When I decided to write about Nelson Mandela, the undeniable leader of the world peace, I was afraid to be not worthy of such an honour, so he was a man who accomplished great deeds for the freedom and equality of his people.

My first approach to his figure was through my History teachers from High school, Pre-university school and Collage, who taught me the value of his tenacity against the Apartheid, a policy of racial segregation carried out by the National South African Party.

From then on, his life and deeds started to be well known all over the world after launching a protest campaign against the criminal policy in 1952; when three years later, during the South African People Congress, he adopted ‘‘the Freedom Charter’’, in which he stated the main program of the cause against racial segregation.

‘‘Tata Mandela’’, as he was called in South Africa, went to prison several times due to his revolutionaries deeds. But, it was in 1964, when he definitely was imprisoned in Robben Island for 17 years, where he suffered precarious conditions.

Then, he was sentenced to 10  years more in two different prisons, serving a sentence of 27 years maximum, a period of time in which the Government of South Africa rejected all kind of requests for his release.

However, after continual struggle and local protests, Mandela was released in 1990, who started to play the role of main interlocutor of, by then, President of South Africa, Frederik Willem de Klerk, with whom he shared the Nobel Prize of Peace in 1993.

A year later he became the first black President of his country; a position through which he put into action a policy of national reconciliation, by eradicating the racial conflict through dialogue and mutual agreement.

He passed away six days ago, at the age of 95 years old, but his ideas are still alive in our hearts, and they will never die.

That’s why we must recall Nelson Mandela through each one of his thoughts. Only those who admire him can value the irreparable lost of such a great world leader, who decided to leave us- physically- on last December 5th, with our deepest hope of embracing him and knowing more about his life and ideas.

(By Daynelis Rodríguez Peña)