headquarters in Johannesburg, visiting with Graça Machel, a well-known
humanitarian and Mandela’s wife, when we received word that Mandela himself
would be happy to greet us at his home nearby.
We went immediately, of course. Nelson Mandela was ninety-two at the
time. He’d been hospitalized with lung issues earlier in the year. I was told he
seldom received guests. Barack had met him six years earlier, as a senator, when
Mandela had visited Washington. He’d kept a framed photo of their meeting on
the wall of his office ever since. Even my kids—Sasha, ten, and Malia, about to
turn thirteen—understood what a big deal this was. Even my eternally unfazed
mother looked a little stunned.
There was no one alive who’d had a more meaningful impact on the world
than Nelson Mandela had, at least by my measure. He’d been a young man in the
1940s when he first joined the African National Congress and began boldly
challenging the all-white South African government and its entrenched racist
policies. He’d been forty-four years old when he was put in shackles and sent to
prison for his activism, and seventy-one when he was finally released in 1990.
Surviving twenty-seven years of deprivation and isolation as a prisoner, having
had many of his friends tortured and killed under the apartheid regime, Mandela
managed to negotiate—rather than fight—with government leaders, brokering a
miraculously peaceful transition to a true democracy in South Africa and
ultimately becoming its first president.
Mandela lived on a leafy suburban street in a Mediterranean-style home set
behind butter-colored concrete walls. Graça Machel ushered us through a
courtyard shaded by trees and into the house, where in a wide, sunlit room her
husband sat in an armchair. He had sparse, snowy hair and wore a brown batik
shirt. Someone had laid a white blanket across his lap. He was surrounded by
several generations of relatives, all of whom welcomed us enthusiastically.
Something in the brightness of the room, the volubility of the family, and the
squinty smile of the patriarch reminded me of going to my grandfather
Southside’s house when I was a kid. I’d been nervous to come, but now I
relaxed.
The truth is I’m not sure that the patriarch himself completely grasped who
we were or why we’d stopped in. He was an old man at this point, his attention
seeming to drift, his hearing a little weak. “This is Michelle Obama!” Graça Machel
said, leaning close to his ear. “The wife of the U.S. president!”
“Oh, lovely,” murmured Nelson Mandela. “Lovely.”