Dr. Dorianne Cara Weil
The Essence of Madiba
Dorianne Cara Weil with Rory Steyn - The Essence of Madiba
- So, hi everybody. Good evening and welcome back. And tonight we, I have two special guests, Dorianne Weil, our clinical psychologist who most of you know. Welcome back, Do.
Thank you.
Yeah, and I really want to thank you so much for organising for Rory Steyn to come and join us tonight. Rory, thank you. You and Dori will be in discussion and discuss the essence of Madiba. I know that you had a very special relationship with Mandela and before I hand over to Dori, I just want to say a little bit about you. So, with a national diploma in police administration, Rory Steyn has an accomplished history in the South African police. While in the service of the government, he specialised as an investigator, intelligence field worker and a section head of the police VIP protection and bomb disposal units in Johannesburg. Upon being transferred to the Pretoria-based Presidential Protection Unit in 1996, Rory was appointed Team Leader of President Mandela’s Personal Protection Team, entailing the protection of the president both nationally and internationally. He retired from the South African Police Service on the 17th of June, 1999 with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and set up his own security consultancy with his partner, Bob Nicholls. NSA Global Security Consultants is South Africa’s largest executive protection employer, counting Fortune 500 and blue chip companies among their clients. He has worked at the Athens, Beijing, London and Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympic Games, and the 2010 Vancouver and 2018 Winter Olympic Games. On behalf of NSA’s clients, Rory has consulted to the successful Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games bid. He is married to Gillian, a school headmistress. They have three sons, Kyle, Ian and Craig. Rory, Gillian, your wife.
Yeah.
Who is, which school is she the headmistress of?
Of Crawford in Ruimsig.
Ah, I thought so.
Yeah.
So we could chat afterwards. Well, a very, very warm welcome.
Sure.
And we are delighted to have you on Lockdown University and yeah, we are all looking forward to the special evening. Over to you, Do.
Yeah, thank you. It’s such a pleasure. And I was very intentional, and as you know extremely persistent in organising this evening. It took us some time to get it together, but it’s a story, a collection of insights, anecdotes, experiences that absolutely have to be shared by the world. I was going to say by all South Africans, and we’ve got many South Africans and expats are on this platform, but it’s not only the story of, it’s actually the story of leadership. It’s the story of consummate, of a consummate human being, an icon, and what were the elements that actually led to him becoming this amazing, influential magical man. And I find today, Rory, are really interesting. You know, in doing a lot of the work that I do in leadership work and so on, if you say to people, “Just look at the leaders in the world today, you know, who do you look up to? Who is a role model?” They’re quite hard pressed to say. And if you say, “Is there somebody, you know, who you think of?” honestly, I was going to say nine times out of 10, but 9.9, maybe even 10 times out of 10, they look to, at Nelson Mandela.
And you are going to be able to share with us why, what was the essence of Mandela? Your book, called “One Step Behind Mandela”, and you were one step behind him, but you were also in certain ways having to be one step ahead of him. And the stories that you tell in your book are parallel stories of people who represent millions of people, you who came from a very unquestioned, particular background that you, with beliefs that were not even doubted, in your frame of reference when you were thrown into this position. You stepped into this position full of scepticism and uncertainty, very much unprepared to what you might find and to certainly to any transformation that you might experience. And Nelson Mandela, who was labelled a terrorist, and whose whole mission it was to really move from a place of partisan representation and hatred into reconciliation. And I found that the story of your transformation together with his transformation absolutely fascinating. It makes us believe not only in possibility, but it was probability, in fact, reality, and gives us huge inspiration also of hope for the future. So I just wanted to say welcome to you and so looking forward to what you’re going to share with us tonight.
Well thanks for having me, Dori and Wendy, and may I just greet everybody on the call? I’m not sure how many people are listening, but good evening or good morning, wherever you are in the world, to all of you. It’s lovely to be with you.
So Rory, may we start by you. There you were, 22 year old, young policeman from a conservative Afrikaans background, with certain beliefs, ideas and emotions that were woven into your DNA, that were unquestioned, stepping into a significant role that, well, you were very proud of your role. You were serving, you were serving your people, you were serving the fatherland. And I’m interested in your personal transition, perhaps starting from the beginning with finding yourself promoted to this position.
Okay, so let me just correct a few things there, Dori. My home language is English. I have Afrikaner heritage, I have Afrikaans, well, I have Dutch, German, English and French heritage, but my home language is English even though my surname would indicate otherwise. And I joined the police force as it was straight out of matric in 1982. Spent a year’s police training in ‘82 and then took a very normal police career. There was nothing special. I wasn’t hand-picked, I wasn’t carefully selected or anything like that, but it really came about because the Special Branch came knocking and recruiting in 1986. They were assembling Special Investigation Units and I was seconded to one of those Special Investigation Units. And then they put me on the churches section because one of the channels that the anti-apartheid movement used to channel funding into South Africa internally from abroad was via the churches. The South African Council of Churches, as a member of the World Council of Churches, was one of those channels, so we had to concentrate on them. And there’s a reason I’m telling you this story because as a very naive, very wet behind the ears warrant officer in the South African police, I was told to report to this section that concentrated on the churches, go up to a particular floor in what was then called John Vorster Square and go and fetch those old reel-to-reel tape recordings, you know, of the bugged phones of the South African Council of Churches Head Office, which was Khotso House. And I was told to listen to those recordings and to report anything subversive, which was about the extent of the briefing I got, so not much of a briefing. What I then did was record everything that I considered to be potentially subversive, but I could only understand about 30% of the conversations, those that were in English, because the other 70% were in an African language and I didn’t speak any African language at the time other than Afrikaans. And so that’s where it started.
So if you then, that’s '86. So I wasn’t 22, Dori, I was a little older than that because I was 22, I was sorry, I was 19 years old when I entered police training in 1982, so I was probably in my mid-20s when I was recruited by the Special Branch. And in 1990, well I can tell you exactly how old I was in 1990, 'cause I was born in '63. So at the age of 27, then-State President F. W. De Klerk makes that famous and historic announcement at the opening of parliament in February of 1990, telling the world that he will release Mr. Mandela and the other political prisoners unconditionally, and that he would unban all the banned organisations, including the African National Congress, the South African Communist Party, the Pan-African Congress, and then a whole raft of smaller organisations that formed the basis of the anti-apartheid movement. So that was February of 1990. I’m sorry, my phone fell over. Do apologise, Dori. That was February of 1990 and literally at the stroke of a pen, because remember apartheid the system or the ideology even of apartheid was really a set of laws. Mr. de Klerk signed those laws out of or off the statute books. So the Special Branch had no more work because their job was to concentrate on persons and organisations that opposed the state, and it was the apartheid state. So what are they going to do with this young, by then I was a lieutenant, what are they going to do with this young, wet behind the ears still, very much young lieutenant in 1990 at the age of 27? They said, “You go and start a VIP protection unit.” So that’s how it happened, because you understand that the National Party government was anathema to the diplomatic community and the business community before that announcement. After that announcement, everybody wanted a piece of them. Business people wanted to understand what direction this policy of unbanning everything would take.
