Mandela: The Miracle Maker
The
extraordinary life of the man who liberated South Africa—and then kept the
country from falling apart.
Nelson Mandela, who died December 5, refused to
be thought of as a saint. “I never was one,” he insisted—“even on the basis of
an earthly definition of a saint as a sinner who keeps trying.” He wasn’t just
being modest. He had a weakness for fine clothes and good-looking women, and he
certainly was no pacifist. But a halo was the last thing Mandela needed. He
spent half a century wrestling South Africa’s white-minority rulers to the
negotiating table, and when he finally got them there, he had to be a hard
bargainer, not a holy man.
And yet he worked miracles. The sight of the
71-year-old Mandela walking out of Victor Verster Prison to freedom after 27
years, raising his fist in triumph, practically defied belief. Many of his
supporters had despaired that the regime would ever let him out. And yet
despite spending a quarter-century behind bars for demanding his people’s
rights, he wasn’t bitter. He remained optimistic about the human character.
“There is a streak of goodness in men that can be buried or hidden and then
emerge unexpectedly,” he later wrote.