Nelson Mandela was one of the most influential and charismatic statesmen of the past 50 years. He was an inspiration to generations in his native South Africa, but also elsewhere in Africa - in fact to the world. He had an amazing international standing as a symbol of resistance to apartheid even by 1990, when he was released from prison after having been silenced for 27 years. But the lustre of his leadership of the African National Congress, and of his sufferings in prison, was much further magnified by the approach he then adopted to reconciling bitterness and anger as the apartheid state began to implode from its own contradictions, not least from the international support for the rights of non-white South Africans that Mandela's sufferings had helped create.
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The old South African regime characterised Mandela as the devil incarnate, an organiser of terrorism against the state, and as an active communist. But Mandela had been involved with almost the full range of peaceful and moderate political struggle before coming to think that resort to force and sabotage was necessary. Somewhat born to the purple among the Xhosa people, he was brought up a Christian and, while studying law at the mainly white Witswaterrand University was well versed in the currents of political ideas - right and left, conservative and radical, and ideas of anti-imperial and anti-colonial struggle.
Originally inclined to think that the racism and discrimination could be broken down by patient political and industrial campaigns organised and supported by white, coloured and black activists, he came to despair of what might be achieved by moderation, negotiation and restraint, and to think that justice could be achieved by Africans alone.
At that point, South African communists, if dominated by Comintern thinking, promoted revolutionary politics - about which Mandela was initially suspicious - but also a strictly non-racial organisation, which Mandela had come to think ineffective. The strains on the movements were increased by the election in 1948 of the stridently racist National Party, under Afrikaner D.F. Malan. There was a repressive crackdown on dissidents, including the development of pass laws, formal segregation of the population, and rigid controls over movement, meetings and types of life and work.
Mandela's embrace of the African National Congress, including adoption of its non-racial agenda - represented some mellowing, rather than radicalisation of his ideas. He now believed the guardians of the apartheid state were not going to be reasonable, and that the system had to be fought physically, and that peaceful resistance would not work.
For many activists this conclusion was reinforced by the Sharpeville massacre of 69 protesters in 1960, after which Mandela went underground. He was charged with attempting to overthrow the state in 1964. Eloquently pleading his cause, he spoke of the ideal of a free and democratic state where people of all races lived harmoniously and with equal opportunity. It was an ideal for which he was prepared to die.
Mandela was in prison with other great leaders of the South African struggle but became perhaps the most important symbol of resistance to a racist and unjust system. His words, his personality and increasing consciousness of his strength of character, meant that all South Africans - white and black - came to recognise that he was the moral leader of the nation that South Africa had one day to become.
International pressure, boycotts and sanctions were brought to bear, and many focused on this most obvious symbol of leadership and resistance. In 1990, he was released, bans on the African National Congress relaxed, and, in 1994, he was elected president of a new multiracial democracy.
Mandela stood high above practical government arguing for peace, reconciliation, the need to recognise and face biting problems. He focused, too, on bringing a multitude of angry and suspicious people into a sense of common nationhood. His dignity, restraint and amazing lack of rancour made him greatly known and admired.
For millions of people, he continues to represent hope and dignity, and a genuine commitment to social justice, peace and reconciliation. But Mandela also reminds us that justice, dignity and the removal of racial discrimination have to be fought for.
