Cameron Duodu: Nelson Mandela and I
I first met Nelson Mandela at Jan Smuts Airport, Johannesburg.It was in September 1990, and I was in Johannesburg as the guest of Jim Bailey, the publisher of the Pan-African Magazine, Drum, whose Ghana edition I edited from 1961 to 1965.
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Nelson Mandela had been released from prison, after 27 gruelling years, only seven months earlier, and South Africa was still teeming with journalists, each of whom was anxious to secure an exclusive interview with the world’s most famous ex- political prisoner.
I put in my own application, without expecting to receive any response. However, I kept phoning the ANC press office, and one Saturday morning, I struck pay dirt. When I mentioned my name, the guy at the other end of the line said : “I know of you! When I was in exile in Lusaka (Zambia) I used to listen to your dispatches from Accra to the BBC.” He then began to consult his colleagues in a whispered conversation.
Finally, he came back on the line: “Can you get to Jan Smuts Airport right away? Mr Mandela is about to travel to Asia and we haven’t told the other media. So you can see him on an exclusive basis!”
I thanked him and drove very fast to Jan Smuts. I went to the VIP lounge – surely, Mandela would have to leave the country that way? But after hanging around there for about half an hour, I saw no sign of him. So I made my way to the general departure lounge and scanned the faces of people in the crowd. I recognised one: the late Thomas Nkobi, treasurer-general of the ANC .
First meeting with Mandela
I was talking to Nkobi when suddenly, Mandela came walking towards us. Two of his young, beautiful grand-daughters were with him. They were the only “bodyguards” he thought he needed!
You see, his physical bravery was extraordinary, and perhaps even foolhardy, considering the nature of the racist right-wing lunatic fringe who were breathing fire in the country, and who eventually murdered Chris Hani, who was seen by many as Mandela's Number Two man in the ANC. Anyway, Mr Nkobi introduced me to him as a journalist friend from Ghana.
As soon as Mr Mandela heard the name Ghana, he said: “Ah, Ghana! I was there in 1962. I went there to see President Kwame Nkrumah. But I never got to see him. I waited for several days, but the Foreign Minister, Ako Adjei, said I would have to wait, as Nkrumah was about to address a meeting of other freedom fighters. I would have to talk to him then.
Now, I had been warned that A K Barden, director of Nkrumah’s Bureau of African Affairs, preferred the Pan-Africanist Congress to the ANC. [I later learnt that Mandela's informer was the raving beauty, Genoveva Marais, Nkrumah's very good "friend", who hailed from South Africa.]
Mr Mandela continued: "So I didn’t think it would be useful to hang around in Accra and I left for Liberia. There, I was received promptly by President William Tubman!”
The irony of the situation was not lost on me. President Kwame Nkrumah was the loudest champion of African liberation at the time, whereas Tubman was generally regarded as a ‘sell-out’, because of Liberia’s close relationship with the United States.
Yet Nkrumah's bureaucracy had denied him the opportunity of meeting Mandela on Mandela’s dangerous secret trip across Africa, which had enhanced his reputation as “The Black Pimpernel”, who could give the slip to the ubiquitous and murderous South African Bureau of State Security (“Boss”).
Houghton meeting
The second occasion on which I met Mandela was when I visited his home in Houghton, in the company of the Nigerian politician, the late Chief Moshood Abiola. We were waiting in his living room downstairs, which was packed with ANC cadres, when he suddenly made his entry.
He took one look at the room and realising that there was no empty chair for him, he darted towards the dining table and grabbed one. He was making his way into our midst when I jumped up like a bitten rabbit and took the chair off him. It was quite heavy.
How could a 74-year-old man even conceive of picking up such a chair? Prison had made him extremely self-reliant – I noted in my head. O must admit I was not impressed with the ANC cadres, none of whom had seen fit to go and take the chair off their "hero"!
As in our first meeting, Mr Mandela astonished me with the sharpness of his memory. After 27 years in jail, he could reel off names like “Alhaji Sir Ahmadu Bello, Sardauna of Sokoto [Nigeria]” and “Alhaji Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, prime minister of the Federation of Nigeria”, with ease.
