Nelson Mandella

When Nelson Mandela walked out of prison on Feb. 11, 1990, South Africa's future walked with him. If Mandela had raised a clenched fist and said, "We must purge this land with blood," an uprising would have surely ensued, and South Africa would have disappeared into the sea of anarchy that has engulfed so many other African nations. A lesser man would have felt justified in calling for a violent upheaval to bring down the white supremacist government. Anger is a powerful emotion and Mandela had reason to call for revenge. He had spent 27 years in prison, 18 of them on Robben Island, an inhospitable chunk of rock sitting in the cold Atlantic, off the coast of Cape Town. In his autobiography, "Long Walk to Freedom," Mandela reflected on his years in prison: "It was during those long and lonely years that my hunger for the freedom of my own people became a freedom of all people, white and black. I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man's freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else's freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their own humanity.