Nthabiseng Manyako exhales a long, low breath of air. Walking away from Nelson Mandela's coffin, she gently wipes her eyes, and smiles with sincerity at this journalist. It is the kind of smile you would understand only if you knew about her father.
Manyako met her father in 2005, the struggle having taken him away from her for 18 years. As the daughter of a regional ANC leader, she is a daughter of the struggle, but also a daughter of demo-cracy, and her identity straddles both.
On Wednesday, the 28-year-old arrived at the Pretoria West showgrounds at sunrise, to take a bus to the site of Nelson Mandela's inauguration as South African president.
Manyako was born into a South Africa recently declared an emergency state by then-president PW Botha, in 1984. Her father, Absalom Ditshoke, was an ANC member, and his work was becoming increasingly dangerous. Her mother left him to protect her children from the apartheid regime.
It would be 18 years before Manyako saw her father again.
Manyako admits that, like her mother, she does not share her father's passion for politics. But, where her mother saw his politics as a form of rebellion, Manyako sees it as a justified means to an end. That it was probably the cause of her fatherless childhood is of little importance now, as the man who led her father's movement lies in state nearby.
'I'm resentful sometimes'
"I'm resentful sometimes, but it's difficult to be angry with my father. I understand why we couldn't be together. He did what needed to be done," she says.
While her mother may not have cared much for party-specific politics, the profundity of Mandela's inauguration in 1994 was not lost on her. She took her children to the Union Buildings, and Manyako remembers it fondly.
Although she met her father in 2005, he was a member of the mayoral council in the Tshwane local municipality. She was instantly in awe of the man she had built up in her head all those years – and he was taller than she expected.
"He had this aura about him. He looked powerful. I thought ‘he must know everything'," she says with a chuckle.
He didn't know "everything", it turned out, but that was precisely the quality that she respects most about him.
"The first thing I learnt about him was that his personal assistant was white. I was shocked. I grew up believing it was us blacks who were supposed to serve other races. Here was my father, as tall and assuming as he was, and a white woman brought him his tea!"
This woman, Yvonne, became Ditshoke's teacher. "He would ask her about everything related to the municipality. You see, my father knew that reconciliation was also about learning from each other."
Now, at the Union Buildings, Nthabiseng walks up the stairs to the casket, two steps at a time. "Faster, sister," a police officer says, ushering the queue along.
"I'm nervous. I'm very nervous. You know, I actually came to the Union Buildings four times this week. I don't really know why I came here, but since he died, I felt like I needed to go somewhere, to be in his presence. I'm hoping that seeing him today will give closure," she says.
The site of the casket is in view, and Mandela lies only a few steps away. The next breath she takes is deep and audible.
Her fists clenched behind her back, she glances over at Mandela apprehensively. He looks tired, the smile perpetually gone from his mouth. Nthabiseng keeps walking. It is only a moment, but she has seen all that she came to see.
She reaches for her friend's hand. Their heads touch as they walk down the stairs of the Union Buildings: free.