Ear doctor’s life changed by Madiba’s listening power

For leading ear, nose, and throat surgeon Professor Peter Friedland, telling his patient, former President Nelson Mandela, that he was planning to emigrate was a formidable prospect. This and other startling conversations with Mandela had a profound impact on his life, and Friedland’s book, Quiet Time with the President, reveals the inextricable connection between listening and healing.

Co-written by his sister, Jill Margo, Friedland, who treated Mandela for hearing difficulties in his later years, adds his stories to the former president’s legacy. “There’s one fundamental thing that Madiba, as I referred to him, taught me, something I’m trying to impart in my book,” says Friedland. “You need to recognise that there’s a spark of humanity in every single individual born in this world, irrespective of their colour, race, religion, or the country they live in.”

Friedland acknowledges the wealth of material already written about Mandela’s life. “Yet very little has been written about the latter part of his life – his twilight years,” he says, explaining why he saw fit to add his stories of Mandela to an already considerable collection. “I had that unique gift of having access to him in the quiet of his home where there weren’t huge demands on his time and hundreds of people trying to get access to him.”

For years, as Friedland relayed his stories of Mandela to his family and friends, they urged him to write them down. When Margo, a well-known biographer and the senior medical editor for the Australian Financial Review, offered to help him write his stories for his 60th birthday, he accepted. What began with Friedland recording his stories for Margo to collate for his personal use, evolved into a fully-fledged book. “I thought I could share the legacy of what Madiba taught me for future generations,” he says.

Emphasising the difference between curing, which is generally done with antibiotics in Western medicine, and healing, which is a process, Friedland says Mandela was a healer. “He healed relationships between South Africans, between nations. You heal people by healing relationships, by bringing families into it, and by listening. Madiba taught me how to listen.”

Through listening, one also evolves. As Mandela told Friedland and many others, you cannot expect people to change unless you can change yourself. “He said, ‘Doctor, I’ve worked on myself for 27 years, and I will ask people to change.’” Yet, he acknowledged that he needed to negotiate with human beings, not angels, just like he himself wasn’t an angel.

Mandela’s ability to see beyond surface classifications has long been lauded. Though he recognised where people came from, he levelled the playing field in a way many couldn’t understand, Friedland says. “He viewed the world’s greatest leader and the cleaning lady on a completely equal level. This wasn’t false humility, he spoke across people. It didn’t matter who you were.”

Quiet Time with the President juxtaposes the peace that Mandela brought to the world with the violence Friedland confronted in his professional and personal life. “I wanted to contrast the serenity and peace in Madiba’s Houghton home – I loved going there – to the chaos in my life,” Friedland says.

“I had an overexposure to violence. I was working in a level-one trauma unit, and I had friends who had died tragically. It was one extreme to another. Yet in Madiba, there was steel beneath that velvet glove. He was as tough as one could be, one just had to look at the adversity he had dealt with.”

After numerous violent incidents, including witnessing a hijacking and a tragedy in which a close friend died in his arms following a shooting incident in 2008, Friedland suffered post-traumatic stress disorder. He had reached the point where he knew that he and his family had to leave South Africa. The decision was the most difficult of his life.

“The greatest dilemma was that here was a man who gave up his life and family for the sake of peace in this country and the world,” he says. “On the other hand, look at me. I have all the privilege and opportunities afforded to white people. Yet, I have the audacity to go to Madiba and say, ‘I’m leaving the country because of all of this violence. I’m sacrificing the country for the sake of my family.’

“That conflict stood out for me, and it stays with me today. I was committed to making positive change, but left when the country desperately needed my skills. And I went to a skills and talent-rich country that didn’t need me. That I’ll have to live with.”

Friedland says he’s forever grateful for the opportunities and humanity South Africa afforded him. This gratitude is something his mother taught him through the lesson of hakarat hatov – the ability of man to recognise good that was done. Yet, leaving was the best decision for him.

It was Mandela’s unexpected response to the news of his imminent move to Perth that gave Friedland comfort and added a layer of purpose to his journey. Mandela revealed a mistake he had made when he’d first visited Australia. Through ignorance of the plight of the Aboriginal people, he failed to meet with them initially. Upon being criticised for it, he immediately organised an unofficial meeting and made amends.

He stressed the need for Friedland to learn about the indigenous people of the country he was moving to and to treat them, something Friedland has actively done ever since. “He said, ‘Wherever you do that in the world, we’re all one people, all part of humanity, and you have my permission,’ and I cried. Madiba changed my life.”

Life isn’t necessarily about curing ills, Friedland says. As Mandela himself once wrote, whenever he reached one plateau, there was always another mountain to climb. “That ‘long walk to freedom’ is a process,” Friedland says. “We’re all still walking.”