Mike Leven: Nelson Mandela

On a trip to South Africa  ten years ago, I read Mandela’s biography prior to arrival.

I visited Robbyn Island  and was guided through his cell and activities by a cheerful intelligent man who had been a prisoner with Mandela for 18 years. At the end of the tour, I asked him why he was not angry. His answer was “What good would it do?”

I never forgot it. It was in fact what Mandela  represented that anger doesn’t solve problems — that understanding and patience and goodwill towards all does.

What a privilege for all of us to have seen and heard what Mandela was and will always be…a guide to a better world.

Mike Leven is President and Chief Operating Officer of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation