67 minutes with Mandela’s carpenter
SOPHIATOWN – Nelson Mandela's carpenter shares moments he had with the former president.
Colin Fitzgerald (69) tells all about being former late president Nelson Mandela’s carpenter.
Fitzgerald invited the Northcliff Melville Times into his home and shared his experience working for Mandela for 16 years.
Fitzgerald who was hired to work at Mandela’s house in Houghton, said that he started working there months before Mandela and his wife Graça Machel lived at the house. He said he moved to the Mandela house in 1997 with his late wife Clare Fitzgerald who was a receptionist at the time but quit to assist him with designs. They were known as the carpenter and his apprentice.
He said that he had worked in the house for a while when his bodyguard Rory Steyn came to him and told him “He’s here.” Fitzgerald said laughing, that he did not have to ask who “he” is. “I had been waiting to see him for about a month. He was just never at the house,” he said.
Mandela came to his study with Graca while Fitzgerald was working. He said was impressed by the tall and slim man who walked in with his wife on his arm.
“The first thing he said to me was ‘hello, how are you?’,” he said. “And the first thing I said to him was, ‘It’s a privilege to meet you Mr president’.”
Mandela then asked Fitzgerald to show him around his house as he had not moved in yet.
Three months after working for Mandela, Fitzgerald was approached by the president himself to work for him. “How would you like to work for an old man?” Fitzgerald said that was how Mandela asked him to continue to work for him.
He mentioned that Mandela had a fantastic sense of humour and a good heart.
“To this day, I can say he is the nicest man I have ever met,” he added.
He said that one thing that he remembers about him is that he was very charming with the women. “He just had an aura about him and women went weak at the knees for him,” he said.
He said that Mandela used his presidential salary to start the Mandela foundation. “Being around him inspired me, improved my life, made me a nicer person through his concepts and philosophies.” Fitzgerald said the he was raised in orphan homes and that he saw a father figure in Mandela.
Fitzgerald said that he and Mandela had a lot of intimate conversations and shared a very close relationship. “He once asked me for advice on a house to purchase in Cape Town and took my advice fully.”
Fitzgerald said that one of the greatest moments with Mandela was when he asked him to build his private safe. “Mandela was not a normal person, he was a level up,” he said.
He remembers the last time he saw Mandela alive, he said that he was already very sick at the time. He said that Clare was in a wheelchair but when she saw him she stood up and sat on the armrest of the chair that Mandela was sitting in.”It was sad, but beautiful seeing two old people trying to help one another,” he said.
He said that when Mandela died, he received calls and emails of condolences. “I just saw it as him being free from his pain,” he said.
Fitzgerald said that Mandela gave people the freedom to think and direct their lives in anyway that they want to. “South Africans should have faith in their country and and in themselves and spread the Madiba magic anyway they know how,” he concluded.
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