How do we access international markets? And of course, the diplomatic community wanted to brief their governments back home. Like, what is it going to look like now that we have all of this political freedom? Are we going to have one man, one vote elections, all of that? So our cabinet were all of a sudden travelling the length and breadth of South Africa, implementing this historic, and it was an historic decision or announcement to unban and end apartheid. So, they needed protection and I was told to start that. So, that’s what happened. Now, that’s 1990. If you fast forward the movie another four years to 1994, President Mandela wins the election, becomes the first democratically elected head of state in South Africa. I’m still the commander of that VIP unit in Joburg, but he’s got a home and an office in Joburg. So I find myself doing 70% of my working day what we call advanced security. There wasn’t even such a unit as the Presidential Protection Unit as there is today. It was still being evolved, but he had a protection detail. And me and my team of VIP protectors in Joburg found ourselves going from venue to venue and doing advanced security, making sure there were no explosive devices there, taking the sniffer dogs through, posting my men and women at the entrances and exits. And I do stress I had some very good women on my team. So that’s what we were doing. And then eventually I got a phone call from the commander of that newly-evolved unit to say, “Hey, Rory, one of the team leaders has gone to study in Canada.” He’s still there, by the way, he’s never come back. “Your rank is the right rank. You know the president, he knows you, you know the teams and they know you. Would you consider applying?” So I phoned my wife, oh, sorry, I spoke to her that night over dinner. I said, “Look, I’ve got this opportunity. What do I tell the guy tomorrow?” And she said, “No, I think you should take this job,” so that’s what happened.
So Rory, what I’m interested, you know, we, I mean there’s a great deal about how it happened and what you did and we are going to hear more about it. But what were some of the mixed feelings, the internal dilemmas? You dealing with this announcement, anticipating how, the change that was coming, how it was going to.
Yeah.
Thinking about whether you should or shouldn’t take the job. And when you did and you were, you were stepped into that role, what confronted you? I’m interested in your journey, your experiential journey.
Okay, so there’s a reason I took some time to explain all of that, Dori, because I’m conscious that we have people that don’t necessarily automatically understand the South African context both politically and socially prior to and after 1994. So my dad, my late father was, and by the way, I was raised by a single parent and it wasn’t my mom. My dad raised me and two of my brothers on a journalist’s salary as a single parent, but he understood better than I did the social context. So remember now, I’m an English-speaking South African white boy from Joburg who’s joined the police force straight after matric. That’s not a normal course of action for an English-speaking kid. And remember that in those days, every white male above the age of 18 had to perform two years of compulsory military service. So we were conscripted, only whites and only males. I did not fancy doing two years of compulsory military service and but in order to get that deferred, you typically had to go to university. My father did not have the money to send me to university, so I found out that if you joined the police force for four years, not two, for four years, and you studied an appropriate degree, the police would pay for those studies. So I enrolled or enlisted to study law, absolutely hated it and decided to go and study teaching. And by then I was well into my police promotion exams, which is the national diploma that you mentioned. They lost the papers of my application to get a bursary to study teaching, so I phoned the school and said, “You know, what’s happening? Am I going to go?” And they said, “You need to come and reapply.” I said, “I’ll tell you what, don’t worry about me reapplying, I’ll stay a cop.” So instead of staying four years, I stayed nearly 18 years. But the point is that.
So.
My dad being a journalist and understanding that context knew that if I as an English-speaking kid joined the police, I would be outnumbered. And he was right because in amongst the 36 men, the recruits in my company, which was Platoon Seven of Bravo Company in 1982, 36 guys, four of us were English speaking, the others were Afrikaans speaking. And when I look back on it now, Dori, I can see that there’s a golden thread running through there that was preparing me for, so I was already outnumbered as an English-speaking kid in the police force, which like most of the civil service at the time was the domain of the Afrikaner. Now I am asked to head one of these protection teams where history literally threw a bunch of people together from completely disparate and opposing walks of life. We were white cops trying to arrest these Black freedom fighters who were trying to evade us by entering South Africa. So you couldn’t have found more bitter enemies. I mean, Israelis and Palestinians might be a comparable comparison, but I’m not even sure that that fully justifies it. And history throws us together and we get told to protect the most famous human being on the planet. That’s where I found myself. So once again, I’ve now got this target on my back almost because I’m the only English-speaking person and I’m the only person coming from a special branch, a security branch background. And I’ve now got to integrate with these or non-statutory forces officers to form this unit and nobody trusts me. The Afrikaners don’t trust me, and the Black guys don’t trust me. I’m on my own. And maybe that was what my father understood.
So Rory, I know that right in the beginning that your dad understood that.
Yeah.
But I know that right in the very beginning there were various ways that Mandela interacted with you from the beginning and how he interacted with everyone else.
Yeah.
And there was also the whole thing of the bombing of the Council of Churches where you believed, would you like to tell the story? It’s a fascinating story, that he thought that you might have been implicated in that and you didn’t even know that he had that belief. So I want to move on to.
Yeah.
How you felt being in that very hostile, what you perceived in the beginning was to be a hostile environment and the interaction with this man who you knew only as a terrorist, started in transforming you and some of those early experiences and the behaviour that he displayed that was significant.
