MADIBA.. “Every day was a struggle; I could see it in his eyes even after he became president. Some old demon would rise up and somebody would say something stupid, but he fought it every day,” Clinton said at the UN General Assembly. Clinton told how he had raised with Mandela the issue of his walk to freedom from the jail along a dirty road and how he had been a “canny politician” inviting his jailer to his inauguration and bringing white opposition parties into his government. “Tell me the truth: when you were walking down the road that last time, didn’t you hate them?” Clinton said he questioned Mandela. “He said briefly: ‘I did. I am old enough to tell the truth.’ He said: ‘I felt hatred and fear but I said to myself, if you hate them when you get in that car, you will still be their prisoner. I wanted to be free and so I let it go.’ “He said: ‘People can take everything from you. I lost my family, the chance to see my children grow up, the best years of my life. They can take everything except your mind and your heart. Those things I decided not to give away. He looked at me and smiled and said: neither should you. That is a lesson that every human being on earth had better learn sooner or later. The grace of it embraces every friend that he had.”
Posted on: Fri, 19 Jul 2013 16:08:18 +0000
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