Are there parallels between Nelson Mandela and the biblical Joseph? I heard this intriguing comparison at a recent lecture that I attended.

Joseph spent 12 years in jail for a crime that he did not commit. He could easily have been bitter and twisted. After all, his brothers had sold him into slavery, and he was in a strange land alien to his upbringing and faith.

Yet he remained sensitive enough to his fellow human beings to enquire what was troubling two Egyptian prisoners. The one had been Pharaoh's baker and the other his butler. He interpreted their dreams for them, a small kindness that had major implications later. The butler was freed from prison and reinstated in his position. He remembered Joseph when Pharaoh was troubled by his dreams. So Joseph was brought to interpret them, .and ended up as vizier of Egypt.

Nelson Mandela's life is also a story that leads from prison to statesmanship. After 27 years in prison he emerged without bitterness towards his former oppressors. He went out of his way, indeed, to embrace people such as Betsy Verwoerd and Percy Yutar, the prosecutor at his own trial.

Before he went to prison Mandela was an arrogant and combative street-fighter. In the 1950s, his comrade Oliver Tambo reportedly said, "When I want a confrontation, I ask for Nelson."

According to his biographer Anthony Sampson, Mandela's prison years "transformed him into a much more reflective and influential kind of leader" who came to see that "law, not war, was the basis of his hopes for his country's future." Because Mandela "was cut off from mass audiences, public images, and television cameras, stripped down to man-to-man leadership and to the essentials of human relationships...he learned about human sensitivities and how to handle the fears and insecurities of others, including his Afrikaner warders."

This personal transformation was critical in assisting the broader transformation that led to the relatively peaceful transfer of power in South Africa. It's a clear example of how one man, who was able to make peace within himself, was later able to make peace in his country.

It showed in his personal behaviour when he insisted on showing respect to even the most humble of people. This is not to overlook, though, the personal qualities in National Party leader FW de Klerk that enabled him also to transcend his own party.

Great leaders do matter, even though some say it's all about vast impersonal forces such as class or race. Sadly, one has to be disappointed in the quality of the leadership presently at the helm in South Africa.

President Jacob Zuma has manifestly good intentions, but is unable to lead because he wants to be all things to all people. He doesn't have the internal demons that led former president Thabo Mbeki astray on issues like HIV/Aids. But leadership is about choices, not meandering along to appease all factions.

It seems that we are all held hostage to the ANC's National Conference next year that will decide whether Zuma gets a second term or not. We can only hope that if he gets a second term, it will release him to be the real leader that we so urgently need.

This article by Jack Bloom MPL, DA Leader in the Gauteng Legislature, first appeared in The Citizen.

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