His choice to pursue reconciliation, in a way that openly acknowledged the violence and injustice of the past but allowed South Africa as a whole to move beyond it, demonstrated a reconstruction genuinely run by the "angels of our better nature." It was a wonder and an astonishment to a world that often confuses "vengeance" with "justice."
Mandela also had this blessing. He lived long enough to see his dreams realized. Not all of them. Their is much poverty and inequality remaining in South Africa. But he lived to see true political freedom for his people and he set them on a path to better days.
