He­len Dray­ton

The Xhosa Rolih­lahla Man­dela, born to Non­qaphi Nosekeni and Hen­ry Mgad­la Man­dela in 1918 was not just an­oth­er per­son who trans­formed or­di­nar­i­ness to colos­sal state­li­ness. He epit­o­mised the best of hu­man­i­ty.

Re­search will not yield a greater leader in mod­ern times whose life spanned a com­bi­na­tion of prince­ly sta­tus, the egal­i­tar­i­an­ism of a box­er, coura­geous free­dom fight­er and brand­ed ter­ror­ist, rev­o­lu­tion­ary lawyer, and pris­on­er of con­science. He was a com­pas­sion­ate politi­cian, pres­i­dent, ne­go­tia­tor, in­ter­na­tion­al me­di­a­tor, phil­an­thropist, world states­man and fa­ther fig­ure, and now a leg­end for all times.

At age nine, he lost his fa­ther, who was vil­lage chief and coun­sel­lor to King Jong­inta­ba. Rolih­lahla be­came a ward of the Them­bu roy­al house, and the Xhosa king groomed him to as­sume high of­fice. The mis­sion school he at­tend­ed gave him the name Nel­son.

It was in the king's house the young dream­er lis­tened to sto­ries about the val­our of African re­sisters as told by his el­ders, which fu­elled his de­sire to con­tribute to the strug­gle of his peo­ple. Those valiant re­sisters were not on­ly the men of his time, but dat­ed back to 1652, when the first Eu­ro­pean set­tlers had ar­rived in South Africa.

Back then, the Eu­ro­pean in­vaders had dero­gat­ed the ear­li­est Khoisan peo­ples of South Africa "Bush­men" and "Hot­ten­tots." They deemed them an in­tel­lec­tu­al­ly in­fe­ri­or peo­ple and "a dull, stu­pid, lazy, stink­ing na­tion who were al­so bold, thievish and not to be trust­ed."

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