How a shirt helped form a magical Madiba connection

When designer Desré Buirski heard that Nelson Mandela would be speaking at the Marais Road Shul, just days before his 1994 inauguration, she knew she had to give him one of her hand-designed shirts.

By chasing this dream, she not only became Madiba’s shirt maker, but also formed an enduring relationship with her hero.

Having emigrated with her family from South Africa to the United States in 1980 at the age of 18, Buirski began her design career in California. While working around the United States (US) and in Indonesia, she heard that Mandela was being released from prison.

“I had this epiphany that I wanted to come back to South Africa.” And so, she moved back and opened a store at Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront.

It was by chance that at a Friday-night dinner a few years later, she heard that Madiba would be speaking at Marais Road Shul the following day – the Saturday before his inauguration. “I was so excited; I couldn’t believe it because for more than a year, I had been wanting to meet or even just see him,” says Buirski.

Wanting to give him a gift of appreciation, she dashed home and grabbed a loose black cotton batik-print shirt with brown fish swimming across the chest. One of the last shirts she had made for the shop she formerly ran in California, it was hanging in her cupboard with the swing tag still intact. Wrapping up the shirt, and without time to buy a card, Buirski inserted a small note on the back of a business card, thanking him for everything he had done to save our nation.

At the shul, with the gift under her arm, she heard Madiba speak. “His speech touched my heart because he said, ‘The Jewish people left this country in droves over the past few years because of apartheid. Grandmothers and grandchildren have been separated from each other, as have children and parents. If you’ve got family overseas, I’m asking you please to tell them to come back. We’re going to have a government of national unity here. Tell them to bring back their skills and what they’ve learned so that we can help grow this country.’”

Having left her family back in the US, Buirski was struck by his words. More determined than ever to get her gift to Madiba, Buirski fought her way through the multiracial and united crowd outside and managed to spot his vehicle. She knocked on the window, explained her plan, and was directed to Madiba’s bodyguard, who accepted the gift. “I threw myself into his arms and said, ‘Please give Nelson Mandela a hug from me, and for all of you who are doing such an amazing job of bringing peace and unity to this country’.”

Elated, Buirski returned home. Then, on the day of the inauguration, a friend called to tell her to buy Die Burger newspaper. There on page three was a picture of Madiba at the dress rehearsal for the opening of Parliament and he was wearing Buirski’s shirt. “I could barely believe it,” she says. “You couldn’t dream this up.”

Buirski still gets emotional recounting the story, for two reasons. “The journey that I walked on with Madiba, the same journey that South Africa walked with him on, was an incredible time in history. And when I think of South Africa now, I just wish Mandela was still alive and he was still our president. But it is what it is.”

For Buirski, the fish shirt was the beginning of an incredible journey. Soon after the picture was published, Buirski contacted Mandela’s then private secretary, Mary Mxadana, and arranged to send through more shirts. A year and a dozen shirts later, Mxadana called her to arrange a breakfast with Mandela. “I literally fell on my back after I put down the phone,” laughs Buirski.

At the meeting, she offered Madiba her help in any way possible, and he asked if she’d like to make him silk shirts. And so, during the years that followed, she made him more than 150 one-of-a-kind hand-painted silk shirts. During that time, she was invited to all the presidential banquets.

Yet what stands out was a staff Christmas party she attended in 1998, the week before her mother passed away. She was seated next to Mandela himself. “I had my first photograph taken with Madiba. Despite our long relationship, I hadn’t had a single photo taken with him before that,” Buirski recalls tearfully. “I could go to my mom the next day – she was in the hospice – and take her that photograph.”

Another highlight for Buirski is a silk quilt she eventually created out of the offcuts of the shirts she made for Madiba over the years. She was unsure how to use it, until inspiration struck, and she knew she had to give it to Madiba to auction off for his charities.

While she hadn’t seen him for five years at that stage as he’d moved to Johannesburg, Buirski knew she had to find a way to pitch Madiba her idea. Through a mutual friend, Dan Ntsala, she met Madiba in Mozambique to hand over the quilt, which ultimately fetched €360 000 (approximately R8 million) for Mandela’s charities at a fundraising auction held in Monaco in 2007.

In Mozambique, she got a moment alone with her hero.

“I was sitting on the arm of Madiba’s study chair, a few inches above where he was sitting on the chair,” she recalls. “He looked up at me and said, ‘I wish I didn’t have any regrets. I wish I’d never done anything wrong in my life.’ I was speechless. It was like he imparted a bit of his soul into my heart. It shows you how virtuous and gracious that man truly was because he did so much for South Africa and to recognise that there were things that he wished he’d never done. It taught me to always try and be a better person. He made me a better person.”

Buirski also experienced a full-circle moment a few weeks after Madiba passed away in December 2013, when she received a call from a rabbi in New York, Avraham Berkowitz. He told Buirski a story of how he, by chance, met Madiba in Monaco and asked him if he wore his shirts to liken himself to Joseph in the Bible. Mandela laughed and said, “No. I wear the shirts because they represent the tribes and many people of South Africa. There’s a lady from Cape Town who has made all my shirts for me, and she’s helped me carry my message to every corner of the world.”

• Now based in the United States, Desré Buirski remains founder and brand ambassador of her Cape Town-based Presidential Shirt brand, which has an ongoing relationship with the Nelson Mandela Foundation.