Although the media and industry are in the height of their ritual Christmas courtship display with the consumer, someone is making headlines who has exemplified our true intent of the season: to make peace with one another a greater reality. He has not only led the oppressed to freedom but continues to exert global influence in reconciling enemies and achieving justice.

Nelson Mandela is not old news.

You may think that since he finished his term last year as South Africa’s first native African president that any 82-year-old would take some time off and play with his grandchildren.

Eighty-two is still too young for Mandela to stop his work.

Since Thabo Mbeki was inaugurated in June of 1999, Mandela, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and revolutionary, has done nothing but intensify his commitment to racial unity, peace, and reconciliation, but this time on a global scale. His recent role in spearheading efforts for truth and reconciliation commissions in the wake of civil wars throughout Africa offer an innovative and uniquely African approach for current ills plaguing the continent.

Rather than relaxing in his home, Mandela passionately embraced his responsibility to fellow Africans in the war crimes tribunals held in Tanzania. The tribunal formed to try perpetrators of serious war crimes against humanity committed in the genocides of Rwanda and Burundi. In lieu of a standard international body in place to handle the proceedings, war crimes tribunals have been mired in doubt over their effectiveness and their legitimacy. Mandela’s guidance is changing the perception of such movements for international justice.

As Mandela oversees the transformation of the African community, the rest of the world looks on with relief as the man commanding our respect is at the helm of the proceedings.

If Nelson Mandela had exited public life after his term in office as the President of South Africa, he would have been a great peacemaker. If he had simply played a pivotal role in the transition of government from apartheid, he would have earned his place in history. If he had died in prison before his release in 1990, his 1964 life sentence as a political prisoner in his own country would have made him a martyr. Had Nelson Mandela disappeared from the turbulent South African political scene in the early 1960s, his memory as a leader of the African National Congress and organizer of resistance would still be alive in the minds of civil rights activists throughout the world.

History hasn’t finished with Mandela yet.

In his best-selling autobiography, “Long Walk to Freedom,” Mandela describes his unlikely rise to the center of racial division and political turmoil. His life began at the end of World War I in a rural community in South Africa where he was named “puller of tree branches.” Through a series of fortunate events and diligence, he was able to wrestle an education from a less than equitable colonial government. Mandela became the first African lawyer in Johannesburg and became permanently entrenched in the struggle for freedom from the iron fist of apartheid.

Unwilling to bend to the indignity and inhumanity of the Afrikaner government, Mandela undertook more responsibility in the campaign for freedom. He later wrote: “The struggle is my life.” He was sentenced to life in prison on Robben Island after an enraged Afrikaner court charged him with treason.

Even after his release signified the dying days of the apartheid government, Mandela refused to ascribe to the crippling hate infecting his nation.

His emergence as a returned savior for the oppressed created an unprecedented political situation. His collaboration with then-president F.W. de Klerk offered transition to a new, free South Africa.

One of Mandela’s most enduring legacies is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, forum pioneered by the South African government for perpetrators and victims of racial crimes.

The approach has been duplicated in Indonesia as well as several other African nations.

Nelson Mandela’s enduring commitment to peace, is reminiscent of his name. “Puller of branches” is once again offering olive branches.