Nelson Mandela, true to his native spirit—umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu, we are people through other people —celebrated his 90^th birthday on July 18^th by urging action against poverty: "Poverty has gripped our people. If you are poor, you are not likely to live long. There are many people in South Africa who are rich and who can share those riches with those not so fortunate who have not been able to conquer poverty."

Right from the early days of his fight against apartheid, Mandela—being theoretically and ideologically influenced by the readings and hearsay about Das Kapital and Marxists' revolutionary traditions, his personal encounters with other people's liberation movements, particularly, Mahatma Gandhi's concept of Satyagraha that he preached and practiced that ultimately freed India from the colonial rule, Shakespeare, who, for him, is `the writer', the Bible, the Quran, along with the genuine African influences—has developed a vision of a state that belongs equally to all its different people, nations and tribes. That is what indeed echoes in what he, while defending himself against the charges of sabotage and attempts to violently overthrow the government in the Rivonia court, said: "I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal, which I hope to live for and to achieve. But, if need be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."

It is the same spirit that we saw him exhibiting when he became the democratically elected first black President of South Africa. Despite being imprisoned and banned for 27 years by the rulers of the apartheid, Mandela showed an uncanny sense of that `middle road' which upheld his basic principle of Ubuntu, `fraternity'—which implies "compassion and open-mindedness and is opposed to individualism and egotism"—which he passionately got incorporated into the manifesto of his newly formed ANC Youth League in 1944 thus: African "regards the universe as an organic whole in progress towards harmony where individual parts exist only as aspects of this universal unity"—all through his presidency and leadership that worked for national reconciliation. It is this `color-blindness' that he ardently cultivated, perhaps, in his long days of solitary confinement that enabled him to see the smooth transition toward a new South Africa that is governed by a black President but administered by white bureaucracy. It is this courage, integrity and wisdom that enabled him to create Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a `good compromise'—between creation of a special court to prosecute human rights violators under the erstwhile authoritarian rule and granting a blanket amnesty for those involved in such crimes—to handle the evils of the past and thereby empower the young independent South Africa reject the idea of `partition' and the ills thereof as witnessed in India/Pakistan; Malaysia/Singapore; Israel/Palestine and survive the transition by attracting international community's economic and political support for its stability and progress. This rare vision of humanity of "looking ahead to South African reconciliation instead of back at the deep wounds of the past" won him the Nobel Peace prize, besides showing the world how deep-rooted conflicts can be resolved peacefully.

Analyst Magazine, Nelson Mandela, Revolutionary Traditions, Liberation Movements, Reconciliation Commission, Anti-apartheid Movement, Multinational Corporations, Political Culture, Multifarious Challenges, Multi-racial Society, Mandela Economic Policy.