what did mandela compare people of his country? why?
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I met Nelson Mandela twice. The first time he was no longer a prisoner and not yet the president of South Africa. His office was in a high-rise building in downtown Johannesburg, which the oil company Shell had used earlier as its headquarters but was now the home of the African National Congress (ANC). At that time, the ANC was still a freedom movement and not a political party, and it was a busy period as ANC’s leaders, developing negotiation strategies to write the country’s democratic constitution, were also getting acquainted with each other. Some had been in exile; some had taken up arms; some had been in jail; and some had stayed underground. Mandela was the unifying figure among these men and women, many of them avowedly leftist, some even revolutionary, and many, like Mandela, once believed in violence. (He was sentenced to Robben Island after the Rivonia Trial of the early 1960s, in which the ANC leadership was found guilty of planning and carrying out explosions, sabotage, and distributing weapons.)
Mandela shook my hand warmly and firmly; he considered India to be the ANC’s old friend and ally. India had led global efforts to isolate South Africa soon after apartheid was introduced in 1948, tabling resolutions at the United Nations and imposing sanctions. The old Indian passport carried an official stamp saying “Not valid for the Union of South Africa and the Colony of Rhodesia." In 1974, the Indian tennis team forfeited its chance to win the Davis Cup, by not playing South Africa in the final. Mandela remembered; he was grateful.