A CLICHE it may be, but today Britain welcomes a man who is truly a legend in his own time.

Nelson Mandela is indeed an international hero.

Here is a man who spent 27 years incarcerated in one of the most brutal prison regimes in the world. Yet he came out not embittered but ready to lead his country to a new future through a negotiated settlement that few would have thought possible.

After the dismantling of apartheid and the first universal free elections in South Africa many thought the country would erupt into bloody civil war.

It did not. South Africa still has enormous problems, not least its massive crime wave, but ensuring stability is the calm, quiet and dignified presence of Mandela.

Not for him the bickering that typifies our political leaders. The power of his persona is enough.

But will it be enough for South Africa after he is gone?

Marshal Tito was another charismatic leader who kept a country riven with factions together for so long. When he died those hostilities eventually erupted and blew Yugoslavia apart.

We must pray that at 78 Mandela is granted the time to create democratic principles, imbued with his own philosophy, that are so ingrained in the people of South Africa that the same can never happen to them.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.