Nelson Mandela did not fall from the skies. He was an organic outgrowth of the ANC and our country. He was a reflection of our country’s huge potential, of what we could be if we put our shoulders to the wheel, says the writer.
OF THE countless tributes paid to Nelson Mandela, one that perhaps most stands out is Bill Clinton thanking him “for being the person we would all like to be – on our best day”.
Mandela made others want to be better people, he said.
“He speaks to what is best inside us,” observed Barack Obama at Mandela’s funeral. And he “no longer belongs to us; he belongs to the ages.”
That he could invite his jailors to his inauguration as President of our country. That he could have lunch with the spouses of the former apartheid heads of state. That he could even go to Orania to have tea with Mrs Betsie Verwoerd, the wife of Hendrik Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid.
