Christmas with Nelson Mandela offers an eyewitness account written by an award-winning journalist who experienced first-hand all the trials and tribulations of Nelson Mandela's democratic government.
Journalist Adrian Hadland had a box of cuttings and papers sitting in his wardrobe for close to 20 years, full of writing, columns and words about an extraordinary period in South Africa's history: the Government of National Unity presided over by Nelson Mandela from 1994 to 1999. In Christmas with Nelson Mandela, he transforms that personal archive into a book. Here is an excerpt.
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December 25, 1995
It is a little before five in the morning and Nelson Mandela is dressed to walk the hills in the dark, moist weather.
The sun is scarcely an orange smudge above the misty Transkei valleys of his birthplace, but Mandela has a lot of ground to cover.
He chooses a different direction each day, sometimes south to the village of Mvezo on the banks of the Mbhashe River, where he was born; sometimes toward Mqhekezweni, the Great Place, formerly the residence of Chief Jongintaba Dalindyebo, where Mandela lived for the 10 years prior to his circumcision.
As he walks, the people in the scattered hamlets come hailing him with calls of "Madiba", "Nkosi" or "Dada". They take his hand in theirs, women and children looking away in the traditional sign of respect....