So it didn’t take longer than two or three months for me to become convinced of the fact that the agenda that President Mandela espoused, one of reconciliation and nation building and uniting the peoples of South Africa, Black and white into a single South African nation, was a genuine and a sincere one. So I was given this privileged position, so I get how privileged I was, Dori. Excuse me, it could have been, you know, any number of other cops, but it kind of fell into my lap for the reasons I’ve described. I was the commander of the VIP unit in the city that he had a home and an office. And really President Mandela and Rory Steyn should have been the bitterest of enemies, but I can honestly hold my hand up and tell you all, in all honesty, I was treated by him with nothing other than respect and almost an affection that turned into a rather special relationship because as team leader of one of these protection teams, and I do stress that I wasn’t the only team leader, but as a team leader part of my duty every day when we finished his working day and we got back to his home in Joburg at whatever time of the night that was, while my team were booking back the weapons and getting the vehicle sorted out for tomorrow and waiting for me to come and brief them, I would’ve to go into the house with the President, from my pocket take a copy of his schedule and brief him on what was going to happen tomorrow.
No protocol officer or secretary did that. We did that. We had to get him through his day from A to Z, from the moment he stepped into the vehicle in his driveway, that was our job. And so imagine the privilege of spending one or two minutes every single day of my working life when I, when my team was on duty in that very private and personal interaction with Nelson Mandela. That became my privilege. And I don’t know what it was. There must have just been something that he saw perhaps in the way that I conducted my duty or led the team that, you know, he was comfortable with and grateful for. Because when the intelligence services did finally wake up to the fact that this, I was a major, well actually I was a lieutenant colonel by that time I started on that team, that this Lieutenant Colonel Steyn, who’s a team leader of President Mandela’s Personal Protection Team is the same Steyn who has a Special Branch background who worked on the church’s section and spied on the people in that building, Khotso House, which was blown up by the apartheid forces. So those people that committed that, what’s the TRC term for it? Human rights violation. The people that perpetrated that act are either in prison today or they have received amnesty, but I was fingered by one of my former colleagues who said, “No, that the recce or the advanced kind of reconnaissance party that went into Khotso House.”
You were implicated.
“To plan was led by me.” So I’m not denying that I was in the building, I was in Khotso House.
Yeah.
Not when it was blown up, but for what I now with hindsight believe probably was the recce, but I didn’t lead it.
No.
I was told by my commander, “We are going to go in there.”
Yeah, so.
But President Mandela didn’t know that.
Rory, we know the real story.
Yeah.
You see, that was the thing. So really what was fascinating was the way, and it wasn’t, it seemed to be not only you, the way he dealt with everyone from in the beginning with tremendous respect, in an egalitarian way, with the least hierarchy that anyone had ever experienced, where people were invited to step forward, where he approached them and showed interest in who they were and in their family, you had that special time with him at the end of the time. But the, when we talk, start talking about the essence of Madiba, it’s different kind of behaviour than was the expectation, that he seemed to display in a way of dealing with everyone, and after his history, for you what was so absolutely extraordinary was that he believed, his intelligence seemed to indicate to him, that you had been involved in that bombing of Khotso House and you didn’t know that he thought that. And there was a moment that was kind of life changing for you because even with that belief, he kept you on his detail anyway. And you refer in your book to what that meant to you and how that was a turning point.
You’re 100% correct. And the thing that struck me so profoundly was the fact that I was serving in a capacity that demanded the highest level of trust, and I’m searching for a word here, of loyalty. Loyalty to the office that we were protecting irrespective of who the incumbent is. And I’ve spoken to this with my colleagues that do this kind of work all over the world, and irrespective of who the incumbent of an office is, if you protect the highest office in the land, it’s something that you take seriously because it demands such a high degree of loyalty. But the point is that long before I was ever called upon to exercise that loyalty in protecting him against some or other threat, he was loyal to me first, because you’re quite right. The intelligence went to him and told him, “Sir, you’ve got to get rid of this guy. This is his background. We suspect or we hear or it is reported that he was part of this bombing.” And the President told them, “No.” He said, “You leave that boy there.”
Now, Rory.
“He’s doing a good job. And we are not after the people that were carrying out instructions issued under that regime. We want the people that were.”
Now that.
“That issued those instructions. You leave him there.”
That’s a, but that’s amazing. I mean, if we are talking about differences in human beings which resulted in him displaying what was later called the Madiba magic, just attracting people wherever he went like a magnet, not only because of his charisma, in a way, I mean it was really because of his humanity. How do you understand? And we want to actually use a lot of the time to hear some of these amazing anecdotes which illustrated who Madiba was, the essence of him, and there’s some funny stories and amazing stories that you do share in your book. But I mean, how do you understand the fact that even with pre-warning that might put a dent in the perception of loyalty and commitment in other human beings, and he could have replaced you. You yourself say not, everyone is dispensable in a way. And his, your words when you write about this is he said, “Everybody deserves a second chance.” But in fact, that second chance could have cost him his life. I mean, not with you of course, but the perception could have been, any other person might have just put a line through it and said, “Get me someone else.” What was it about the essence of Madiba, the person that he was, that after everything that he’d been through with all those 27 years and everything else that came before that, and in fact after that, until he, and until this reconciliation really began to be believed, what was it about him that said everybody deserves a second chance? That says.
Well, I’m not sure I’ve got the, I’m not sure I’m 100% have the right answer, Dori. I think it has something to do with his utterly unswerving belief in his own judgement of a man. So the way that I conducted myself, the way that I performed the duty with all of those challenges that I described earlier, perhaps he saw something in that and he was convinced. First of all, he insisted that every single demographic represented amongst the South African populace had to be present on his team. So we had Black and white and every skin colour in between as part of the team, not just the protection team, his personal staff. So that’s the first thing I want to say. So there were, in Joburg where he lived, there were two teams, one headed by me with a Black ANC cadre as my second in command, and the other team was headed by, excuse me, a Black ANC cadre with a white cop as his second in command. So that’s the first thing I’ll say. The other thing, or the other way I’ll answer your question is by saying this. People often ask me, “What was he like? If you never met Nelson Mandela, what was he like, Rory?” And the greatest compliment I can pay him was that if you’d never met him, how you perceive him off a TV screen is exactly how he is. The way that he would speak to another head of state is the same way that he would speak to the gardener or to us as his protection team or to his family. Now you would understand how rare that is today in any human being. How much more rare is it in a politician? So I don’t know how to say anything more than that.
