Not long after the world witnessed the tumultuous scenes of Nelson Mandela's release from Victor Verster prison in the Cape, I sat on a small leatherette couch in Soweto. The couch was in the front room of Nelson Mandela's little council house. I was sitting beside the great man. There was no tumult and no cheering. Our conversation was interrupted only by the birdsong of the southern hemisphere's summer.
I remember feeling it difficult to believe I was there. The couch I sat on was still warm from the presence of the British ambassador, Sir Robin Renwick. He had been there to put forward, unsuccessfully one should add, the views of his principal, Margaret Thatcher, that all sanctions against the apartheid regime should be instantly dropped.
It was a coup for a newspaper from a small country to have its representative among the first to speak to the man on whom the eyes of the entire world were focused. At the gates of the house, Zwelakhe Sisulu turned the BBC away as I arrived, looked up his notebook and said: "Irish Times. You are on the list. Come in."
The list was composed of Life magazine, Die Zeit from Germany, Dagens Nyheter of Sweden and The Irish Times. The method of selection was inexplicable but here I was ahead of the big boys from Fleet Street and prestigious correspondents from the US.
Our influential Johannesburg correspondent Patrick Laurence, unselfish as usual, had played his part in getting me there. So too did Sven Oste, the doyen of foreign correspondents from Sweden, which had made massive contributions to the ANC. My own contribution was a stubborn streak inherited from my Ulster forebears. I gave Ronnie Mamoepa, the ANC press secretary, such a hard time I am convinced he allowed the interview simply to get rid of me.
There might have been a hint of favouritism, it appears to me in hindsight, from Walter Sisulu, second only to Mr Mandela in the ANC's hall of fame. He had earlier that week singled me out to tell me of his admiration for Ireland in general and Eamon de Valera in particular.
But there I was face to face with Nelson Mandela, my stomach audibly rumbling from the 10-hour wait in his garden with nothing to eat as chieftains and princes of the tribes of Africa and Europe filed in to pay tribute. The interview centred on the issues of the moment, particularly sanctions, and Ireland's role in ensuring their continuance while holding the European Community's presidency.
I can still remember the aura of dignity that emanated from him. People felt this even over the airwaves. My late friend and colleague, the author and broadcaster Breandan O hEithir put it this way: "He was so different. So dignified. If it had been one of ours let out after 27 years in jail the first word on his lips would have been `vingeance'."
Mr Mandela, as even his enemies called him, spoke instead of nation-building. He talked of forgiveness and of making South Africa a great country. He spoke too of his pragmatic relationship with his jailers; his street-wise convictions that there was no point in applying to the Justice Ministry for an extra blanket in winter when a buttering-up of his warder, Warrant Officer Gregory, would be far more effective.
I saw Nelson Mandela again several times but never in such an intimate setting. I was there in the gardens of Groote Schuur, the Cape Town mansion built by Cecil Rhodes, when he stunned his audience by speaking in Afrikaans, regarded up to then by black South Africans as "the language of the oppressor".
I was present, too, in a small group for an occasion in Mmbatho in 1994 when a great political triumph coincided with a poignant personal moment. The dictatorship of Lucas Mangope, the pseudo-president of the pseudo-state of Boputhatswana, had come to an abrupt and violent end. Tens of thousands lined the streets to welcome Mr Mandela but a quieter, sadder, drama was played out too. At a photocall in the garden of the South African "embassy", Nelson Mandela posed with the former "ambassador" who was now the territory's administrator.
Suddenly and unexpectedly they were joined by Winnie Mandela who made a stunningly flamboyant entrance to steal the limelight as usual. Not a word, not even a glance, was exchanged between husband and estranged wife. The future president just looked at his shoes.
Not long after this, I witnessed the surge of acclamation in Pretoria when jet-fighters of the South African air force roared across the sky at government buildings in Pretoria for the first time as the protectors of all the country's citizens rather than as oppressors of the majority.
Nelson Mandela had, at last, finished his long journey from prisoner to president.