Mandela’s greatest gift

mandela00026-4_3_rx513_c680x510_0

Each of us will remember Nelson Mandela, who died today at age 95, in our own way. Powerful for me is the memory of Mandela’s almost incomprehensible forgiveness – his setting-aside of violence in order to bring to all of his people the promise of peace. (credit for 1994 photo)

But I will also remember what a judge from Burundi once told me was Mandela’s greatest gift:

‘He was the first African leader to leave office after a single term, to permit a peaceful transition of power. He showed us the way.’

One thought on “Mandela’s greatest gift

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s