ABOVE: Sean Mallen sits down with Avanthi Singh, who remembers Mandela as “Uncle Nelson.”
“Uncle Nelson” is how Avanthi Singh knew Nelson Mandela.
Mandela was friends with her father J.N. Singh who studied law with the South African icon.
The two spent time in jail together while in university after refusing to give up their seats on a bus.
“They were on the bus together and they were told to go to the back of the bus. As they were law students, they said ‘no, no we’re not going to do that, that’s not what we’re going to do,’” she said.
“Uncle Nelson was part of the group and he was a young man who was so apolitical at that point but suddenly met a group of people who were so impassioned with equality that he joined them and before you know it, he was arrested with the group.”
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And while people around the world remember Mandela as a champion of human rights being memorialized by world leaders including Prime Minister Stephen Harper and U.S. President Barack Obama, Singh recalled several times she chatted with him as though he were a member of her family.
WATCH: The entire interview with Avanthi Singh.
When she was 5 years old and living in South Africa, she said, she remembers frequent “secret” meetings between her father, Mandela and other activists. They would arrive at her home at all times of the day and night but were frequently forced elsewhere out of fears her home was bugged.
“I would see uncle Nelson coming over, especially to my grandmother’s house, and he was just uncle Nelson who would visit. I didn’t know clearly what they were trying to do other than they were having meetings.”
Mandela died Thursday at the age of 95. He agitated against South Africa’s policy of apartheid which segregated blacks from whites. After being arrested, he served 27 years in an eight-by-seven-foot cell in a prison on Robben Island before being released in 1982.
“I remember sitting watching TV, with tears running down, thinking you know, this is what they all gave up so much for, with passion, this is what they wanted to see,” she said.
But as Mandela grew into an international icon, she said, every time they met, his “humility” shone through.
“He was just interested in knowing about us. It was not about him,” she said.
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She saw him again a few months before he was elected the first black president of South Africa. She was living in Canada but had gone back to South Africa to visit her father who was recovering from back surgery.
It was late at night and she had gone with her sister to a relative’s. They were drinking wine when their mother called and told them they had to come back. “Uncle Nelson was coming over,” her mother told her.
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Mandela served as president of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. In 1996, he signed the new constitution of South Africa which enshrined equality and freedom from discrimination in its bill of rights.
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He stepped away from the South African presidency in 1999 and went on to work in the fight against HIV/AIDS. He retired from public life in 2004.
But in 2004, when Avanthi and her mother were in South Africa for her cousin’s daughter’s wedding, Mandela reached out and invited them to Johannesburg.
“Please tell her to come; I don’t know when we will see each other again,” he said in the message, Singh told Global News.
“He saw mom and I,” she said. “They spoke to each other for almost over an hour, an hour and ten minutes, and the whole time my mom talked to him like an old friend,” she said.
– With files from Sean Mallen
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