Friday: Meeting Nelson

I was 21 in 1990 when I was sent on my first overseas posting to South Africa, an assignment that was to last two years.  I arrived in Cape Town in mid January, in the middle of the South African summer and instantly fell in love with the country.  Not long after I started my new job we started hearing rumours at work that FW de Klerk was going to make some really surprising announcements in his forthcoming speech for the opening of parliament.

My office was right opposite parliament and I remember hanging out the window on 2 February, together with my colleagues, to hear him read his speech from the steps of parliament.  No-one had guessed that his announcements were going to be as massive as they were - namely that the ANC was to be legalised and Nelson Mandela was to be released.  A few days later I was in Green Market Square in Cape Town to hear Mandela's first speech in freedom.

As you can imagine the mood in the country was electric.  Six months later, Nelson Mandela came to the office where I was working, for a meeting.  Our most senior boss arranged for us junior staff to meet him briefly.  There were only a few of us and we all got to shake his hand and say a few words.  He was interested to know how we liked South Africa and which places we had visited.  I remember being surprised at how tall he was (6'4'') - something I had never appreciated before.  And I also remember how patiently he waited when Alice, our white South African receptionist who must have been in her early sixties then, and who had lived her life under apartheid, ran off to find pen and paper so she could have his autograph.

I can't remember if I have cried before when a famous person died, but I did cry yesterday. We won't see his like again.