As a prison guard on his first day on Robben Island, Christo Brand was told he was about to meet one of the biggest criminals in South Africa’s history.
Now with the death of Nelson Mandela at age 95, he is mourning a mentor.
“It’s like a father I lost,” said Brand, an Afrikaner.
“Always, I will have him in my mind.”
Brand arrived on South Africa’s Robben Island in the late 1970s as an 18-year-old with an aversion to the “terrorists” locked inside.
Then he met Mandela.
“The change came while I was working on Robben Island with him,” said Brand, who was transferred with Mandela to Cape Town’s Pollsmoor prison.
The anti-apartheid hero taught him about his struggle, and offered up lessons in humility and humanity.
“He said the more you give away, the more you will get,” Brand recalled.
Brand also recalled helping Mandela’s then-wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, smuggle in their baby granddaughter, Zaziwe.
Children were not allowed in, but Brand told Madikizela-Mandela he had never held a black child and took the girl to a teary Mandela.
The men remained friends after Mandela’s release.
“People will always remember Mandela for the humble, down-to-earth person, the person who leads the country, who changed the country without bloodshed,” said Brand, who has returned to work on Robben Island, now a museum.
“For me, it feels I lost a father even if he was my prisoner.”