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.
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