Nelson Mandela, 1918-2013

Blipfoto is always the first thing I look at when I turn my computer on, and that's where I learned of Nelson Mandela's death today -- on Berkeleyblipper's journal and on tookie's, as well, when I returned home after late afternoon errands.

My daily news source is The New York Times online, and that's where I turned next, reading Bill Keller's obituary for Nelson Mandela. (Mr. Keller, the former executive editor of that newspaper, covered the end of white rule in South Africa from April 1992 until May 1995.) These words particularly rang out for me:

The explanation for his absence of rancor, at least in part, is that Mr. Mandela was that rarity among revolutionaries and moral dissidents: a capable statesman, comfortable with compromise and impatient with the doctrinaire.

When the question was put to Mr. Mandela in an interview for this obituary in 2007 -- after such barbarous torment, how do you keep hatred in check? -- his answer was almost dismissive: Hatred clouds the mind. It gets in the way of strategy. Leaders cannot afford to hate.

What a different place the world would be if we had more leaders who were comfortable with compromise, impatient with the doctrinaire, and knew they could not afford to hate!