Lunch With Nelson

When visitors arrive for an approved visit with Mandela, they drive through the prison farm's main gate and across its rustic grounds until they reach a fenced-in compound. After registering at a guard station, leaving cameras behind, guests are ushered into the parlor of a three-bedroom stucco cottage where Mandela has been incarcerated since recovering from tuberculosis in 1988.

"Pitch yourselves," says a white man calling himself Mr. Swart, who serves as half warder, half butler. "Mr. Mandela will not be long." Swart was once a guard on Robben Island, where Mandela was imprisoned under harsh conditions for nearly two decades.

Three attorneys visited at a specified time last month. "We had tried to arrange our own date, but we were told that he was a busy man," says Keith Kunene, head of the Black Lawyers' Association. Mandela gave them a tour that included a room where he gets a weekly medical exam, a modest gym and a small outdoor swimming pool. He is permitted a TV and radio but not a shortwave receiver, which would pick up foreign broadcasts. Before talking politics, he hinted that the parlor might be bugged and asked Swart to bring some Cokes. Later Swart served lunch. Mandela cleared the table.

When Mandela speaks with visitors, Swart sits in the next room, positioned so that he sees Mandela but the guests cannot see Swart. Guests must leave before 4 p.m., when Swart goes off duty. From then until 7 the next morning, South Africa's most famous prisoner is alone.