JOHANNESBURG: After overcoming nearly three decades of imprisonment and almost a lifetime of racial discrimination to forge South Africa’s peaceful post-apartheid democracy, Nelson Mandela’s advice is worth listening to.

And, as part of celebrations to mark his 85th birthday this month, Mandela plans to extend some of that wisdom to an audience of two billion young people via a special television broadcast on the big day, July 18.

The former South African president and Nobel peace laureate will commandeer an hour on MTV, the international music channel, to discuss three subjects close to his heart: HIV/AIDS, the struggle for democracy, and reconciliation.

Since stepping down from frontline politics in 1999, when he handed the reins of South Africa’s fledgling democracy to President Thabo Mbeki, Mandela has concentrated on what he considers the world’s ills.

AIDS — a disease ravaging sub-Saharan Africa — is top of the list. With as many as one in nine South Africans carrying the HIV virus, Mandela has repeatedly used his international stature to urge young people to battle the epidemic.

In December last year, he carried his AIDS campaign to a global audience in an MTV concert staged in Cape Town.

While the broadcast featured stage shows by Sean “P. Diddy” Combs and Alicia Keys, Mandela broached more serious matters, introducing a young rape victim who had contracted HIV, and highlighting the discrimination she suffered as a result.

Mandela has not completely abandoned the fiery politics that made him the apartheid government’s number one enemy in the 1950s and 60s and landed him in prison for 27 years.

The revered peacemaker has returned to the limelight more than once to rebuke US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair for their handling of this year’s Iraq conflict, and for what he says is their disregard of United Nations unity.

And, ahead of his 85th birthday, some of that fighting spirit is still on view.

During the interviews recorded for the birthday programme, Mandela renewed his attack on Bush, and also rounded on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon — this time focussing on their approach to the Middle East peace process.

Confronted by the grievances and faltering faith of a Ugandan infected with HIV, a Burmese democracy activist, and an Israeli and a Palestinian robbed of family members by fighting between their two sides, Mandela advocated hope, and trust in peaceful means.

He had words of encouragement for Ugandan Henry Luyombya, an HIV-positive AIDS activist who said he was running out of faith in his work to raise awareness of the disease in his country and to fight the stigma attached to it.

“I asked Mandela how he managed to survive under hard conditions, and what motivated him...And he told me he didn’t do it own his own. In our struggle against HIV/AIDS we need a combined effort,” 23-year-old Luyombya said.

Mandela also told Min Zin, who is campaigning for democratic change in military-ruled Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, that he had no need to feel guilt because his political activities had separated him from his family.

“He said you shouldn’t feel guilt because you are doing a good thing,” said the 29-year-old activist.

Mandela slammed the election of Sharon and his right-wing government earlier this year as “suicidal” for peace, and said Bush’s sidelining of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat was a big mistake for a man who was “President of the United States, not President of Palestine”.

Mandela maintains a pace that would exhaust a person decades younger.—Reuters