A Prison Guard Becomes Best Friends with His Inmate

What if your quietest acts of love hold more power to change the world than you realize? This story invites you to see love as your greatest superpower.

Nelson Mandela with his jailer Christo Brand, who grew to become his friend. Photo provided by The Leonard Lopate Show, WNYC.

There was no hint of celebrity in the guy sitting across the hotel lobby from us…no entourage…no media swarm to swat away. Not even the hotel staff seemed to recognize (or cared to recognize) a man so intimately connected to South Africa’s founding father. He sat alone on a couch, cradling his creamed coffee, as if warming his hands…like a man accustomed to shift work on a cold winter’s morning.  

Cape Town was the birthplace of the most brutal practices of apartheid in all of South Africa.  Just off its shores, like America’s Alcatraz, Robben Island served as the most severe security prison and penal colony in the land. It was there that Nelson Mandela and his fellow anti-apartheid colleagues were to spend their life sentences in isolation from one another, their families, and the world. When Lisa and I knew that we would be joining my daughter, Lizzie, at the end of her coursework in Cape Town, we asked our travel agent to book us on a tour of that island-prison turned museum. We were informed that, “unfortunately,” during our stay, "it would be closed for repairs.” “But,” our travel agent informed us, “I might be able to arrange an interview with the man who served as Mandela’s prison guard for eighteen years. They ended up being close friends." She asked, "Would you be interested in that?” We were more than interested.  

A Jailer Turned Friend

Through a thick Afrikaner brogue, Christo Brand told us the story of growing up on a farm in rural South Africa. His family was white Afrikaner, but living in the country placed him in contact with the children of African tribesmen. They became his playmates. Those early friendships gave young Christo a fluency in several languages, including Mandela’s tribal language, “Xhosa.” Nobody told him so, but Brand believes that this is what ultimately led to his assignment to guard South Africa’s most notorious “terrorist/saboteur.” Not only could he give orders in Mandela’s native tongue, he could overhear conspiratorial conversations between the inmates. Little did his administrators know that, in addition to giving him fluency in tribal languages, Brand’s rural upbringing also immunized him from the brutal racism that infected most of Afrikaner society. 

How a Jailer Turned 

The signature event that transformed a jailer into a companion took place on a visitation day early in Brand’s career on the island. Nelson’s wife, Winnie, arrived on the prison ferry dressed in an elaborate wrap. It was meant to conceal a watermelon-sized bump against her belly. It didn’t take long for a guard to unwrap a contraband baby grandson. Babies and children were strictly forbidden. When Mandela learned of the presence of his grandbaby so close by, he began begging his young jailer to bend the rules for him. Through some clever chicanery that not even Winnie could learn of, Brand was able to sneak the baby in for a two-minute visit. The proud, dignified leader of the ANC wept openly as he held the only baby he had touched in nearly twenty years. Disobedience like that could have cost the young jailer his job, as well as his freedom. In that exchange of warm humanity, a friendship was born.

A Subtle Ingredient in the Formation of a Transformational Leader

What followed were stories that revealed a young guard’s deep compassion and respect for his prisoners. Purloined extra blankets would somehow arrive for inmates on extra cold nights. Like Sargent Schultz, in the prison camp sitcom, Hogan’s Heroes, on many, many occasions, Brand strategically “[saw] nothing!” …especially when there was obvious evidence of Mandela’s efforts to sneak forbidden reading and English lessons to other prisoners on the island.

Decades into his sentence, internal and international pressure had succeeded in loosening the austerity of the ANC leader’s imprisonment. On a Christmas Eve’s day, Brand’s famous inmate came with a proposal. “We prisoners would like to share the fruitcake we purchased with our saved prison allowances. We would like you to join us for a Christmas morning breakfast of fruitcake and coffee.” The invitation was accepted. The table was laid as elegantly as the prisoners could manage. Unfortunately, nothing could dress up a fruitcake made without rum. Brand laughed as he recalled the episode. “You call that fruitcake?” He joked. “I will get us a proper fruitcake.” That week, Christo’s wife began her clandestine career as a prison baker. She would smuggle baked goods for the prisoners in her husband’s lunch pail.

A two-hour interview couldn’t contain all the stories of a lifelong friendship. For more of these stories, read Christo Brand’s biographical/autobiographical book, Doing Life With Mandela: My Prisoner, My Friend. It provides a unique window into the soul of arguably the most inspiring leader of our time. Unintentionally, it also reveals the fundamental decency of its author as well. I’d argue that it was that decency that helped create a transformational leader. 

Lisa and I with Christo Brand, Nelson Mandela’s prison guard and friend

Changing History

I’ve always thought of Nelson Mandela the same way I’ve thought of Mother Theresa, or Mahatma Gandhi. Job number one, for him, after thirty years of unjust imprisonment, wasn’t retribution and further division of his troubled land. Instead, truth and reconciliation were his lodestars. How do you do that? What ingredients come together to cook up this kind of a soul?  

After years of resilience studies, it seems to me that transcendent leadership requires…well…Transcendence. The delivery system for Transcendence is most often subtle and doesn’t announce itself with a trumpet blast, or a media blast for that matter. It usually arrives as quietly and inconspicuously as the whisper of a gentle breeze that subtly, over time, changes things.  

Which brings me to my question. “How would Nelson Mandela’s leadership trajectory have been altered without the consistent, gentle breeze of Christo’s compassion and respect?” For example, rather than sneaking a baby grandson into Nelson’s arms, what if he refused to stick his neck out and cruelly held the line on company policy? What if, instead, he took the opportunity to rub salt into the “terrorist’s” loneliness? What if he turned a deaf ear night after night to his prisoners’ shivering insomnia? Instead, a white Afrikaner consistently broke through to give an African man…care. Suffering alone does not create a Nelson Mandela. Suffering plus Love creates this kind of man, and this kind of leadership.      

I’m just going to flat-out say it. During my interview, I came to believe that Christo Brand’s instinct was to love. I believe that his ongoing simple choices to love each and every day may well have changed the course of history for South Africa.

The Challenge of Our Time

Our own moment in history is fraught with our own brand of division and hatred. The main takeaway from my interview with Christo? Never underestimate the power of Love to change things. That is your fundamental superpower to change things like no one else can. 

Dialogue and Discussion Questions: Longtime SMC readers know that “the Dialogue” section of this article is set aside for a good conversation over a cup of coffee—with a friend, with a group, or just with yourself! As always, feel free to share your reaction or reflection in the “Comments” section below.

• Think of a time of your greatest suffering or challenge, no matter how large or how small. Who gave you real compassion and real love during that time? How did they do that? What difference did it make?

  
  

• When have you provided that kind of caring compassion and tangible love for someone during their suffering?

  
  

• There is a theme woven through the world’s great literature that Joseph Campbell named, “The Hero's Journey.” It usually involves some kind of descent into a dire set of circumstances. During the darkest part of the journey, the main character discovers not only their calling but the internal resources to answer that call. As pointed out in this article, there are normally characters in such stories that provide necessary assistance to the protagonist, like Christo Brand provided to Nelson Mandela. Does this literary form fit any section of your own formation? It is not likely to fit perfectly, but is there some section of your life that approximates this kind of literary form?

  
  

• Have you been feeling a tug lately to respond to a need in your community, or in the world? Would you be willing to discuss this tug with a trusted friend or mentor to see if it may be a calling for you?

Please share with the SMC community your thoughts and/or reflections in the comments below.