Transcriber: David DeRuwe Reviewer: Tanya Cushman
Kia ora.
(Audience) Kia ora.
I wonder if you, anybody in this room,
knows where you were on the 5th of December, 2013.
Anybody?
I can tell you exactly where I was
and remember pretty much everything about that day,
and not just because the following day was my 50th birthday party
but because the 5th of December, 2013,
was the day that our president
announced to all South Africans and, indeed, to all of the world
that, as he put it,
our beloved Madiba had left us.
Something that we,
in our individual as well as our collective capacities,
had been expecting for a long time.
He'd been ill for a long time.
But when that announcement came, it hit like a punch to the guts.
But a curious thing happened.
It didn't take long for us to get over that initial shock,
and there was this intense grief and mourning,
and then that turned, in a matter of probably 24 hours,
to celebration,
to the celebration of what was truly an extraordinary life.
And I began to ponder in my own mind as to how I would deal with that.
I was privileged -
please understand that I get that,
I get how privileged I was to serve that man for five years,
the five years that he was our president.
How was I going to deal with this nebulous concept
or this cliché of closure?
It didn't come that day,
and that was an intensely busy 10 or 11 days.
It may have come when we were invited -
we as the former presidential protection unit
were invited to the sending-off ceremony
of Madiba's coffin
once it had lain in state at the Union Buildings,
where he was inaugurated,
for three days.
And then it had to be flown, by the South African Air Force,
from Pretoria
down to the Eastern Cape to Mthatha,
where it would go to its final resting place
on the family farm in Qunu.
We were invited to form part of the guard of honor.
As the ceremonies proceeded around us,
the coffin was there with the national flag over it,
and we were called up, ten at a time,
to stand, five on either side of this coffin,
with our own private thoughts and memories,
and say our goodbyes.
And it was a tremendous privilege because we weren't working.
Whenever we were with the president,
we were working.
That day, we were there as invited guests, and we had a chance to say our goodbyes.
And till this day, I'm grateful for that invitation.
But I had a sense
that that wasn't quite the closure I was looking for,
because the next day I had to work.
I had an overseas client coming in who was an invited guest to the funeral
down in Qunu in the Eastern Cape.
And I flew down on a private plane,
and I saw that same coffin with the national flag
come on a gun carriage from the marquee where the funeral service was held,
up a small hill to the burial site for its final rest.
Soldiers slow-marching
as they escorted the gun carriage carrying the coffin.
But I was working.
I was, you know - I had my game face on that day.
We'll return to this issue of closure in a few minutes, when I close.
I came to meet President Nelson Mandela on the very day he became our president.
We're nearly there, four days, the 10th of May, 1994.
He swore the oath of office at the Union Buildings,
witnessed by 184 heads of state, heads of government, and royalty.
On that same day, he flew from Pretoria, from the Union Buildings, by helicopter,
to Ellis Park in Johannesburg,
the very same Ellis Park where 13 months later,
he wore that famous #6 Springboks shirt.
I was the commander of the Johannesburg police
VIP protection unit and bomb disposal unit,
and nobody told me or gave me any instruction.
I just heard
that the newly-inaugurated president is coming to Ellis Park
to attend a soccer match on his inauguration day.
Why would anybody do that? you may ask.
Well, that's because somebody who was very smart
on the local organizing committee for his inauguration
decided that if we put 60,000 soccer fans into Ellis Park,
televise the inauguration proceedings on the big screens,
then that would be 60,000 fewer people
clogging up the M1, trying to get up to Pretoria,
and more importantly, probably,
60,000 fewer people
trying to cram onto the lawns of the Union Buildings to witness this.
It was a massive celebration that day as South Africa realized its freedom.
So I went to Ellis Park and did what I would have done
if the previous state president had been going to a rugby match there.
I got my team in there,
we brought the sniffer dogs, we sterilized the president suite,
I posted my men and women at the entrances and exits,
and I awaited the arrival of the helicopter.
It landed next door,
the motorcade drove the president around the corner,
up a vehicle ramp,
and across the polished wooden floor of the reception hall
behind the president's suite,
probably about the exact size of this space you're sitting in.
So here are the doors to the president's suite.
I'm standing along with the South African Football Association officials.
The motorcade draws up,
president gets out, is welcomed by his hosts,
goes through the doors of the president's suite,
gets into the lift over there,
and goes down to the tunnel dressing-room level,
walks out of the tunnel onto the field,
and greets the two teams as presidents do, right?
South Africa and Zambia.
Having done that, he walks back into the tunnel,
gets in the lift, comes back up,
immediately makes his apology and says,
"I have got to go back and host these 184 VIPs
for lunch on the lawns of the presidential guesthouse,"
gets into the car,
and I'm now standing back, waiting for the motorcade to move off,
when we see him trying to get the door of the car open,
which may sound, to you, simple because you do it every day,
but not when it's a 3.8-ton armored BMW
and he's in his 70s -
it's not just a flick of the elbow.
