this, you know, effort to dismantle apartheid. mandela got wind of it so the story goes, invited this man to his house, asked him he would like tea and he bought him tea. asked him if he wanted milk. he poured him milk. asked him if he want sugar and put the sugar in and stirred it. this is a man who was going to instigate civil war. already violence oversouth africa. streamists and whites. it was just a disaster. people say the fact the election went off at all in 94 was a miracle. mandela disarmed this man by having him over for tea. he left. no civil war, mr. mandela. we have spoken about how mandela learned the language of the oppressor and got into the mind of how africaners think and said with you may win the battle but not the war. look back at your history.
given our tortured history was very important. mr. mandela played a pivotal role in that process. we are one country. we are one people. he realized that afrikaner passions were intense. they felt they lost their country. and i think he cared about them. he showed genuine empathy. mandela reaches out to the afrikaner community. he has tea with the wives of former apartheid leaders. he visits monuments that celebrate afrikaner history. in 1995, south africa hosts the rugby world cup. rugby was the religion of the mainly white africaners. mandela walks on to the pitch sporting the team jersey to show his solidarity and support.
simple expression of love and reconciliation. one of his most important achievements was after he came out of prison and after he became president, there were still some people within the african national congress and other black groups that wanted to secretory bugs against those who is had imprisoned him and held him down all those years. it was mandela to stood up to the black side now and said if we do that, we re creating a new kind of apartheid. we are now one people, black and white, africaners and indians all one people. and that s how he led the country and that s how he turned the country over. are they finished with all of their challenges and problems? of course, not. they ve got a long way to go economically and without other ways. but without him, i don t know where they would be. i was reflecting earlier this morning if only abraham lincoln had lived longer, maybe he could
that s right. and he reached out. when he got out of prison, he brought in africaners who were the oppressors, but he brought people from that group into his inner circle. zela was one of the people he reached out from one of the offices in the government and brought into his life. there were many others that he did and i just want to say one other thing. we talk about this old man who got to be 95 years old. i think that part of the reason that he was able to sustain himself so long was that from the time that he was in prison, he was very, very careful about his diet. when i first met him, it was close to dinner, and he was saying that he didn t eat very much for dinner. he ate his main meal in the middle of the day and he had soup for lunch. so he carried that physical regimen throughout his prison life and then once he got out of
this idea of the elders, this global humanitarian group. in terms of his legacy, obviously, it is in the modern state of south africa, and again, i just keep coming back to his willingness not to meet force with hatred, his willingness, you know, even to really embrace the africaners who had for generations oppressed the black south africans and a number of different groups in south africa. what do you think it was that allowed him to do that? i think it was the time he had in prison to think, to read and to realize that, you know, to be a great statesmen and, you know, maybe the greatest statesmen on earth, you had to do extraordinary things. you had to take extraordinary