Look, that in itself is, you know, really interesting because there seems to be a very interesting balance. And I’d love you please to tell us some of your experiences and observations that you saw in unusual things of how he called people out from a crowd and how he did deal with situations in an unusual way. And I know you’ve got so many, so many stories, but there seems to be a balance really in going through this and understanding the essence. It sounds like in a way you talk about a mixture between a Victorian gentleman and an African prince. There’s also kind of mixture of a humanitarian ethic, which is very, very strong. But at one point you also talk about a strategic politician, not necessarily with the guile or with the subtext that we’ve come to expect, with a kind of openness. There’s so many interesting , you know, he could stay at the Dorchester Hotel in London and still make his bed every single morning. And his preference used to be spending time in a very simple home, you know, where in his, where he was born. Because in some way the house reminded him of the kind of internal, which was interesting, sort of time that he even had in prison for himself. So you know, you’ve got all of this iconic person who could be wined, dined, visited by people from sportsman, superstar, supermodel, who kind of came to him even as his grandfather, talking about Naomi Campbell in that thing, to just saying that, “These are my values and this is the essence of me.” And maybe you can tell us some amazing stories that illustrated that.
So I’ve already told you one thing that I think is so unique to him and that is this incredible ability to treat everybody the same. That’s a gift. The other thing that I would say is he was probably the person that I’ve known in my 60 years who is the most comfortable in his own skin. Somebody can Google it, but I think at last count Nelson Mandela was bestowed with 160 or 180-something honorary doctorates from universities all around the world and he just didn’t need any of that. That was irrelevant to him. And all he wanted to do was sit in his home in Qunu in the Eastern Cape and read his newspapers. By the way, he read every South African daily newspaper, English and Afrikaans, every day from cover to cover. And that was when he was at his happiest. I recall a conversation that he and I had when it was just the two of us in the room. It was in July of 1996, and he went on a state visit to the UK on the invitation of the late Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. We slept in Buckingham Palace for three nights. Everybody, okay, I’ve slept in Buckingham Palace, eat your hearts out. But there was an exceptionally formal occasion where he was granted the Freedom of the City of London. So that honour is bestowed by the Lord Mayor in the iconic, and I’ve just, Mansion House is the residence of the Lord Mayor where the banquet took place afterwards but I’m just struggling now to remember the building that survived bombings of both world wars, where the Freedom of the City is actually bestowed. It’ll come to me in a second. Very, very formal.
Actually, Rory, you might be interested to know that Wendy was granted the Freedom of the City. And both she and I and other people who are on this call were there. She was the first South African, certainly after Nelson Mandela, and I think that it was probably the last.
Wow.
And I witnessed that. We went to see her grant, receive.
So tell me, so tell me where it was then, will you? 'Cause I’ve forgotten the name of the building.
So that’s why I’m thinking, . But it doesn’t matter, we’d rather hear the stories.
Yeah, okay, okay.
I don’t want to run out of time for all your fascinating stories.
No, that’s fine. It’ll come to me in a second. I’m rather embarrassed that I can’t remember the name of this building.
That’s fine.
'Cause it’s a very famous and historic one. But the point is that they had a protocol officer literally walk him through step by step, because it’s an extremely formal ceremony.
It is.
And the, it culminates in him receiving the key, literally a key in a presentation box.
Yeah.
That symbolises the Freedom of the City. And I think under correction he was the first serving head of state in something like 300 years to be accorded that honour. And then we had, then we were taken to Mansion House. As I said, there was a white tie banquet there, and he had to change out of his business suit that he wore to the ceremony where the Freedom of the City was bestowed into formal evening wear. So there’s just the two of us in there and I’m battling to get his shoes on and off 'cause he wore those compression stockings on his lower leg. His feet had swollen up. And as I’m kind of knelt down there dealing with the shoelaces, he sits back in this chair and he looks at me and he says, “You know, our cultures are totally different.” Meaning that he doesn’t need all this pomp and ceremony and the Brits are the best at pomp and ceremony. Nobody can argue that. It’s like, you know.
It meant nothing to him, yeah.
“I’m a humble, I’m a humble, country boy from Qunu in the Eastern Cape. I don’t need all of this. What is all this performance about?” And I think, again, so if you talk about the essence of Madiba, that’s the essence of Madiba.
Yeah, that he still, with all of this, in his heart he was a, that, a humble, country boy.
Yeah.
So Rory, it was actually on that same visit.
Yeah, he was probably still chase the cattle.
That if I recall correctly, and it’s not really, please correct me if I’m wrong, not really important, but I’d love you to tell the story, 'cause on that same visit actually where you, after London, I think it was you visited Brixton and you had an experience.
No, it was during the visit. It was during that very visit.
During.
Yeah.
Yes.
That we visited Brixton.
Would you like to tell us. what happened ?
Yeah, I’ll try and be brief 'cause it’s some story. So you would understand that Brixton is not on the average tour of duty of heads of state who visit London, right? But because the President asked to go to Brixton, a mixed ethnic, mixed race community that’s had its fair share of troubles, so we arrived there two months before the state visit to do the recce and to plan, well what is he going to do in Brixton? We know we’re going to go to Brixton, but what are we going to do? And the operations inspector from the local police station came to me and he said, “Rory, you know, we’ve worked hard to achieve a truce between the people and the police. We don’t need 45 minutes of President Mandela in Brixton disrupting all of that.” I said to him, “You’re preaching to the choir here. I come from a country where we’ve had more than our fair share of police and community conflict.” But what I should have heard him saying was that the police would be very hesitant to act or react in any way that would even look like it was heavy handed, so that’s the point. So what we settled on was that the President would formally open a community centre that the then-Prince Charles, the now the King, the monarch of Britain, Prince Charles’ charity called The Prince’s Trust had built a community centre in Brixton and, excuse me, President Mandela was invited as part of that state visit to cut the ribbon and to declare the community centre open, which was the easy part because you can control access to a community centre. But when he came out of the community centre to walk back to the vehicles, this was now an opportunity for the people of Brixton.
And you’re just going to have to accept my word for this, that Nelson Mandela was a kind of a messiah to any mixed race, mixed ethnic community. So there were tens of thousands of people outside that community centre waiting to see this almost messiah walk in their ‘hood. So the bobbies had done their work and they put crowd barriers down either side of the main road outside the community centre. The bobbies were standing on this side of the crowd barrier, facing the crowd. And they were doing exactly what they were briefed to do. All the vehicles that brought both Prince Charles’s motorcade, the President’s motorcade with the big 44-seater bus that had the whole delegation plus the 12 motorcycles from the London Metropolitan Police that escort you on a state visit in London, all of the vehicles were off to the left. And the idea was that only Prince Charles and President Mandela would walk into the road that is now fenced off by these crowd barriers with the police posted all the way down. And they’re going to walk for 100 metres to the right-hand side, and then we are going to pick him up there as we leave Brixton, put him back in his vehicle and go to Trafalgar Square to South Africa House. Well, that was the plan. When we walked out of that community centre, every hair on the back of my neck stood up and I knew something’s going to happen here. So he went and I said to one of the palace officials, he was a lieutenant colonel, retired from the British Army. I said, “Colonel, please make sure that this delegation goes to that bus. We don’t have the manpower here in Brixton today to worry about anybody other than the President.” And he said something to me like, “Young man, we’ve been doing this for hundreds of years.” I said, “Okay, Colonel, I’m just saying please make sure they go to the bus.” So they didn’t go to the bus.