So the team leader asks the body guard in the car,
"Why does he want to get out?"
That guy says, "I don't know. He hasn't said anything."
So the team leader gives the door a sharp tug,
opens it up, and almost impatiently says,
"Sir, why do you want to get out? You've just got in."
Doesn't say anything to the team leader,
gets out of the car, walks around the front of it,
and starts heading across this floor
to the vehicle ramp over there where he should be driving out.
And the only person standing there
is an old-school, old South African police colonel -
full blue uniform,
scrambled eggs on the cap, stars and crosses on his shoulders -
and his eyes are getting bigger and bigger and bigger
because the president is heading directly for him.
And Madiba stops in front of him, and he puts out his hand
and says to him,
"Colonel, I just want you to know
that today you have become our police.
There is no more you and us.
I'm now the president of this country,
but I want you to know today that you are our police."
Ladies and gentlemen, this old-school police warrior
had been there, seen, and done it all,
and he had the lines on his face to prove it.
And he started to cry.
And the tears were running down the lines on that face,
and they were dripping like this onto that polished wooden floor.
The president just patted him on the shoulder,
and he said, "It's OK, Colonel. I just wanted you to hear that."
And then he turned on his heel,
walked back to the car, and drove to the helipad.
Now, if I tell you
that that was like a bucket of ice water being thrown into my face,
and that's an understatement.
He could just as well have said those words to me directly and personally
because my rank was only one lower than that colonel.
I was a lieutenant colonel at the time,
and I'm prepared to admit today - hold up my hand and say -
I did not believe the stuff
that he was saying when he came out of jail four years earlier
and he said, "South Africa is for all her people, both black and white."
This cynical white cop was saying, "Yeah, whatever.
That's the party line. Of course, you're going to say that."
I didn't believe it.
But that day,
as I heard this very private exchange between the president and that colonel -
no media there, there were maybe 12 of us that heard this -
I started to question all of my upbringing,
all of the inputs, all of my training.
Guys, I was born in 1963.
Apartheid came into being in 1948, so it had 15 years to establish itself.
So when I grew up, the ideology of that system
was infused into every stratum of South African society.
The media was controlled by it.
The school curricula was controlled by it.
The church preached it.
And I started to question all of that.
And I started to watch him very closely because I thought it was all a facade:
When is the facade going to crumble?
What is also said to me was ...
184 of the world's big shots can actually wait.
That colonel needs to hear this from me today.
And the symbolism of that has never left me.
My friends, do not ignore or forget
to do the little things that really matter.
Take the time to do those little things that mean massive amounts
and do them well.
I learned that lesson from him that day, on the day that he became our president.
But let's go back to December of 2013.
As I said, I saw that coffin go up the hill
and into its final resting place.
The next day, or that same day, actually,
I left South Africa
and went on an overseas holiday.
I'd actually sent my family there without me,
which isn't a cool thing to do.
To see the look in my boys' eyes when we got to the airport, said goodbye -
I could see they're thinking, "Dad, are you ever going to get there?"
But a couple of months later, maybe February of 2014,
this e-mail popped into my inbox from Mrs. Machel, Madiba's widow.
Extraordinary lady -
only person in history to be married to two different heads of state.
And the e-mail invited us, as the bodyguard,
as the protection unit team members of Madiba's team,
to tea at the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory in Johannesburg.
So we went there -
Saturday afternoon, three o'clock, auditorium like this, raked seating.
Mama Graça walks up onto the stage, dignified, she's in black,
she's in mourning in terms of the African culture,
and she looks at us like this,
and she picks out a face here and recalls a memory there,
and she says,
"I just called you together today to say thank you
because you were always by my husband's side."
She said, "You saw him when he was happy, you saw him when he was sad,
you saw him when he was angry,
but you were always there,
and I just want to say thank you."
That's when the closure that I sought came.
Why?
Because somebody had just taken the trouble
to say those two simple words -
to say thank you.
It's such a small thing, but it's a huge thing.
So today, I, together with every South African,
we say, "Thank you, Madiba."
In fact, every global citizen that inhabits this blue marble
should say to him,
"Thank you for what you taught us.
Thank you for teaching us to forgive.
Thank you for teaching us
that to talk to your enemy
is always going to be superior to fighting with him."
And thank you, Tata, for teaching me personally
that I now have a responsibility to pay all of that forward,
whenever I can, wherever I can -
even if it's in Auckland, New Zealand -
in whatever way that I can.
So I thank you all for listening to me today.
(Applause)