Politics & Power Quote by Jonathan Shapiro

Name-dropping usually reads as ego, but Shapiro’s version lands differently because it’s built like one of his own cartoons: a small, sly setup that lets the real subject walk onstage. “Out of the blue” does two jobs at once. It signals the surreal power imbalance (a president calls you, casually) while keeping the tone disarmingly domestic, as if history just rang the house phone. That compression is the point: Mandela’s presidency wasn’t only policy and symbolism; it was also a man navigating intimacy, humor, and human contact at scale.

“While he was still president” adds a quiet drumbeat of consequence. This isn’t the warm-afterlife Mandela, safely embalmed in global admiration. It’s Mandela with authority in his voice, calling during the messy middle of governance, when relationships with critics and commentators mattered. Shapiro, as a cartoonist, lived in that charged zone: satire as civic pressure valve, but also as a potential irritant to power.

Then the kicker: “at first he played with me a bit.” That phrase reframes Mandela from monument to tactician. The subtext is charm as statecraft, mischief as a form of control. Mandela “plays” not to belittle, but to set the emotional temperature and to test the other person’s posture. Can you take a joke? Will you bristle? Are you pliable? It’s a reminder that charisma is not just likability; it’s a tool that can disarm, recruit, and manage dissent.

Shapiro’s intent feels double: to share a private brush with greatness, and to puncture the stiffness of hero-worship by showing Mandela’s most underrated power - the ability to keep the conversation human, even when the stakes were national.