They all walked down those stairs and turned right and they followed President Mandela and Prince Charles down the road. And the people of Brixton took one look at that and said, “Who are these guys in the road? Let’s join them.” And they started to jump over those crowd barriers. So the bobbies that are now standing 10 metres apart, you know, you might catch one, two, or three on the collar and prevent them, but four, five, six, seven and eight and the rest of them are in the street and they’re running at my President. And I said to him, “Sir, we’re going to have to evacuate.” And now I need something to evacuate him to. If you’re in a street, it’s normally the car. The problem was that the car that the Queen had made available to the President was driven by this geriatric driver from the Royal Mews. I said to the Brits on the recce, I said, “You don’t have to put somebody in the car who’s the same age as the President. I don’t need that old guy. I need a highly trained police officer driving the vehicle that my President is in.” And they just told me, “You know, that’s how it’s done. Yeah, forget about that. It’s not happening. It’s going to be the driver from the Royal Mews.” Do you know that he was the only person who got that vehicle through that melee that had now developed in the street and the next thing that Rolls was next to me. We opened the door, we put the President into the Rolls. Prince Charles’ protection officer, he has since retired, Charlie Parr, he was running up and down the street there like a headless chicken. I said, “Hey Charlie, put the Prince into the Rolls.” His car was nowhere. So we put Prince Charles in the wrong car. I now look for his daughter. President Mandela’s daughter was the official companion. And I saw these wild eyes and arms and legs flailing there. I shouted to the bobbies, “Push her forward. That’s the President’s daughter.” Opened the door a third time. There’s no space for her now because Prince Charles is in the wrong car. Get her in the Rolls, they moved up and made room. Now.
And they landed up where?
The people, no, so no, no. Now this Rolls is stuck in the road. There’s a crowd around it. And the driver’s hesitant, you know, to kind of get it moving and it’s like sideways across the road. So he straightens it, he gets it walking, going at a very slow, walking pace. People are now running to the door. So I’m standing or staying next to that door, figuring that I better, if somebody can get to the door, I need to stay at the door. And then the bobbies brought in those beautiful, highly-trained riot horses and they just created space next to this Rolls. And we got it going at like a walking pace, then a jogging pace. And I’m looking over my shoulder the whole time, staying by the door thinking, “Where is my black Rover driven by the highly trained cop from the London Metropolitan Police Services Special Branch?” Because I’m in that car and I need to stay behind this Rolls, and there’s nothing. The only thing coming out of this.
So this isn’t going to end up well.
Bedlam that we’ve left behind are the motorcycles. Yeah, no, it’s not going to end up well ‘cause we’ve got no support.
Yeah.
We’ve got the wrong principal in the Rolls Royce, there’s one British cop in there and there’s this old driver, bless his socks, I’ll be forever grateful to him. And this Rolls is busy leaving Brixton and I’m now sprinting behind it and we are losing the race. And I’m busy breaking the golden rule of my profession, which is you don’t lose your principal and you certainly don’t lose him on foreign soil. And the Rolls is disappearing down the road. And I’m losing the sprint. I look over my shoulder one, so the motorcycles are, sorry, they’re coming out of the, the motorcycles have extricated themselves and they’re shooting past me with a bodyguard on the back, either a British one or a South African one on a police motorcycle with no helmet. And these motorcycles are heading for the intersections on the route to Trafalgar Square to stop the traffic. So that Rolls is now seriously gone.
So how does, it’s a hell of a story but I know we’ve got so many. So how does this end? I don’t want, I want .
I’ll tell you.
Yeah.
Gimme a chance and I’ll tell you.
Okay.
So I look over my shoulder one last time for my black Rover. There’s no black Rover. Around the corner comes an old Renault 5, beat up, off-white Renault 5 driven by this young girl and her boyfriend. And we commandeered that vehicle in the street of Brixton. Who’s we? A big Zulu from Pietermaritzburg, my colleagues , an even bigger Brit, Frank Armstrong, who later headed Tony Blair’s protection detail. He played in the front row for the London Police Rugby Team. And the three of us pile into the back of a two-door Renault 5. And I’m in the middle between these two big guys. And we said to that driver, “Follow that Rolls.” And she said, “I don’t have enough petrol.” I’m thinking, “Lady, you’ve just saved my career here and now you tell me this rubbish.” There’s no point saying, “I’ll just pull in over there to the BP,” because by the time you get the pump hose out of the pump, nevermind into the tank, those police motorcycles have released the traffic at the intersections across the route and the Rolls is gone. So I pulled the radio off my belt. I called the British cop in there.
I said, “Stan, where’s the nearest police station?” Before he answers me on the police radio my driver tells me, she says, “Kennington Police Station.” I said, “Stan, go to Ken. Tell the driver to turn into Kennington Police Station. It’s half a mile up the road. We need to find those two motorcades. You’ve got the wrong principal in the car and you’ve got no support.” “Roger,” says Stan. And bless her cotton socks, when that Rolls turned into the police station a half a mile up the road, that little car was right behind it. You know, Dori, I don’t even know whether I had the common courtesy to thank her, and I also don’t know how I got out of the back seat of a two-door Renault 5, but it was fast. And I ran into the police station. I said, “Where’s the station commander?” And there he came, I said, “Superintendent, I’m a superintendent staying from South Africa and I’ve got President Mandela and Prince Charles about to walk into your police station. We need to find the two motorcades we’ve lost in Brixton. I suggest you take them to your office and make them some tea. We’ll figure out the motorcades.” Well, when his jaw bounced back off the ground, I thought I was talking to a fish 'cause he’d literally stood there like this. I said, “Superintendent, your office, tea.” So after about, President Mandela goes in there and he greets the whole police station. Everybody, the cops, the public, the people that are under arrest, he’s greeting everybody. That’s, “How are you?”
