Jay Kuten Photo/File
The world has reason to mourn the death of Nelson Mandela.
As we've come to learn from his time in office, Mandela was a truly great person, a champion of racial equality and of democracy. Deservedly, the encomiums come from every quarter, including those from the President of the United States.
Obama's eulogy described Mandela's accomplishments and likened him to Lincoln by including the statement "now he belongs to the ages."
The phrase is attributed to Edwin M. Stanton, famously uttered at Lincoln's tragic death. Lincoln, whose Emancipation Proclamation began the freeing of American black slaves, was often reviled in his lifetime.
That Biblical-sounding phrase of Stanton's began a process of near canonisation that continues, often to the detriment of our understanding of the real man, Lincoln. So too it may be with Mandela.
His few critics fault him for failing to ensure that his successors would be less self-interested than they have turned out to be. They criticise his over-eagerness to placate the country's white power elite in the transformation to a multiracial democracy. And it's true he failed to deliver economic equality to the vast majority of blacks still living in poverty.
Instead, to the power elite whose continuity he assured, was added a few black faces.
None of those claims, however true, can diminish his great achievement.
From a revolutionary radical imprisoned by an unjust regime, he transformed himself into a man unburdened by hatred.
Once in power, he succeeded in transforming an oppressive apartheid into a multi-racial democracy without the shedding of blood.
During the 27 years of Mandela's imprisonment I lived in the US, busy in my profession and family.
It's a paradox of US life that Americans are conscious of their country's position of leadership in world affairs but are generally provincial when it comes to knowledge of other countries.
I was no exception. I had some knowledge of European history and had a fair idea of world geography but, limited by the inward focus of news reporting, my awareness of South Africa was tissue thin.
I did know about apartheid but, influenced by my culture, what I heard about Mandela persuaded me that he was a dangerous revolutionary, probably communist.
Bill Keller, former executive editor of the New York Times, cites evidence that Mandela was, albeit briefly, a communist. It's hardly a surprise. Successive administrations, both in the US and the UK regarded him as a communist revolutionary and branded the ANC he led as a terrorist organisation.
In the political calculus of the Cold War Reagan and Thatcher supported anti-communist South Africa and ignored human rights. The unjust nature of apartheid was self-evident but US media warned of a blood bath, should the black majority take power in south Africa.
With Mandela's election as President of South Africa, I was totally unprepared for this man to come from prison and by force of his personality persuade his fellow citizens to reconcile and not to seek revenge for past oppression.
Instead, commissions seeking for truth of past wrong doing , not vengeance, were the vehicle toward a united democracy.
To achieve that unification required both the symbolism of wearing Springbok colours at the 1995 World Cup and the compromises with the white elite necessary to prevent the massive white flight which had undermined the economic and political structure of other African countries newly run by their black majority.
The predicted blood bath was thankfully averted.
From my chastened viewpoint, the reference to Lincoln in Obama's eulogy is apt.
Mandela was indeed a great man but not like the majestic saintly Lincoln seated in his memorial by sculptor Daniel Chester French, but rather like the flesh and blood Lincoln - the politician - wheeling and dealing and compromising to hammer out a Constitutional Amendment to end slavery.
Neither man was perfect.
Both worked through hard times of suffering, to do the best for their nations and bring out in lesser men the better angels of their nature.