one of the year. The villagers would come out of their homes at about one o’clock and give up some of their food; not a full plate but bits and pieces from their own to those who returned from the hills and valleys. This would bring an end to a hard day herding cattle. This memory would be reborn in Qunu, like the ghost of Christmas past.
As 1996 drew to a close, Mandela was starting to feel the full effect of presidential office. Tired, he withdrew to Qunu for a month. His bodyguards, happy to escape the demands of protecting South Africa’s first citizen at home and abroad full-time, were presented with a new challenge, as Mandela would rise at sun-up and walk the hills. But there were whisperings on the wind that year: ‘Christmas is coming.’ And with Christmas came Mandela, and food and fun. Word of his Christmas party had spread far and wide that year, and thousands would descend on his home come 25 December.
So big was the party that, in just the fourth year of the event, sponsors were brought on board to help carry the cost. The children still retained pride of place, though – 1 000 of them this time, some of whom had walked five kilometres to be there. The night before, Mandela slaughtered an ox and 11 sheep. The ox was a gift from Zulu monarch King Goodwill Zwelithini. Royalty itself had heard the whispers and such was Mandela’s gravitas, it did what it could to associate itself with the occasion.
By now the media had Mandela’s Christmas party firmly noted in its diary. Print, radio and television journalists in their numbers made the journey to Qunu. In Mandela they had their own living, breathing St Nicholas and, besides, good will makes for great television.
In the middle of the garden stood a giant Christmas tree, decorated with lights and baubles. At its feet lay hundreds of presents. Hope in a box. The children, presented with the unthinkable, were at pains to restrain themselves and had to be held back by security from diving into the pile and gorging themselves on toys and trinkets.
‘There was no Christmas at home,’ said ten-year-old Nopasika Matikinca to one newspaper, ‘but now we find Christmas at this place.’ She had walked six kilometres, unaccompanied by any adult, to be there, bringing only her three-year-old sister with her.
The meal too had been transformed – mutton stew and samp. And to round it off, a two-metre-long Christmas cake decorated in the colours of the South African flag.
Mandela wore a red hat and played the role of Father Christmas. But his speech, for the first time, had a more generic, political quality to it: ‘The country’s children are our most important asset,’ he said, ‘because out of them will come future members of the legislature and the premiers, the national parliament, the deputy president and even the president.’
So, politics and patriotism, which had also quickly found their way into the Qunu Christmas party, would come to help define the event too, and both boast an insatiable hunger of their own.
Some of the presents under the tree were toy guns – something the newspaper, The Daily News, doing its bit to ensure good will adhered to those parameters that orthodoxy demands, wasted no time moralising about in an editorial the following Monday: ‘With the spirit of joy and peace so evident at the Qunu festivities, it struck a sour note that someone in the backroom slipped in choosing some of the gifts handed out by the President. Toy guns are contentious items at the best of times, and, with the television cameras rolling, this was certainly the worst of times to put them into young hands.’
Mandela learnt his lesson well. His party was no longer a private gesture, but a public symbol. When you are in the public eye, authenticity has to be quickly diluted down to its blandest, most palatable form. The guns would never make another appearance.
But the media, it appears, was not quick to forget. Two years later, after the 1998 party had come and gone, The Herald took to its editorial pages to bask in the triumph that it had been a ‘gun-free’ Christmas party: ‘We don’t want our children to grow up like those in Liberia or the Democratic Republic of Congo, who have found themselves fighting in adult wars without even knowing who they are killing and why.’ No doubt the press had saved many lives when first it decided to campaign on this issue.
As time passed, Mandela’s Christmas party grew … and grew. It had now become a phenomenon. ‘Word has spread over the years,’ said Mandela’s private aide, Zelda la Grange, ahead of the 1999 festivities. ‘The number of children attending annually has grown.’
Grown they certainly had: some 5 000 people would attend that year, and the next year it would grow again. It was reported that some children travelled for two days so that they would arrive in Qunu for Christmas Day, only to travel two days back home after the event had drawn to a close.
But as South Africa more generally grew accustomed to freedom over the years, poverty did not relinquish its grip on the Eastern Cape. If anything, in the 364 days between each party, it had tightened its hold. La Grange would later write in her memoir, ‘I saw children infected with diseases without names. Underfed, deformed, mistreated, neglected.’ The party might have grown, but the hunger it sought to feed was becoming insatiable.
By 2002 the party prepared to welcome 15 000 people. And as it had expanded, so had its reputation – and not just in Qunu but across the entire Eastern Cape, among those valleys and beyond the hills, into the rest of South Africa, across the sea and all the way to the United States of America. Oprah Winfrey would even make an appearance that year. Mandela was Oprah’s adopted father figure, and she, like so many others, adored him and was captivated by the occasion. An occasion that, as coincidence would have it, also made for great television.
The event was brought forward a few days, to 22 December, specifically to allow Oprah to attend (no doubt because she had Christmas plans of her own in the States). But, even though the Christmas party was now no longer on Christmas Day, this did nothing to dampen its popularity. Banners reading ‘Christmas Kindness’, the name of Oprah’s international Christmas campaign, were installed all around Mandela’s residence.
The ghost of Christmas present roamed Qunu that day and, with it, an infatuation with the moment – and with framing the event perfectly on celluloid, so that the unselfishness of spirit could be projected to a global audience.
The children arrived on foot, in makeshift ox carts, on squeaking bicycles, in taxis and buses, some in wheelchairs, others even on horseback. ‘We can’t seem to keep up with the demand,’ said La Grange. ‘Every year, by word of mouth, the children learn of the party and the numbers have been multiplying year after year. You can’t believe your eyes when you look out at the sea of excited faces. The queues go all the way into the hills.’
Some had queued since 2 a.m.
No longer would Mandela be serving the food; he was now more an observer than a participant. The South African Chefs Association had committed a team of 40 people, who worked for 20 hours packing meals. Each lunchbox would contain two pieces of roast chicken, some cheese, chicken sausages, peanuts, yogurt, a boiled potato and coleslaw. The association’s vice president, Martin Kobald, described it as a ‘logistical nightmare’.
Mandela would make a grand entrance in a defence-force helicopter, and later he would mingle with politicians such as Bantu Holomisa and Makhenkesi Stofile. Ladysmith Black Mambazo were booked to provide the entertainment.
This was a turning point in the life of Mandela’s Christmas party. The numbers were so large now that it was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain order. It is one thing having 1 000 children swarming around a Christmas tree, quite another managing 20 000. As Ladysmith Black Mambazo played their hit song ‘Diamonds on the souls of her shoes’, the crowd, already a pulsing mass of enthusiasm, began to squash up against the railings. The show was promptly stopped as security guards had to push the crowd back. A number of children were squeezed