What did Prince Charles do?
So Prince Charles said to me, well, first of all he, I could see he was really rattled by all of this. I said to him, “Your Royal Highness, don’t worry. The President is used to this kind of deviation from the formal agenda,” which is the gospel truth. He said to me, “Really, do you think so?” I said, “Look at him, Sir.” As I said, greeting everybody there. “Do you recognise me? What’s your name?” And anyway, we get them.
So Prince Charles wasn’t so used to it.
No, sure, but he thought he’d committed the diplomatic blunder of the century and mommy’s going to smack my wrist. I’ll never be king, man. So we get into the office and eventually the call comes on the radio, “Okay, we found the motorcades.” I knocked on the door, I said, “Mr. President, we can go.” Oh good, down the stairs we go, still no tea. I mean, this is London for goodness sake. And in the time that we found two motorcades, those British cops couldn’t make two cups of tea because they were that rattled. So that’s the story about how I nearly lost my President in London and I was saved by this young girl. Do you know, I tried to find her? At the 20th anniversary of that, so that would’ve been 2016, I started this whole Facebook campaign to try and find that girl. Think about it. Surely if you’re driving with your boyfriend and three cops pile into your Renault 5, you’ve told somebody that story.
You’ve told somebody, yeah, quite incredible.
And the community leader who was there kind of at that community centre opening, he got involved. He put the word out, he shared the post 'cause I really wanted to thank this girl.
Yeah, of course.
As I said, for literally saving my career. And I’ve never found her. I would love to, I would love to find her.
Well, who knows?
I’ll give her a big hug one day.
Maybe as a result of this Lockdown University, you never know. There could be somebody listening. Rory.
You never know.
They’re incredible stories. And this one, I mean is absolutely, there were a few close shaves that you speak about. But one theme that goes through all of the stories and anecdotes and experiences that seemed to also illustrate the essence of Mandela was that, I mean, he made a statement to you that you said you and your team used to talk about often. And that was something like, “You are here to protect me, but not to tell me what to do.” It was a line that he said, which meant that quite often he would go off on his own tap. There are incidents where he would slip away. Not very many, but it must have been challenging to deal with someone where you, there was just this enormous responsibility, of course. And he would go walk about a little bit, go and chat to someone. Now I’ve been a recipient of that, more than one occasion. I’ve also been with him in his plane, his Falcon, very thankfully on more than one occasion. But he was rather irreverent. And he, as you say, all of the protocol didn’t mean that much. So how did that affect you and your team? And can you tell a few sort, short anecdotes, I don’t want to run out of time, about the challenge of and occasions when this happened to you?
Well, it, I have to be very honest and say, Dori, that in my time there, which was as I said from '94, that didn’t happen. But speaking to my colleagues that protected him between his release from prison in 1990 and him becoming President in 1994, there was a much smaller team. It was all guys from the liberation movement, all ANC guys. They were still trying to understand what it, you know, what does it look like to protect the world’s most famous former political prisoner? And he was staying in someone’s home at the time. He wasn’t, he didn’t have his own home in Joburg like he did when we protected him as President. So there were times, and he was, you know, he was a fitness, I wouldn’t say fanatic, but he was a very fit man. He was a former boxer. So before he developed the osteoarthritis in his knees, he would go walking at five o'clock in the morning. And sometimes, you know.
Every single morning?
If the guys weren’t ready and he, every single morning, if he came out of there at ten to 5:00 and you weren’t there, he would just start walking. And you know, when you caught up to him, he would look at you and say, “Yes, chaps.” So I only heard that from those guys. It never happened with me. But I can tell you that when he was courting Mrs. Machel, remember when I told you now that when we were in London, he, the official companion on that state visit was his daughter, Zenani. But then he met and fell in love with Mrs. Machel, Mama Graça, a unique lady, an extraordinary lady as gracious as her name suggests. And unique in the sense that I think she’s the only person ever to be married to two presidents, to two heads of state, because her first husband, President Samora Machel of Mozambique died in a plane crash, and then she later met and married President Mandela. But when they were courting and she would fly down to Joburg from Maputo in Mozambique, he would insist on going to the airport to meet her. And we would tell him, “Dada, let us go and fetch Mama.” No, I want to be there. When he wanted to buy her jewellery or flowers or chocolates, we would say to him, “Dada, give us the money.” No, I want to choose them myself. And really, Dori, all that was was an excuse to walk amongst ordinary people. And as I reflect on that today, you mentioned the responsibility earlier. When I look back on it now, you know, it’s some years later now, as I say. I finished my service of the President in '99, so 24 years later, when I look back on it now, I sometimes go quite cold and all the hairs on my arms stand up and I get goose flesh thinking of the responsibility that was given to us. As I say, history threw enemies together to protect the most famous man on the planet. And somehow we managed to do that and keep him alive and keep him safe.
And sometimes.
But the responsibility that we had was enormous.
Yes.
So I often say that if we didn’t know that he was going to walk into Sandton City after work on the way home from the Union Buildings, going to his home in Houghton to buy chocolates at Godiva chocolatier, then how would the bad guys know? So it wasn’t all that he was, you know, difficult to work with and he broke with protocol. No, he broke with protocol because he wanted to be with and talk to and interact with ordinary people. Who would deny him that, having been in prison for 27 years? So, as I was trying to say, when I reflect on it now, I’m very proud of the fact that I served a President who wanted to be with his people whenever he could. And even more than that, I’m very proud of the fact and I love the fact that I served a President who loved children. Madiba loved nothing more than to be with children. And he was completely unfazed by the fact that he would get them all together and collect them around him like a grandfather, and he would sing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” with them, or to them. Who cares what it sounded like? Who cares if his voice broke? He was, you know, when he was deep into his '80s. Didn’t worry him. He just wanted to be with kids. I’m proud of the fact that I served a president like that.
And often, you talk about being with kids, he would say to your detail, he would notice a child perhaps in the crowd and say to them, “Bring,” say to you, “Bring that child here,” or he would walk off to them. And you seemed to, I mean there was this a little bit of unpredictability that you kind of got used to because it was his way with the ordinary people. So Rory, if you had to choose a few defining moments for you that made you understand and have the deepest respect and say what you said a few times in different ways in your book called “One Step Behind Mandela”, that you would take a bullet for him and that, you know, the, your mindset fundamentally at first developed and then changed without a doubt. What would you like us to know and hear before we?
