NOVANEWS
Mirror 7. Dec 2013
Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown says there was no better birthday occasion than Nelson Mandela’s 90th, when the world celebrated at a concert in Hyde Park.
It was Nelson Mandela calling to congratulate Sarah and me.
He had known of our daughter’s death 20 months before and the most famous and respected man in the world was taking time to assure himself that the birth had gone well.
This was the start of a wonderful annual ritual for us and our children. John’s birthday happened to be on the same day as Mandela’s wife, Graca Machel, and my second son Fraser’s birthday is the day before Mandela’s.
So presents, cards and usually phone calls were exchanged every year. This led to what is called a “small diplomatic incident”. Graca had been awarded the title of Dame of the British Empire and Paul Boateng, our excellent South African High Commissioner, was to officially present her award.
When a package arrived he gathered together an audience of the best and brightest for the presentation.
However, when he unveiled the package in front of everyone, out came a huge shower of coloured glitter. It turned out not to be her “gong” but our children’s home-made birthday cards.
There was no better birthday occasion than Nelson Mandela’s 90th, when the world celebrated at a concert in Hyde Park.
I had the honour of sitting next to him, explaining as best I could who each act was. He was very interested, and particularly intrigued by Amy Winehouse, now sadly no longer with us. When she met him she jokingly told Mandela he and her husband had a great deal in common – both had spent a lot of time in prison!
Mandela wanted a drink. I asked what kind and he said, ‘Cuban rum’ – an old prison joke about what was and was not available in the cells.
Graca was worried that alcohol would imperil his fragile health and so I will never forget the sight of this great man with a lifetime of achievements – surely entitled to one celebratory drink at a concert in his own honour – hiding from his wife’s view his glass of champagne.
I can still remember Mandela’s first words to me the first time we met, not long after he was freed.
“Ah, a representative of the British Empire,” he joked.
We soon became friends. Indeed, I persuaded Mandela to come to London in 2005 to launch our G7 initiative that culminated in the Gleneagles summit which doubled aid to Africa. He was instrumental in persuading the rest of the G7 finance ministers of the case for new initiatives on both debt relief and aid.
Later I visited him at his home in Mozambique. It was only days after his son, who had been suffering from AIDS, died I could only marvel at Mandela’s fortitude and acceptance of his loss.
He had seen so many friends and colleagues die – but I marvelled at the way he took time while grieving to explain to the media that Aids was not a pretext for censorious moral judgements, but a medical condition that – like the TB he once had – needed to be cured.
Mandela will be remembered for creating a multiracial South Africa, and for much more. He always said he had climbed one mountain in ending apartheid but had another still to climb – to get every child the right to a decent start in life.
He won every accolade in the world but the one he prized most was Children’s Champion. He encouraged me to campaign for global education, attended our launch, and Graca – a wonderful woman who will carry on his legacy – co-chairs our panel to get every child to school.
Raising funds for children was the purpose of the Mandela Foundation dinner in 2007, when Bill Clinton and I paid tributes to him.
We sat with him as Elton John and Oprah Winfrey competed in an auction to buy the original framed version of his famous Letter to a Child. Both went up to a million and Oprah won in the end (I think only then was she told it was pounds, not dollars). I reached over to Madiba and suggested he quickly write a second letter!
What few people know about Mandela is that he loved to gossip – I had great conversations with him about everything from him meeting the Spice Girls to his thoughts on world leaders.
What I always marvelled at was his faith in the future – and most of all his lack of bitterness. He told great stories about his prison days, reminiscing without bitterness about his guards and prosecutors. Without his willingness to forgive and reconcile, South Africa could have descended into a bloodbath.
When I wrote a book entitled ‘Courage’, I singled out Mandela as a hero for all time.
We tend to think of courage as bravery, as daring, the absence of fear. Mandela exhibited all that – but he showed something more. True courage requires not only a strength of will but a strength of belief.
And as I found, what motivated him and drove him to risk his life was his burning passion that inspires us and will inspire the world across generations – that all men and women are equal.