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Mandela, as someone once observed, is a combination of African nobility and British aristocracy. He has the punctilious manners of a Victorian gentleman. (His aides sometimes chastise him for rising from his chair to greet everyone who approaches him.) His patrician nature is on display most prominently in his dealings with President F.W. de Klerk, whom he has often treated as a kind of bumbling equerry. At the end of the first day of negotiations for a new constitution in 1991, Mandela gave De Klerk a withering dressing down: "Even the head of an illegitimate, discredited minority regime, as his is, has certain moral standards to uphold." His wrath is cold, not hot; he does not explode at his foes, he freezes them out.
At the same time, Mandela possesses a common touch that no amount of political coaching can inculcate. When Mandela speaks at banquets, he makes a point of going into the kitchen and shaking hands with every dishwasher and busboy. On countless occasions, he will stop in the middle of a street or hallway to talk with a little boy; his questioning has the rhythm of a catechism. "How old are you?" he will say. "Four," the boy might whisper. "Ah, you're a big man, man!" he will reply with a smile. "And what did you have for breakfast today?"
One paradox of leadership is that voters are partial to candidates who seem both bigger than they are and yet are also one of them. When Mandela lived underground as an outlaw in the early 1960s and was dubbed the Black Pimpernel by the South African press for his ability to elude the police, his colleagues marveled at how he blended in with the people. He usually disguised himself as a chauffeur; he would don a long dustcoat, hunch his shoulders and, suddenly, this tall, singularly regal figure was transformed into one of the huddled masses moving along the streets of Johannesburg. Even today, at rallies or meetings, the poorest supporter of the A.N.C. feels he has the right to greet and address his leader.
Though Mandela may be a natural mass leader, he does not exhibit all the attributes associated with such charismatic figures. Yes, Mandela may plunge into ecstatic crowds at rallies, pump hands, give the clenched-fist A.N.C. salute and dance a few steps of the toyi-toyi. But when he begins to speak, the cheers usually turn into a good-natured but puzzled silence. Not for Mandela the soaring metaphors of Martin Luther King or the rhyming aphorisms of Jesse Jackson; he addresses his audiences in the sober, didactic style of an organic-chemistry professor. "I try not to be a rabble rouser," he says. "The people want things explained to them clearly and rationally. They recognize when someone is speaking to them seriously. They want to see how you handle difficult situations, whether or not you stay calm."
Mandela rarely practices the modern politician's art of telling his listeners what he thinks they want to hear. To black audiences, he declares that democracy and majority rule will not change the material circumstances of their lives overnight. At the same time, he informs white audiences that they must take responsibility for the past and they will have to reconcile themselves to a future of majority rule. He is the paterfamilias of his nation (his staff members call him "Tata," which means father), but he is a stern parent, not a cuddly one.