Well, there’s one there’s only one moment that I will refer to. And you know that when President Mandela passed away in December of 2013, so it’s 10 years ago. And I was asked by many, many, many journalists, media houses, TV interviews and radio interviews, as those media houses sought stories, anecdotes, and sound bites, the one thing that I kept reflecting on was the very day that he became President, on the 10th of May, 1994, he swore the oath of office, immediately got in a helicopter from Pretoria at the Union Buildings and flew those 60k south to Joburg, landed on the roof of the Technikon and attended a soccer match at Ellis Park. Who does that? Is a fundamentally good question. Why would you get into a helicopter and go to a soccer match half an hour after becoming South Africa’s first democratic president? Well, it’s because somebody very smart on the organising committee decided that if we put 60,000 soccer fans into Ellis Park, televise the proceedings from the Union Buildings where he is sworn in as our first president, that is, sorry, that is 60,000 fewer people clogging up that M1 motorway where me and my team of men and women, VIP protection people and cops drawn from all over South Africa had to move 184 VIP motorcades from the 13 five-star hotels in Joburg up to the Union Buildings to attend this historic event. And it’s 60,000 fewer people trying to fit or cram onto the lawns of the Union Buildings where the ceremony happened, where there was this massive celebration going on as the majority of South Africans celebrated the, you know, the advent of freedom and democracy. So, it was a very smart idea. So I get this communication that the President will attend this soccer match.
So I think, “Well, I better go to the President’s suite and make sure that it’s okay, that it’s sterile, that there’s nothing funny in there.” So I do that and I’ll await the motorcade to drive from the helipad next door around the corner. The President doesn’t go into the President’s suite. He goes straight to the lift or the elevator if there are Americans on the call and he goes down to the dressing room level of the stadium and walks out onto the pitch to greet the two teams that are lined up. South Africa is playing Zambia, who are the continental champions. That fixture is now an annual one, unsurprisingly called the Nelson Mandela Inauguration Challenge. And he shakes hands with the teams, goes back up the tunnel, comes back up the lift, and immediately apologises to the Football Association officials, “Gentlemen, excuse me, I’ve got to get back to Pretoria by helicopter. I’ve got 184 of the world’s top VIPs waiting for me to host them for lunch.” There’s a big marquee on the lawns of the Presidential Guest House and he’s got to fly back there, gets in the car, I take a step back and I think both literally and figuratively breathe a sigh of relief and nothing happens. The car doesn’t move. And we see him trying to open the door, but he’s just got in and it’s a 3.8 tonne armoured BMW. You don’t just flick an elbow when you’re in your 80s and the door opens, you know? I think he was in his late 70s, actually. So the team leader calls the protection officer in the car and says, “Hey, why does he want to get out?” That guy says, “I don’t know, he hasn’t said anything to me.” So the team leader gives the door a good, sharp tug to get this heavy door open.
And he says to him, “Mr. President, why do you want to get out? You’ve just got in.” And the President says nothing to him. He gets out the way, President climbs out of the car and he walks around the bonnet of this armoured BMW and he starts walking to the back of this reception hall to the vehicle ramp where he should be driving out to go to the helicopter. And the only person standing there is an apartheid-era police colonel in his full blue uniform. He’s got his stars and castles on his shoulders. He is got the scrambled eggs on his cap to show that his rank is colonel, and his eyes are getting bigger and bigger and bigger because the President is walking directly towards him and he has got no idea why. And we are just tagging along. There’s maybe 12 or 15 of us, all cops and security guys thinking, “Why is he doing this? Where’s he going?” And the President stopped in front of that colonel, and he put out his hand and he said to him, “Colonel, I just want to tell you that you are now our police too.” He said, “I’m now the President of this country, but I want you to know that from today forward, that’s no more you and us. You are our police too.” And this old warrior, he was right near the end of his career, he had the lines on his face to kind of show that he’d been there and seen it all in a long career. He started to cry, and the tears ran down those lines on his face, and they were dripping onto that wooden floor of the reception hall. And the President just patted him on the shoulder and said, “It’s okay, Colonel, I just needed you to hear that from me today.” And he turned on his heel and he went back to the car and he said, “Let’s go to the helicopter.”
Wow.
And you know, I think if you’d punched me flat on the nose, I would’ve been less surprised than what I heard him say to my colleague. My rank was only one rank lower. I already told you, I was a lieutenant colonel in the police at the time. And I didn’t believe the things he said in 1990, when he was released, when he went to the Grand Parade in Cape Town to make his first speech as a free man and the world’s press were there hanging off every word. And he said many things, but one of them was quoting from the Freedom Charter, “South Africa is for all her people, both Black and white.” And I’m sitting in my office and I’m going, “Yeah, whatever. Of course you’re going to say that, that’s the party line. I don’t expect anything different.” But I didn’t believe it. Four years later, I hear him say this to my colleague and it completely knocks the feet from underneath me. And that was the moment that I began to question all of my conditioning, all of the training that I’d received, everything. He didn’t need to do that. That wasn’t a media moment. There were no media there. It wasn’t a vote-winning moment. He was already the president. But 184 of the world’s most important people can just wait a few minutes because this colonel needs to hear this from me today.
And what did that colonel represent, Dori? He represented the system that pursued Mandela, arrested him, tried him, convicted him, and imprisoned him for life. He’s lucky they didn’t hang him. And on the day that he’s got all the power, he’s now the president and it’s our turn now, he gets out of that car and he walks across there and extends the hand of forgiveness and reconciliation to somebody that represents that system. There was no more profound indication to me that he was serious about this agenda, so I bought into it. I said, “Okay, if that’s your agenda, Mr. President, I’m in.” And I watched him because I had this privileged position from which I could watch him. And as I said, didn’t take me longer than two or three months to realise that that agenda of his was utterly sincere. And I said, “Okay, I’m in for this long haul of this new South Africa.” So of course now we’ve done a fairly decent job of undoing all of that, and I think he’s spinning in his grave when he looks at what’s going on now. But that doesn’t mean we can’t fix it, and it doesn’t mean that the ideal that he espoused is dead and it’s incumbent upon on all of us next year when we go to the polls to fix this mess. And I’m going to stop there now, before I get emotional.
I’m going to jump in here and just say, Rory, that was the most brilliant presentation. Thank you, thank you very, very much. I mean.
You’re welcome.
