One degree of separation from Madiba

We had come to Paarl and were greeted warmly by Lu at Lu's Guesthouse, a place just five minutes' drive away from Boland Park, the venue for the second ODI between Bangladesh and South Africa on Wednesday. Lu, a welcoming and jovial woman of around 60 years of age, keeps a nicely furnished house that was full of pictures of South Africa's great revolutionary leader Nelson Mandela.

Later that evening, we needed to buy some groceries and were looking for an Uber, but Lu interjected and said that her husband will drive us to a nearby mall and bring us back. During the drive with Lu's husband, Nathan Baldwin, we realised that we were being driven to and from a mall by someone who not only worked in the jail, Pollsmoor, that Mandela had been moved to in 1982, but also stayed in Victor Verster, the house Mandela was held under house arrest in from the late 1988 to his release after 27 years of incarceration on February 11, 1990. It was a house the great man liked so much that he built an exact replica in Transkei. Not only that, while he was president Mandela visited the Baldwins' in 1999 to show his wife where he stayed before he was freed.

What's more, Lu Baldwin herself worked at Pollsmoor as the warden of the juvenile section.

Having received the information that we were in the presence of people who were in the presence of Mandela, and had seen part of the legendary story unfold, we were a captive audience.

"Madiba was moved to Pollsmoor in 1982 and I joined in 1988," Nathan, who was the second-in-command at Verster during Mandela's stay and the head of the facility when the president visited, said. "Those were still the days of apartheid, and black workers were not allowed to talk to Mandela. He was held in the maximum security section of the prison, but I managed to sneak him some newspapers on a few occasions.

"Back then they knew which way the political wind was blowing, so they took Mandela out in secret on drives around Cape Town to have discussions with him."

Lu offered an insight into just why Verster was so precious to Mandela. "If you had gone to Robben Island, you would have seen the condition he lived in. His cell was smaller than the bathrooms you have here. Verster was a much better place and we lived there; it was nicer than this."

Nathan told the story of when Mandela visited with his second wife Graca Machel and had tea under a tree in the backyard at Verster. "Mandela told the story of the time he saw a snake here. Graca asked whether or not he killed it and Madiba replied, 'Why should I kill it? It didn't harm me'. That is why he was special, even after those 27 years, there was no bitterness."