The pass­ing of Nel­son Man­dela brought the world to­geth­er as cit­i­zens around the globe fo­cused on the life of a man who, though not per­fect (no hu­man be­ing is), stood for the high­est prin­ci­ples as he fought for jus­tice and equal­i­ty for all men.A free­dom fight­er who many ad­vo­cate will be etched in his­to­ry as the great­est of all time, Man­dela must be re­mem­bered for pos­ter­i­ty, es­pe­cial­ly in those coun­tries which did not ex­pe­ri­ence the atroc­i­ties of apartheid.

Na­tions must be en­cour­aged to give se­ri­ous and mean­ing­ful con­sid­er­a­tion about what will be done in their re­spec­tive ter­ri­to­ries to en­sure that the majesty of this ex­tra­or­di­nary man is ap­pre­ci­at­ed by fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.

And while we must pay homage to our lo­cal he­roes, whose con­tri­bu­tions to our growth and de­vel­op­ment are of­ten for­got­ten, Man­dela stands out as an in­ter­na­tion­al icon of glob­al ap­peal. That our coun­try was one that Man­dela vis­it­ed when he was even­tu­al­ly freed af­ter 27 years of im­pris­on­ment should be con­sid­ered a bless­ing, be­cause our na­tion, un­like many who mourned his death, has a last­ing im­print of his pres­ence.

The ac­co­lades that con­tin­ue to show­er praise on this out­stand­ing in­di­vid­ual will ring hol­low if those who speak of his great­ness do no more than mouth his ac­com­plish­ments rather than im­ple­ment his val­ues.And while nam­ing an air­craft in ho­n­our of Man­dela may be wor­thy of ap­plause, I am con­fi­dent that he, though no longer walk­ing amongst us, would much pre­fer that lead­ers of na­tions ex­tol the virtues of hon­esty, fair­ness and truth dur­ing their tenure in of­fice.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers