Ndaah, Mr Deputy President. Baremini? I extend my hand to greet Deputy President Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa.
Ndaah Ndou, he smiles, and almost suffocates me with a bear hug.
Power corrupts, they say, and this man is quite powerful. He is also potentially the next president, if not of the country in two years, almost certainly of the ANC in six months.Ramaphosa himself offers tea despite being surrounded by two of his long-serving professional lieutenants; "wingmen" in snazzy township parlance, the strategist Steyn Speed and the communicator Ronnie Mamoepa, who, I later learnt from Ramaphosa, had been hospitalised after a stroke.
Anything to drink? the deputy president asks, eyes bright despite the exhausting campaign, or "consultative" work, among constituencies he probably has to work double or triple at attracting and endearing himself. In the process he needs to address their concerns, mainly because his last, main, real and reliable constituency was in the union sector a quarter-century ago.
Thus, as the organisation he is obviously vying to lead seems dangerously spinning on the skid rows of history, his political rebirth is gaining traction. Rooibos tea, please, I say.This is also a man who woke up to realise that for his supporters and foes to take him with serious regard, in the party and beyond, he had to be visible. Which means he had to speak to them in languages they understood: languages that would never understand the buffalo-purchasing peccadilloes of billionaires.
To stand in front of those supporters, old and newly cultivated then - as he had done earlier that afternoon in Stellenbosch before our meeting - is to be one with them, even if both parties know that you can no longer be one of them.
In other words, to be a politician at this level in this moment of wild gestures, defences and attacks on comrades and opponents alike is also to be called on to present yourself in performance as well as in your complexity, warts and all.
Let's be this clear on this: I hold no brief for any of the candidates, including my interviewee, running for the top ANC job. I couldn't care a crap about him as a candidate, nor am I enamoured of his millions.
But there's a useful caveat here. He intrigues me, in my guise as a biographer...