No bitterness in Mandela

THE EDITOR: The only comment I would like to make is to observe that it has happened before. We were with Peary at the North Pole, and were denied. Tenzing Norgay really got to the top of Everest first, then went back and got Sir Edmund Hilary, not this piece, published in the Guardian of London. I continue to be amazed at the capacity of Africans to forgive. Mandela is not bitter, neither is this man. When the revelations of the Doctor of Death were made public (his setting up factories to produce commodities to kill off the black people of South Africa using anthrax in candy, cigarettes and beer;) as reported by the BBC, the people left it to the justice system to handle him.

When the Truth and Reconciliation hearings revealed white policemen doing two barbecues, one of a Black activist and one that was their dinner, simultaneously, while getting drunk; the people wept, but did not burn the town down. I am amazed at their longsuffering. I have been up close to Mandela twice. There is no bitterness discernible in the man, nor in this one, whose story is now told. Astonishing.

LINDA EDWARDS
Port-of-Spain