The birthday girl must have been disappointed. Winnie Mandela had organised the party at her Soweto home for one of her young grandchildren. But in the midst of the celebrations, Winnie whipped off the gold and diamond wedding ring Nelson Mandela had slipped on her finger 41 years ago and gave it to a shy teenage white girl in the corner.
Hardly anyone at the party knew who the 13-year-old was. But they recognised her father - Paul Erasmus, the apartheid security policeman whose job it once was to make Winnie's life hell. He shot up her home, blackened her name in the press and did his part to wreck her marriage.
Some of the guests thought Winnie's gesture was a joke, or a stunt. Others saw it as the flamboyance of an unstable woman. But Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, as she calls herself since her divorce from South Africa's president, said the gift to Candice Erasmus was an act of reconciliation.
To casual observers of the South African political scene, it seemed one of the more remarkable rapprochements of modern times. Here was a woman who for years had been one of the most high-profile and potent enemies of the apartheid regime embracing a man notorious for his murderous role in attempting to preserve it. It seemed extraordinary enough that the two might spend time in the same room. That Madikizela-Mandela should present him with a gift as laden with symbolism as the ring given to her by her former husband seemed to betoken a capacity for mercy bordering on the saintly.
In fact, the gesture was merely the most conspicuous manifestation of a relationship that has confounded many of their friends for years. With a clear dividend for both parties, though, it is an alliance that is less difficult to explain than it seems. When Paul Erasmus went public in 1995 and confessed his role in trying to destroy Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, it offered her the chance to blame her failed marriage and conviction for the death of the young township activist, Stompie Seipei, on a government conspiracy. Erasmus willingly accepts the responsibility. In turn, Madikizela-Mandela offered Erasmus a chance to rehabilitate himself for the new South Africa, and shelter after he was thrown off the government's witness protection programme.
Since then the improbable friendship appears to have flourished. Erasmus claims they see each other frequently to work on various projects from help for the disabled to business ventures he declines to discuss. They even teamed up to back a clinic offering a controversial treatment for AIDS and other diseases in which the blood is oxygenated. Oxytherapy, as it's known, is banned in the US and several European countries but Madikizela-Mandela and Erasmus both see it as a miracle cure.
"We talk endlessly about the dirty tricks days," says Erasmus. "I really like to think I've changed her perceptions a few degrees. Over the time I've spent with Winnie I've explained why we did what we did, what made us tick. I showed her police training manuals. She's fascinated about how we lived on the other side of the colour line." Even so, the former secret policeman admits to having been dumfounded when Madikizela-Mandela made her extravagant gifts. "It's an incredible irony that after all that's happened she should do this. It stunned me. I smashed her marriage and did her the most damage. She has forgiven me. She has made my kids part of her household. My son calls her "granny". But this I never expected," he says.
The relationship between Erasmus and Madikizela-Mandela is all the more remarkable when you consider the zeal with which he once set out to destroy her. Erasmus retains a perverse pride in the litany of torture, killings and "dirty tricks" he confesses to. His security police unit launched its campaign against Winnie after the release of Nelson Mandela from prison in 1990. President F.W. de Klerk's government claimed to be dealing with the newly unbanned African National Congress in good faith. But Erasmus says he was told on his training course that the unit had four years until elections to reduce the ANC "to just another political party".
Erasmus was stationed with a security police unit on the Witwatersrand known as "Stratcom". Stratcom, or "strategic communication", was a network directed by the State Security Council headed by de Klerk and designed to destabilise the black liberation movement through propaganda and dirty tricks.
In an operation sanctioned by cabinet ministers through the upper levels of the security police, Erasmus bugged Winnie's home and intercepted her mail to glean information on her alleged infidelity, on the criminal activities of her Mandela United Football Club and on the death of teenage activist Stompie Seipei. This information was then fed as a mixture of fact and fiction to local and foreign media. Erasmus also tried to intimidate Madikizela-Mandela by shooting up her house with shotguns, and harassing friends and relatives.
After he quit the police, Erasmus made public a memo marked "top secret" documenting the international campaign. The memorandum, from Erasmus's unit to Maj Johan Putter at security police headquarters in Pretoria, says that "a veritable mass of material" was forwarded to the South African and international media in early 1991 "with the specific objective of using the Winnie Mandela `saga' to discredit the ANC as a whole".
The document revealed that Stratcom had recruited "an as yet unregistered source in the United Kingdom who has extensive media and political contacts throughout the world". Erasmus identified the source as Dr Harvey Ward, former director-general of the Rhodesian Broadcasting Corporation and media adviser to the Rhodesian prime minister, Ian Smith. Ward, who died in 1995, had moved to Glasgow and joined the Conservative Party.
