Like many African countries, it has diverse ethnic groups, which include the Afrikaner, Baster, Caprivian, Coloured, Damara, English, German, Herero, Kavango, Nama, Owambo, San and Tswana peoples.

Like so many others before and since, I was captivated from the first moment by Mandela s huge, luminescent smile, by his unending charm and grace, and by the lucid intelligence with which he discussed his country s transition problems. But, above all, there was his extraordinary, almost unbelievable, lack of bitterness toward his Afrikaner jailers.

One Afrikaner leader, F.W. De Klerk, came to understand late, but not too late what the times demanded, and he thoroughly deserved to share the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with Mandela. But it was Madiba the tribal name by which South Africans of every caste and color now affectionately call him who made the crucial difference.