“Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it forgoes revenge and dares forgive an injury”.

There will an avalanche of tributes to the memory of Nelson Mandela, who died yesterday evening, at the age of 95, but this quotation by the 19^th century American preacher and poet E. H. Chapin seems to me to be an apposite epitaph.

We are all familiar with the history of Mandela’s struggles, his imprisonment and 27 long years of incarceration before his eventual release in 1990. Back then the world expected a desire for revenge against his former oppressors, a natural human trait, but instead it witnessed forgiveness which, as another great 20th century leader of peace and freedom, Mahatma Gandhi, described as “an attribute of the strong”.

The world lost a strong man yesterday.