" But what did Nelson Mandela say to the widow Verwoerd (note: the architect of apartheid), when he visited her, in 1995? In the scramble for alterity that followed the demise of apartheid, forty unreconciled Afrikaner families,led by Verwoerd's son-in-law,retreated to Orania, an enclave established in the northern Cape.....In Orania,people led pure white lives,free even of black servants.
We know when Mandela visited tea, coffee, and Afrikaner koeksister pastries were served, presumably by white hands. Then Mandela was left alone with the widow. Almost certainly, they spoke in Afrikaans...What passed between them? Mandela reported nothing. Betsie Verwoerd has never spoken of it...
The meeting in Orania must remain the stuff for fiction.
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