In May 1991, he leaked new accusations based on reports from the security police in Soweto - which characterised Mandela and her daughters as nymphomaniacs and drug users - to a "wide variety of contacts in the media and political sphere in the UK", according to the memo. "It is of cardinal importance and interest that all the (media) reports indicate that the information is perceived to have been leaked by elements within the ANC and it is clear that a vast amount of suspicion and conflict has resulted within the ranks of the ANC and most importantly within the executive," the memo said. The document claims Stratcom planted stories in British papers such as the In- dependent and the Sunday Times, and the US magazine Vanity Fair under the title "How Bad is Winnie Mandela?" The papers, it seems, were successfully taken in.
But Erasmus's anti-Winnie campaign was mild compared to what went before. The former security policeman admitted to torture and murder. In one case he described the arrest in Namibia, then under South African rule, of a woman called Rosavita. She was allegedly the wife of a SWAPO liberation movement activist.
ERASMUS detained the woman with her young child. When he didn't get the answers he wanted he resorted to a contraption nicknamed Radio Moscow. It was a handcranked electrical generator. "I pointed my rifle at the child and told Johannes to start asking questions. Even he was impressed by this particular bit of savagery, judging by the smile on his face. We got answers, but not the ones we wanted," Erasmus later wrote. "Back at Oshakati, we reported to Col Meyer and then set about acquainting Rosavita with Radio Moscow. Ear lobes and mouth, armpit and toes, nipples and screams."
Erasmus quit the police in 1993, saying he was angry and disillusioned because his family had been "victimised by a corrupt commanding officer". The former security policeman said he was himself the target of a dirty tricks and disinformation campaign after he went public. He gave evidence to a government commission into covert security force activities, and was dispatched to Britain under a witness protection programme. But life in hiding proved difficult.
"It's very hard when your kids get up in the morning and ask, `what name are we using today daddy?'," he says.
Erasmus's marriage collapsed. In 1994 he found himself back in South Africa. All he had was a disability pension. But he found a good friend in Winnie Madikizela-Mandela when he decided to tell all publicly. "When I confessed she was crying, putting her arm around me and thanking me for my courage. It was a very emotional moment," he said.
Winnie regularly paraded Erasmus to speak up for her. He was the only witness to absolve Madikizela-Mandela at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He told the TRC that based on his investigations, Stompie Seipei had been murdered because he was an informer but Madikizela-Mandela knew nothing of it. The commission came to no firm conclusion.
Erasmus counts himself among Winnie's closest friends. So close that his son, Dylan, who suffers from cerebral palsy, is forgiven the worst of transgressions. "She is truly wonderful with my children. The children of a hated security policemen. She has accepted them as Africans. My son who doesn't know better sometimes calls black people `kaffir'. It's a terrible insult. But Winnie understands. We have a laugh," he said.
It's doubtful Madikizela-Mandela views the relationship in quite the same way. Erasmus said Madikizela-Mandela was furious when a guest at the party told the papers about the gesture with the ring, and handed over a picture of her hugging the two Erasmus children which was spread across the front of a Johannesburg Sunday newspaper.
The years since her conviction and divorce have not been the easiest for Madikizela-Mandela. She lost her post as Deputy Minister for Arts and Culture in her former husband's cabinet after repeated clashes with her minister, allegations of abuse of her parliamentary position and a trip to West Africa which Nelson Mandela told her not to make.
Perhaps the most damning judgment came from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which concluded that while heroic during the long bitter years of her husband's imprisonment, she was also a tragic figure who had done immeasurable damage to her own reputation.
Yet her gift for political survival is still flourishing. She remains president of the ANC Women's League despite determined opposition. In the most recent poll of ANC members on the list of candidates for parliament in June's election, Madikizela-Mandela came eighth. It was a demonstration of continuing support for her militancy among sections of the party faithful, particularly township youth.
Times are changing in South Africa. Nelson Mandela is about to retire. Winnie is making clear her support for her old friend and Mandela's anointed successor, Thabo Mbeki, even to the point of publicly justifying some of his more conservative policies. The day may not be too far away when Winnie Madikizela-Mandela decides that having a former security policeman as a friend is not politically wise.
Paul Erasmus is still deciding what to do with Nelson and Winnie Mandela's wedding ring. He might give it to a museum, if his daughter approves. Or he might hold it in trust for the day Candice gets married.
But whatever happens to the ring he doesn't think it will help rebuild relations with his wife and family. They were wrecked not so much by what he did to Winnie Madikizela-Mandela as a security policeman but for daring to apologise for it afterwards.
"This thing with Winnie has really divided my family and friends. It is very hard to make them understand she is not a monster. My ancestors are turning in their graves."