Sir Trevor McDonald said he was “terrified” before his first broadcast interview with Nelson Mandela in February 1990. The interview, at Mandela’s Soweto home, came 3 days after Mandela left prison and is revisited in ITV News' Reporting History.
McDonald rewatched the exchange for the first time in the episode and later spoke with News At Ten anchor Tom Bradby about arriving in South Africa at a pivotal moment. The programme also returns to a second interview in 1995, when Mandela was president and South Africa was preparing to host the Rugby World Cup.
Mandela's Soweto home
Before the cameras rolled, Mandela asked multiple times if the lights could be dimmed. He said: “I'm terribly sorry, I didn't realise what it would mean. I have had splinters in eyes from breaking rocks on Robben Island.”
That detail changes the look of the interview on rewatch. What reads as a polished broadcast also carried the physical effect of years on Robben Island, and the setup in Soweto had to account for it.
Reporting History revisits 1995
The Reporting History episode moves from that first meeting to the 1995 follow-up ahead of the Rugby World Cup in South Africa. McDonald said he was struck by Mandela's “extraordinary faith” in his government contemporaries and his “faith in human nature.”
He also said Mandela’s outlook “remains his legacy, his belief in the possibility of change.” That leaves the episode less as a look back at one interview than as a record of how the same exchange carried into the next chapter of Mandela's public life. Giants Game Today
