South Africa's President, Mr Nelson Mandela (79), said yesterday he would die a happy man because his dream of a racially united South Africa will have been achieved.
Speaking after being awarded the freedom of Cape Town - the city's highest honour - he said he had seen the rainbow nation "emerging before my eyes".
"Let us tell those who want to drag us into the past that they are grossly mistaken because all sections of the nation are working to build our country and to make it a miracle," Mr Mandela said.
"That is what gives me hope as I go to bed. I have not the slightest doubt that when I go into eternity I will have a smile on my face."
He said as he prepares to step down as president of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) next month, and as president of the country in 1999, he is constantly reassured that racial divisions created during the apartheid era are being overcome.
Mr Mandela said there were great men and women in all political parties. However, "when there is tension, it is not the great men and women who come forward, it is the stupid people who exploit the brutal instincts of human beings which make them wild animals. Great people emerge in times of peace to make a contribution".
He appealed to people not to exploit the "cruelness of human nature".
He said Africans should use their overwhelming majority in South Africa "to create an environment of peace so that minorities can be sure that they are not minorities, but part of the majority".
The president also warned that gang violence in Cape Town's mixed-race and black townships "is a war that gangsters should and are expected to lose".
Tit-for-tat violence between gangsters and anti-crime group People Against Gangsterism and Drugs has been raging in the townships since August last year when PAGAD members burnt a gangster in public.
"It may take time, but those who sit behind this violence must know that the arm of the law will catch up with them," Mr Mandela said.