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In 1978, the international Defence and Aid Fund for South Africa published "The struggle is my life" by Nelson Mandela. It was a collection of his speeches and writings brought together to mark his sixtieth birthday and it also included historical documents of the African National Congress and an account of conditions in Robin Island Prison.

Charged with inciting Africans to strike in 1961 and with leaving the country without valid travel documents in November 1962 Nelson Mandela was sentenced to five years hard labour. In the defence which he conducted himself, the account goes, "there is a passage which speaks for all political prisoners and all those who continue to be detained without charge in solitary confinement, at the mercy of their interrogators: The Government set out … not to treat us, not to heed us, not to talk to us, but rather to present us as wild dangerous revolutionaries intent on disorder and riot, incapable of being dealt with in any way save by mustering an overwhelming force against us and the implementation of every possible forcible means, legal and illegal to suppress us." To the court Mandela avowed 'when my sentence has been completed I will still be moved to take up again as best I can the struggle for the removal of injustices until they are finally abolished once and for all."

In 1944 the ANC Youth League of which Mandela was a founder member, published a manifesto in which he included 'guiding ideals' of every young African's life. It stated "we combat moral disintegration among Africans by maintaining and upholding high ethical standards ourselves" and recommended a plan for education; "to mould the characters of the young; to give them a high sense of moral and ethical values; to prepare them for a full and responsible citizenship in a democratic society " and a reference to African Art looked to "the world of beauty that lies beyond the conflict and turmoil of struggle."

When Nelson Mandela was recently given the freedom of the City of Leeds, he spoke in a gentle self-depreciating way. In the presence of Lucas Radebe, the captain of both Leeds United and the South African national team, he said that in his country politicians were not really popular or household names - footballers and soap opera stars were - so he wondered why Leeds had chosen to honour him, had we been badly advised after all he was only a pensioner, now unemployed and with a criminal record. Was he the sort of person Leeds should be giving the honour of the freedom of the city to? Of course Nelson Mandela is a very special international pensioner but what is so remarkable is how he is the living embodiment of his own advice to African youth.

The apartheid government was determined to rub him out as a person to suppress and dehumanise him. He emerged from his prison experience with the highest sense of moral and ethical values, not bitter or searching for vengeance but insisting on the removal of injustices, a gentle man personally transcending his brutal captors and their regime.

Nelson Mandela is a living witness to faith in the ability of human beings to retain their humanity and to transcend the most adverse of circumstances, to be an altruistic personality, living in service of others. He is not included in the CAFOD notecard pack of modern icons, along with Martin Luther King and Archbishop Oscar Romero but perhaps he is a challenge to those of us who claim to be inspired to live a life of service to others to get on and do it in real life.

© John Battle 2nd May 2001