Australian Prime Minister John Howard bestowed his country’s highest honour, the Honorary Companion of the Order of Australia, on former President Nelson Mandela on Monday. The award honoured Mandela’s contribution to relations between the countries and his part in bringing non-racial democracy to South Africa, Howard said at a ceremony at the Australian High Commission in Pretoria. Howard, in South Africa for the four-day Commonwealth summit which ended in Durban on Monday, praised the 81-year-old Mandela as the “man of the century.”