Review: Vivien Horler

Quiet Time with the President – A doctor’s story about learning to listen, by Peter Friedland with Jill Margo (Jonathan Ball Publishers)

With so much written about Nelson Mandela in books and the media, it can be hard to find something new.

But there are great new anecdotes – certainly new to me – about the former statesman in this memoir, written by his ENT specialist Peter Friedland, who cared for Madiba’s ears and hearing aids for a number of years, and who often chatted to him over a cup of tea after the ear work was done.

One reveals Madiba’s attitude to Robert Mugabe. Madiba was visiting Zambia in July 2001 when he received a request to meet Mugabe. It was agreed they would get together in the middle of the bridge across the Zambezi.

Madiba arrived at the appointed time, but there was no Mugabe. Madiba waited, and waited – for about 90 minutes – until Mugabe finally showed up.

When Mugabe held out his hand to shake, Madiba unstrapped his wristwatch and handed it to Mugabe, saying: “President Mugabe, here is a gift, because either you don’t have one of these or yours doesn’t function.”

Friedland recounts Madiba then said to him: “And with that, doctor, I turned around and I’ve never spoken to or seen him again.”

Friedman grew up in Highlands North, one of four children including his identical brother Richard. Their father developed a degenerative neurological condition and was unable to work, so their mother was the breadwinner. It was not easy.

After school the brothers were accepted to study veterinary science at Onderstepoort, but in his fourth year Friedland elected to switch to medicine at Wits, while Richard remained at Onderstepoort, occasionally interning at a veterinary practice.

This led to some comical moments. In one case an irate patient at a private medical clinic threatened to report Friedland to the SA Medical Council for impersonating a doctor as she swore he had recently treated her cat.

Friedland’s first encounter with Mandela came in 1991, when he was a medic doing his compulsory military service. He was tasked with standing behind a curtain behind Mandela on a stage where he was to make a speech, so he would be there to offer immediate medical attention should someone take a potshot at the president-elect.

Friedland’s concern was that if someone did try to shoot Mandela, the bullet would have probably hit him too.

From this time on Friedland was fascinated by Mandela, who made no secret of the fact he was hard of hearing. He had worn hearing aids from the time of his release from prison.

Watching him on TV, Friedland realised that while Mandela could manage a one-on-one interview in the controlled space of a TV studio, he appeared to battle more in the hubbub of a noisy press conference.

There were suggestions that he was evading direct questions, but Friedland thought it was more likely he was answering the questions he thought he had heard.

So when Friedland was asked by Mandela’s personal physician (no, not Dr Iqbal Surve), Professor Mike Plitt, to take care of Mandela’s ears, he jumped at the chance.

He writes his heart was beating with joy as he drove to Mandela’s Houghton home for the first time. There Mandela explained that even with his hearing aids he was unable to hear.

Friedland discovered Mandela’s ears were clogged with wax. Not only that, his hearing aids were “museum pieces”, and to cap it all both batteries were flat. No wonder he couldn’t hear.

Friedland writes kindly: “Perhaps everyone was distracted by his busy schedule, and the loss of this important function had been relegated to a less than urgent issue.”

Over the years that followed, the two men had many chats, and Friedland received insights into Mandela’s character. He writes of how Mandela always remained loyal to people like Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and Cuba’s Fidel Castro for their support of the Struggle, pointing out that at the time Western democracies were propping up the SA regime.

“When these democracies finally switched sides and began supporting change in SA, they expected the new ANC government would automatically pivot, fall in behind them…”

By this time Friedland was a successful ENT surgeon with a prospering private practice, but he was becoming increasingly concerned about the state of crime in SA. Not only did he treat patients who had been shot in the neck, damaging their ability to breathe independently and to speak, he also had three friends shot dead over the course of 15 years.

Married and the father of five children, he felt it was his job to move them to safety. He landed a job in Perth, and nervously went to ask Madiba’s blessing, intensely aware that while Mandela had put the Struggle ahead of his family, he was choosing family over a country that desperately needed his skills.

Mandela responded by saying when he had first visited Australia after being released from prison, largely unaware of Australia’s history, he had been excoriated by the Indigenous people’s leaders for not having first made contact with them.

He added to Friedland: “We are all part of humanity. If you go anywhere in the world and you contribute to the underprivileged, it doesn’t matter if it is in Africa or Australia or for that matter anywhere else. If you do that you have my permission.”

Which reduced Friedland to tears.

Friedland is now a leading ear, nost and throat surgeon in Western Australia, who today wears hearing aids himself, and while he has been lost to us, his “internal landscape will always be South African”.

There is another anecdote in this book I found delightful, actually related by the great British interviewer Michael Parkinson before an interview with Madiba.

Madiba told him he was hard of hearing, and Parkinson responded he hoped Mandela would be able to hear his questions.

He replied: “I will be able to hear the ones that I would like to answer.”