Mulroney showed true leadership in standing up for Nelson Mandela when few others dared to
Brian Mulroney, who has just been named a member of the Order of Companions of O.R. Tambo, South Africa's highest honour for foreign citizens, is not on most Canadians' lists of outstanding prime ministers. However, he showed real leadership in pushing hard for the release of Nelson Mandela from prison in South Africa. That release, after 27 years of imprisonment, was the first giant step towards South Afr ica eventually leaving apartheid behind and doing so peacefully. After Mandela became the president of South Africa, he set up a truth and reconciliation commission that was without precedent. That commission served as a model for Canada's own TRC, which under the leadership of Justice Murray Sinclair took an unvarnished look at the tattered relationship between Canada's First Nations people and the rest of society, and specifically the relationships between First Nations and generations of federal and provincial governments, and the churches that ran resident...