THERE is little question that Nelson Mandela is the last statesman of our times. And there are all the diverse reasons why such an honour comes to be bestowed on him by people around the world. Let his record speak for itself.
Mandela spent altogether twenty seven years as a prisoner of South Africa’s apartheid regime. That was a time when many of us went from infancy to adulthood, from kindergarten to profession. In all this time, Mandela, along with his closest comrades in the African National Congress, persevered in the harshness of prison, breaking stones in the glaring light of the sun, tolerating the racial abuse regularly heaped on the prisoners by white prison guards. But, again, prison became a centre of moral purpose for Mandela. It gave him time to reflect on politics, on the future. It transformed him, over the years, into a liberal from the youthful radical he had been. The liberalism came, of course, on the sturdy wings of unshakeable political convictions. Mandela would not compromise on the principle of black majority rule.
In the end, it was an incarcerated Mandela who steadily, quietly, resolutely had the fortress of apartheid crumble. The Verwoerds and the Bothas and the de Klerks all bit the dust. For Mandela, as he walked out of prison, the opportunity was there to take charge of South Africa for as long as he lived after February 1990. Like any other African leader — Mugabe, Kaunda, Museveni, Afewerki, Zenawi — he could have grasped power and held on to it. He chose not to. The four years that elapsed before he was elected South Africa’s first black president were a moment in historical time when Mandela transformed himself from a politician into a statesman. As president for the subsequent four years, he forged a rainbow nation out of the disparate racial and political realities battering the country. He shared the Nobel for peace with F.W. de Klerk. More significantly, he built for his people — black, white, coloured — a granite-like edifice of peace. And then he chose to walk away from the presidency. Only a true leader, only a brave man, could achieve such a feat. He would not be a banyan tree under which no other plant would grow. There were the Mbekis and the Zumas who needed to rise into leadership after him.
This is Mandela’s legacy: a strong, proud, inclusive South Africa as a model for the rest of the world to emulate. This is our tribute to Mandela: he is greater than all the rest of us — and yet he will always be one of us.

The writer is Executive Editor, The Daily Star.