He revealed to us that the Sardauna of Sokoto, despite being largely written off as a “conservative” Anglophile, had given the ANC “ten thousand pounds sterling” – a considerable sum in 1962.
Mandela and Abioba
The third occasion I met Mandela was also an unforgettable moment. Mandela was now installed as President of South Africa, in the Union Buildings in Pretoria. He had invited me and a Nigerian friend to have lunch with him and his Foreign Minister, the late Alfred Nzo, to brief them about the arrest and detention of his friend and supporter, Chief Moshood Abiola, by the Nigerian military dictator, General Sani Abacha.
As we lunched on fried chicken, I came to realise that Alfred Nzo, the Foreign Minister who was supposed to advise Mandela on difficult foreign policy issues, was not the slightest bit interested in the conversation.
Whereas Mr Mandela asked many incisive questions, Mr Nzo in fact did not utter a single word. If Mandela had to cope with such "sleeping" people in his Cabinet, how would he succeed in solving South Africa’s problems? I asked myself.
Following our discussion, Mandela sent emissaries to Abacha to plead for Abiola’s release from prison. Abacha made promises, but did nothing.
Finally, on his way back home from an African heads of state meeting in Tunis, Mandela himself made a detour to Abuja, the Nigerian capital, to see Abacha. But he realised he had failed with Abacha when the latter tried to turn the meeting to his own political advantage, by releasing a statement claiming that Mandela had only visited him to “discuss the world economic situation!” Mandela’s office was thereupon stung into issuing a counter-statement, which pointed out that Mr Mandela had gone to Nigeria, “at the request of Chief Abiola’s family”, to intercede with Abacha on Abiola's behalf. Had he not done so, the Abiola family would have been extremely hurt. Mandela was a true humanist in this regar – he took people's feelings into consideration even when he was doing politics.
Ken Saro-Wiwa
The finale in relations between Mandela and Abacha came in November 1995, when the Nigerian writer, Ken Saro-Wiwa, and eight other Ogoni environmental activists were sentenced to death by a military tribunal set up by Abacha.
Appeals went out to Mandela to talk to Abacha to reprieve them. Again, Mandela tried secret diplomacy. And again, Abacha rebuffed him – he hanged Saro-Wiwa and his fellow condemned men on 21 November 1995, even as Mandela was attending a meeting of Commonwealth heads of Government at Auckland, New Zealand.
The world press, unaware of what had been going on behind the scenes between Mandela and Abacha, excoriated Mandela for “failing” to use his influence to make Abacha show mercy.One London newspaper described "Mandela as the man who wasn't there"!
I sensed that Mandela might want to tell his side of the story to someone he trusted and I faxed him a request for an interview, to which he agreed and said I should come in three days' time!.
President Mandela gave me the most unforgettable interview in my professional career. Uniquely, in relations between "the trade union" of serving heads of state in Africa, he bluntly described Abacha as a “brutal dictator” who had set up a “kangaroo court” to murder Ken Saro-Wiwa and his fellow Ogonis. He called on the Nigerian opposition to intensify their efforts to get rid of Abacha. Yes – he urged them to commit treason and indeed referred them to the ANC's own struggle to get rid of the apartheid monstrosity!!
Finally, looking me in the eye, Mr Mandela stated solemnly, knowing I was recording his every word on tape: “Abacha is sitting on a powder keg and I am going to explode it beneath him.”
(The interview was published in the London Observer on 26 November 1995. It also provided the lead story on the BBC World Service news.).
At the end of the interview – and in spite of the fire he had breathed against Abacha only moments ago – Mr Mandela showed me that he had a great sense of humour. I had asked to be photographed with him and he got up to shake my hand. As he did so, he said to me: “Now, you are going to make me famous!”
I exploded into laughter! Me make Nelson Mandela famous?
Wicked sense of humour, no? I loved that man to bits!
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