I mused my way through the musty entrance of the student union buildings, quiet in this holiday time. Old student sports notices, slightly torn, peppered the display boards. A cleaner looked at me for what seemed like decades, unsure whether to sound an alarm. I chatted briefly with her to assure her of my good holiday-making intentions. She relaxed slightly, but still kept an eye on me, having perhaps re-classified me as a nostalgic crackpot rather than an arsonist.

Blessed with a few moments quietude in this lovely place, I pondered on the legacy of earlier Capetonian times. The dignity and courage both Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk showed their peoples in 1998/90 had made possible a forgiving, pragmatic, peaceful multicultural amnesty that forged a new identity for South Africa. This new era truly began when the ANC was no longer banned, and when Mandela walked free from prison in February 1990.

Yet something of the work and vision of Rhodes - and Jameson as one of the executors of his will - is still to be celebrated in the Rhodes Scholarships. These scholarships, fostering international expertise in bright young scholars all over the world, were recently memorably renamed the Rhodes-Mandela Scholarships in January 2003 in Cape Town, with Rhodes scholars from all over the world attending the ceremony.

The renaming acknowledged Mandela's rare achievement in overcoming the potential for never-ending bitterness from tortured years of imprisonment on Robben Island. Mandela publicly promoted a new harmony, rather than fostering further antagonism. From that forgiveness was born the potential for positive reconstruction. In earlier times, Jameson also forgave those who'd betrayed and imprisoned him in the Raid. Though not entirely blameless, he was perhaps, like Lear, "a man more sinned against than sinning" - and therefore one who needed to forgive both himself and others to find peace. And from that forgiveness was born the dignity of his later years as prime minister, from which period Jameson Hall and the steps were named. Forgiveness. A wonderful word. It's a good lesson - to learn to forgive, and from that to transform yourself I thought, struggling to assimilate it in my own life.

And so a nostalgic blend of thoughts on forgiveness, time and history, on transformation, ancestry, memories, sadness and song, called me back to the steps of Jameson Hall. At the bottom of the steps sits a statue of Rhodes, gazing forever at the green expanse of the playing fields of UCT. As a young, plump, dreaming undergraduate, I'd wandered across those lush green lawns in the brilliant sunshine of a blue-skied fresh and open Cape Town day. In that apartheid era, the verdant beauty of the campus was refuge to political prisoners fleeing special branch police, a place of unique protection, in which the lamp of UCT's coat of arms and mission "illuminated darkness" through "good works" not only in theory but actually in practice. But now there is no more need to protect political prisoners fighting against apartheid. Though crime, Aids, poverty and fears of drought still plague Africa, at least the era of apartheid is gone. And at least, in the new South Africa, forgiveness is sufficiently present for the statue of Rhodes to be left peacefully sitting in contemplation at the base of the steps, as if silently remembering his friend, and dreaming his vast dreams forever.

There's something about Cape Town that inspires such soulful contemplation, this yearning for harmony. Perhaps it's in the water, in the embracing warmth of the air or the splendour of the mountainous terrain. Whatever it is, it certainly affected me strongly as I returned to the car and the chauffeur - an Indian gentleman who assured me of his deep knowledge and affection for Cape Town, as we sped along the busy motorway towards the airport.

Table Mountain loomed in through the back window. I took some last photographs, thinking of my father, who had met my mother in Cape Town in the early years of the second world war. In an even earlier era, playing with matches aged eight, he'd nearly set fire to a mountain near the family farm in Stellenbosch but, when he died aged 76 just after Mandela's release, he had become a highly respected legal expert, a former solicitor working on conveyancing rights for black landowners. Perhaps there's something about Cape Town, I thought, that turns rash youth into tender and wise old age - hmmm, I'd better go back again very soon to check that out.