I HAVE some cherished memories of Nelson Mandela. I was fortunate, for example, to be on the Grand Parade when he made his first address as a free man, and I was on the lawns of the Union Buildings in Pretoria for his inauguration. 

The time I'd like to forget, though, was in Mthatha in February 2000 when he opened the Nelson Mandela Museum. 

It was a miserable business. The day was a shambles. Massive delays led to cancellations and events being shuffled willy-nilly up and down a schedule that grew more ad hoc with each passing hour. Frustration grew as it became increasingly clear that, on this occasion, Mandela would not be speaking to the press.

Finally, after a fruitless afternoon in Qunu, where we were shown what I now can no longer recall, I tried to buttonhole Mandela as he was being shown around the displays in the museum's Bhunga Building in downtown Mthatha.

Given that proceedings were way behind the schedule, Mandela's official tour of his own museum was done at a breakneck pace. I had no idea that an octogenarian could move so fast; several priceless cultural and historical artifacts of some importance to the Thembu royal family came close to being destroyed as I barged my way to the front of the Mandela party.

All in vain, though. Mandela was in a foul mood. I'd barely opened my mouth to fire off a question, when he barked at me in rage - "No!" - as his guards elbowed me out of the way. So much for the twinkly-eyed and avuncular old guy we'd come to love.

I later gamely suggested to colleagues that it might have been quite different had I been a Spice Girl. This was some weeks after the Qunu garden had been spruced up for the BBC makeover TV programme Ground Force and Mandela had joking inquired of the show's Charley Dimmock, who used to muck about with a spade in the most revealing of vests, whether she was a member of the pop group. My shortcomings in this regard must have come as a bitter disappointment.

Only now, though, does it occur to me that Mandela's black mood that day could have been be due to the fact that the museum only served to shore up the mythologising that he found so risible. Time and again, he had tried to remind us that he was, after all, just a man. "I am not a saint," he said, "unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying." That quote, apparently one of his favourites, has turned up in many of the obituaries and tributes. 

But no-one bought that. And they're still not buying that. He remains, after all, a towering source of inspiration across the planet; whatever else can be said of his personal life and the squabbles of the family, his legacy remains untarnished to many, and will certainly survive any political failures that may be dwelt upon by a less sentimental or revisionist appraisal of the man. 

Mark Gevisser touched on this in his 2007 biography of Thabo Mbeki: "The overriding legacy of the Mandela presidency . . . is a country where the rule of law was entrenched in an unassailable Bill of Rights, and where the predictions of racial and ethnic conflict did not come true. These feats, alone, guarantee Mandela his sanctity. But he was a far better liberator and nation-builder than he was a governor."

I believe, more than anything, he wanted respite from the "living legend" status. In his last presidential briefing, he told journalists, "I welcome the possibility of revelling in obscurity as I am going to do when I step down." That obscurity never came. In 2004 he told a gathering at his Johannesburg home that he was "retiring from retirement", and wanted to enjoy his last years with his family and doting wife. "Don't call me," he said. "I will call you." Sadly, there was little chance of that. 

It's better to dwell on the beginnings. I count myself lucky to have witnessed the events of the last 25 years. In one of the more astute comments on Mandela's passing,  the writer Darrel Bristow-Bovey suggested that we're more fortunate than the generation that followed "because we were there when we were better than we had ever been. Maybe we can be again."

I hope so. We left the Grand Parade and the Union Buildings all those years ago with the vision of another country, one that we've yet to find. Maybe soon, though. We owe that, not only to Mandela, but ourselves.

This article first appeared in the Weekend Argus.

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