On the eve of Nelson Mandela's birthday.

Whose birthday is on the mind of the world? The answer is obvious Nelson Mandela's birthday is tomorrow.

Some of the greatest of people have had a Nobel Prize as the acme of their career. Few have had it as a mere marker of their progress to immortality. Though there is far to go in uniting the new South Africa, most South Africans are united in their pride at having Mandela a fellow South African.

What is it about Mandela that has made him such a great man? It is not his intellect, though that is undeniably great. It is not his suffering, though that also has been long, apparently without end and, to a lesser man, soul
destroying. It is not even his humility which, great as it is, has not prevented him from expressing his objection to the mighty. It is not his royal birth, enough for some to claim some position in the world. It is not his fame, though few have been more universally famous and few are likely to be famous well after their death. So, what is it?

Clearly it is all of the above. It is also, much more importantly, his humanity. He stands before all of us as a man who, as with all of us, has had, and, no doubt, has, his flaws. He has never denied them. They are almost his strength. We admire and trust him because he has been one of us, still is one of us, and respects all of us. His example urges us to examine
ourselves for our integrity. Usually this is a cause for resentment. We can't, however, resent somebody who has earned all our respect in such fundamental ways.

We find it difficult to forgive our enemies, even in their pettiness, their insubstantial nature. Mandela sees beyond the enemy to the person and understands, and shows us how to understand the person, who, like us, is human and flawed.

I cannot, when thinking of Mandela, avoid thinking of other great men who have changed the world. Buddha, Ecclesiastes, Socrates, Diogenes and Epicurus seem to be men who have understood the vanity of the world and the
striving of people as empty and have, like Mandela, urged us to move beyond that to our common humanity. Petty men who have only temporal power creep under the huge legs of such men and peep about to find themselves
dishonourable graves - as Shakespeare had it so perfectly.

Mandela is a man with no statutory, economic or hereditary power, at least not in the world. However, when he speaks nobody remains untouched by his remarks. He seems to epitomise the powerless power that Ghandi showed was
real power. He has shown himself, like all of us, to be unwise in youth, but unlike most of us, wise beyond even his years as he learned from his bitter experience, not the bitterness, but the essence of life.

It seems trivial to wish him a happy birthday, but I, and millions who respect him can offer the wish that a man who has given so much should, at least, enjoy happiness for as long as he lives.

Happy Birthday, Madiba!