Madiba has been like a benevolent grandfather to us all

I clearly remember the first ever photo I saw of Nelson Mandela. I was 25 and living in Paris, my first sojourn outside of my home town, Cape Town. I’d grown up in a suburb that looked out across Table Bay towards Robben Island, but had spent my childhood ignorant of his existence or that there was a prison there, barely aware of the troubles going on in my city and country.

As a child, most of the people on the streets in my neighbourhood were white or mixed race, known as coloureds. History at school was that of the Afrikaner and even I, of British descent, could not find my place in that story. News, books, films, plays and music were censored and we learnt of the “Red Threat” on our borders, the communists.

I was 17 and at the University of Cape Town, referred to by some as "Moscow on the hill" because it was more free thinking than others, when I got the first real inkling of the injustices of apartheid. Later, working at an anti-apartheid theatre featuring actors from all race groups, my education really began. But information about the African National Congress and Mandela was scarce.

This was the 1980s, the height of apartheid propaganda, the "State of Emergency" and the "Illegal Gathering Act". And the ruling National Party's perception that there was a "total onslaught" on South Africa from inside and outside.

We covertly listened to copies of Johnny Clegg's anti-apartheid music. Songs such as The Island which was banned on the radio because of its reference to Robben Island and political activists. There were riots and marches, and stories of torture and prison. We were scared and in the dark about what was really going on.

And so it was in 1987, in Paris, with Madiba still in prison back home, that I first met him in the form of a grainy black and white photo taken in the early 1960s. At that time, pictures of Mandela were still banned in South Africa, and few people of my age knew what he looked like.

I read books about my country that I was prevented from reading back home, got to know people from other parts of Africa (our study of the world hopscotched over the continent), and faced the abuse and anger of some, simply because I was a white South African.

Many years later, after the 1994 democratic elections, I happened to be in the same room as Nelson Mandela at a function hosted by the South African embassy in Paris. As he walked up the line of people waiting to greet him, he stopped occasionally to shake a hand or say “hello”. I was not one of the lucky ones. And to my regret, I was never fortunate enough to meet him personally.

I know Madiba didn’t make the new South Africa on his own. There are many heroes in the story of my country’s transformation. But he has been like a benevolent grandfather to us all.

As my 12-year-old, who only knows the new South Africa, says: “He was very brave and wise, and a role model for everyone. He makes me proud to be South African.”

Hamba kahle, go well, Tata Madiba.

Glynis Crook is a journalist based in Cape Town