You’re an amazing raconteur. You had us in fits of laughter, you had us spill tears. I have to say that my encounter, and maybe I even met you that day. It was many years ago. I was swimming. I was in Joburg. I was swimming in my folks’ pool in Joburg and suddenly a mutual friend by the name of Stephen Fox suddenly ran down the garden. He said, “Wendy, get out the pool. Come quickly with me.” So I said, “I need to get dressed.” He said, “No, no, no, just put on what you’ve got.” I put on shorts and a t-shirt and I went with wet hair and wet clothes, I got into his car and off we went. And we walked, we just drove down the road to house and what was going on?
In Sandhurst.
At was a book signing, a Mandela book signing. And Steven said, “Come on, come on. I want you to meet him before everybody arrives.” I said, “Steven, look what I look like.” He said, “No, no, no, it doesn’t matter.”
Yeah.
“Just come.” And I remember walking in and I sort of pulled away because I was embarrassed. I didn’t realise it. And the President saw me and he called me and he said, “Come in, come in.”
Yeah, yeah.
That’s to me, and what an amazing experience it was. He was incredible, incredible human being. And actually during that time, I made a sculpture myself and I really wanted to send it to him. And I made it and I kept it, but I wish I had sent it to him. And I always wonder, I made it especially for him. So I, you know, it was just a wonderful time. And we’ve got so much more to hear.
Did you cry?
Yeah, we’ve got so much more to hear from you. Really, it’s a special time. You know, we grew up during apartheid and carried this terrible burden of apartheid, and we were so lucky to have a wonderful man like Mandela. You know, who was released from prison and who actually helped transition South Africa through a, you know, into a peaceful period. And as you said, what we’ve got now is just we, I’ll stop there. I just want to say amazing.
Yeah.
Exactly, I just want to say.
Let me just, let me interrupt you, Wendy. I need to tell you something.
Yes.
So the house in Houghton that he lived in at the time was in 11th Avenue.
Yeah.
And there was a little Jewish kid in one block up who was about to have his bar mitzvah.
Bar mitzvah.
So yeah, so he tells his grandfather that he wants to invite the President who lives in the same street as him. So the grandfather dutifully walks down the road and hands the invitation to the cops behind the bulletproof glass in the booth at the gate, and says, “Look, you know, my son wanted to deliver this invitation, you know, so I’m here to hand it over,” and handed it over and thought nothing of it. Do you know, the President pitched up at that bar mitzvah?
Yeah.
That’s amazing.
And when they rang the door, when he rang the doorbell and the parents opened the door, they said, “What are you doing here?” He said, “Well, the kid invited me. That’s why I’m here.” That tells you who he was, yeah.
That’s fantastic, well we look forward to.
Yeah, Wendy, that was the most incredible story. And after that, everybody started sending him invitations.
I’m sure, I can imagine.
Yeah, I’m sure. Yeah.
On that theme, on that Jewish theme, do you know that, well, of course you know, but I think it would be interesting for you because it was one thing for you, all you listening, that I didn’t know that on his 80th birthday, which was also his wedding day to Graça Machel, just before the wedding ceremony, with very, very few people as witnesses, he had Rabbi Harris and Mrs. Harris there with very few of his, just members of his very immediate family, do a prayer for him before the wedding. And in fact, it was even before people knew that the wedding was going to take place. And that was quite interesting to read about and significant. And of course, Rory, there are many, many stories. Who could forget the number six jersey on the World Cup? That was the first glimpse of the real Madiba magic, besides the inauguration .
No, that was pure genius because that brought about 98% of the Afrikaners in South Africa on board. If not, I mean, it didn’t turn them into ANC voters, but it got them to a point where they were willing to say, “All right, well, let’s give this, let’s give this man a chance.” Because the, you know, but you know, it wasn’t only Rabbi Harris at that wedding. I was at that wedding.
Yes.
I was one of maybe a handful of people because he called me that morning to say that there’s going to be this ceremony, and he got his media guy to call a press conference in Pretoria and all the journalists raced off there. And then they got married in his home that, the, not that one in 11th Avenue, the one around the corner in 12th or 13th Avenue. But the, he had a, he had the rabbi there. He had a Muslim imam and he had a Hindu priest, but the wedding ceremony was conducted by the bishop of the Methodist Church ‘cause he was a Methodist. So each of those people, you’re quite right. Rabbi Harris said a prayer, as did the imam and the Hindu priest. But the bishop of, the Methodist bishop conducted the wedding ceremony. And there I was amongst this handful of people. You know, I had a, obviously I had a job to do, but it’s, I count it a rare privilege that I was there for that ceremony. And I remember saying to Mama Graça afterwards, I said to her, “Mama, thank you for making our P`resident so happy.” Because they were really in love. They were a wonderful couple.
Yeah, it’s been called the love story of the 20th century. Rory, thank you so, so much.
Oh, has it? You’re welcome.
We’ve run out of time.
Yeah.
There’s so, so many stories. I think that you have imparted so eloquently and from the heart the essence of Madiba. And I think that it’s up to us, all of South Africans to remember what those characteristics are and to emulate and bring that back, to fulfil the vision that he had, so thank you so, so much. Thank you, Wend.
Oh no, thank you. And I just want to say two more things before we jump off. It was at the Chamberlain Court of Guild Hill, of the Guild Hill, of the.
The Guildhall, the Guildhall. That’s what it is. It’s the Guildhall, yeah, yeah.
So that’s where we were. And I just want to say.
Well done.
To all of you who are on, be sure to buy and read “One Step Behind Mandela”. That’s your book, right? We can find it on Amazon, is that correct?
Yeah, you can get it in the Kindle store. It’s out of print because it’s about 23 years old.
Oh, is it?
You can still find the odd.
It’s still worth reading.
You can still find the odd hard copy on Amazon. That’ll be secondhand. Some of them are signed, so that’s quite good. Otherwise, it is available in the Kindle store, yeah.
Okay, well thank you very much.
Thank you for that.
And we would love to have you back. So you’ve had so many inspirational stories. I mean, what an incredible experience you’ve had. And I know that our audience would’ve loved every minute of it. And to you, Dori, I just want to read this quote. I don’t know. And this is from Mandela about Dori. “I don’t know if you are aware of the hope and inspiration you offer and the difference you make to so many lives. Dori, thank you for the great contribution you make to building our nation.” So thank you to you both.
Thank you.
Time.
My privilege.
It’s a precious quote. Thank you so, so much. Thanks, Rory.
Thank you.
Thanks, everybody.