Desmond Tutu once told me he believed prison was the making of Nelson Mandela. "I often surprise people when I say this," he said. "Suffering can lead to bitterness. But suffering is also the infallible test of the openness of a leader, of their selflessness." When Mandela had gone to jail, he had been "one of the most angry," said Tutu. "The suffering of those 27 years helped to purify him and grow the magnanimity that would become his hallmark." Jail helped Mandela learn how to make enemies into friends, said Tutu. It also gave him an unassailable credibility. "When you speak of forgiveness, 27 years in prison sets you up very nicely," he said. As free South Africa remembered its founding father Friday after his death at 95 the night before, many of the most eloquent commemorations also seemed to have a connection to Mandela's time in jail. "Mandela was my prisoner, my friend, my president and my father," said Christo Brand. Brand was 18-year-old fresh from the farmlands of the Afrikaner hinterland when, in 1978, he was sent to Robben Island as a prison warden. He had been warned he would be guarding the most dangerous of terrorists. To his surprise, Prisoner 46664, then aged 60, asked him about his family, his upbringing, his fears for the future. "There was no color barrier between us," said Brand, now 53 and a guide showing tourists around the cells where he was once a jailer. "Like me, Mandela came from a farm. He was a human being. We understood that we shared the same sky and the same air." Brand's bond with his prisoner was against all the rules. Still, as the apartheid authorities began to soften their stance and explore the possibility of negotiations with Mandela in the late 1980s, the friendship was tolerated. When Mandela was moved to Pollsmoor prison on the mainland in Cape Town's southern suburbs in 1982, Brand moved with him. Brand transferred with Mandela again in 1988 when the ANC leader was moved to
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