And while I will always fall short of Madiba’s example, he makes me want to be better. It woke me up to my responsibilities – to others, and to myself – and set me on an improbable journey that finds me here today. Over thirty years ago, while still a student, I learned of Mandela and the struggles in this land. But let me say to the young people of Africa, and young people around the world – you can make his life’s work your own. We will never see the likes of Nelson Mandela again. And there are too many of us who stand on the sidelines, comfortable in complacency or cynicism when our voices must be heard.

There are too many leaders who claim solidarity with Madiba’s struggle for freedom, but do not tolerate dissent from their own people. There are too many of us who happily embrace Madiba’s legacy of racial reconciliation, but passionately resist even modest reforms that would challenge chronic poverty and growing inequality. It took a man like Madiba to free not just the prisoner, but the jailer as well to show that you must trust others so that they may trust you to teach that reconciliation is not a matter of ignoring a cruel past, but a means of confronting it with inclusion, generosity and truth. There is a word in South Africa – ‘Ubuntu’ – that describes his greatest gift: his recognition that we are all bound together in ways that can be invisible to the eye that there is a oneness to humanity that we achieve ourselves by sharing ourselves with others, and caring for those around us. Mandela understood the ties that bind the human spirit. Mandela showed us the power of action of taking risks on behalf of our ideals. He was not a bust made of marble he was a man of flesh and blood – a son and husband, a father and a friend. His triumph was your triumph.īorn during World War I, far from the corridors of power, a boy raised herding cattle and tutored by elders of his Thembu tribe – Madiba would emerge as the last great liberator of the 20th century.

To the people of South Africa – people of every race and walk of life – the world thanks you for sharing Nelson Mandela with us.

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