Zapiro, Cartoonist, said, "When I started drawing Madiba I really battled with his face and then something happened, sometime in 94 it clicked in and I got his face and he started wearing these shirts and this parallel persona started appearing in the cartoons, based on him but very much based on him but very genial, the smile, the smile, the charisma and the warmth – and the cheekbones structure and everything and he would often appear in a quite benign sort of way in the cartoons."

Zapiro’s use of satire to both criticize AND applaud events in South Africa is unusual for a cartoonist.

“I thought I would celebrate all these things that had happened, the coming of freedom, and the great hill and the many more hills but the first one here is reconstruction.”Zapiro said.

Zapiro said,“Celebratory cartoons are, by their nature, more difficult to do than critical cartoons. You want to see a cartoon that has edge. But I think with Madiba – it was a very interesting thing – through his presidency I was sometimes able to show him kind of dealing with things where he was called in to handle crises because he was such a good conciliator and someone who had that moral sway over many, many people.”

Zapiro said,“I think of many people from the white community and how they changed towards him. There were many of them who rationalized and kind of wiped out that they had said “hang him”. There are so many people in the white community. I remember it. I remember it really well. I remember in the 70’s and 80’s people saying “hang him”.

Mandela’s conciliatory gestures as president may have won the confidence of the white minority and the outside world - but they also exposed him to criticism.

Zapiro said,“There are people who feel that Madiba was too easy on the regime and that he was negotiating where perhaps they would have been more militant so there were people on that side of the equation and there were people who held it against him that he went behind, I mean he was so much part of the collective and yet he – hell he must have been put through so much indignity by that bastard PW Botha, I just heard the other day from an insider who told me that PW Botha would not allow him in through the front door – even when he was secretly coming for talks - he couldn’t come in through the front door of Groote Schuur, his residence, he had to go in through the back door.”

“One thing that stands out with Madiba, when you compare him to other leaders, both here and in other countries, is that he actually had the ability to understand and support criticism and satire”

“I got a call from him out of the blue and the phone call took me completely by surprise and he played around with me as he tended to do with people (I found out afterwards) and I told him that the thing that most impresses me - apart from the fact that you just picked up the phone and called me yourself, which is incredible – but I said the cartoons since I met you – I had met him in 1994 – you would have seen them become more critical of the ANC and of government – and he said “Ah but that is your job”. And that, to answer your question, is the difference between Madiba and all the rest”.

Leadership qualities like those may be difficult to find, but Mandela himself believes they can be learnt.

Around the mountain from where Zapiro has his studio, is the University of Cape Town.

Gift Pule, Mandela Rhodes Scholar, said,“My name is Gift Pule, I’m studying medical honours at Univerity of Cape Town Medical School in human genetics. I’m from a small town in the northwest, Mafikeng. And I’m a Mandela Rhodes scholar”