The Queen, who usually avoids offthe-cuff speeches much as she avoids shellfish and cats, cheerfully broke her own rule. With no notes, she rose to praise ‘this wonderful man’.

Those who have worked closely with the Queen say this was not merely a cordial friendship between two heads of state.

It was more a meeting of minds between two people used to wellmeaning but unhelpful flattery; both well aware of the pitfalls of being a ‘national treasure’.