It is hard to celebrate Thatcher, Mandela in the same sentence

By Barrack Muluka

In the first of her two autobiographies, The Path to Power, Margaret Thatcher says that history’s lessons usually teach us what we want to learn. She was reflecting on the career of Premier Harold Macmillan, a person she referred to as “a man of masks.” Her conclusion: “Macmillan was a more complex and sensitive figure than he appeared.” Baroness Thatcher thought that Macmillan was a most misunderstood individual so that, “It was impossible to tell, for instance, that behind the cynical Edwardian façade was one of the most deeply religious souls in politics.”