Humanly speaking, we would be inclined to say that those twenty-seven years were utter shameful waste; just think of all he could have contributed to the good of South Africa and the world. I don’t think so. Those twenty-seven years and all the suffering they entailed were the fires of the furnace that tempered his steel, that removed the dross. Perhaps without that suffering he would have been less able to be as compassionate and as magnanimous as he turned out to be.
