Nearly 43 years ago, a young Nelson Mandela, charged with treason, concluded a truly riveting address, in the Supreme Court of South Africa, with these words that became indelibly etched in all our memories:

I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for, and to see realised. But my Lord, if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

His life, thank God, was spared. The price, however, was life sentence with hard labour. He and his fellow trialists lost 27 of the best part of their lives in prison.


The regime believed he would be forgotten once he was out of sight. On the contrary, the word Mandela became a household word. The freedom struggle in South Africa took inspiration from him. Invisible though he was, he was everywhere. The struggle needed a persona and he became that.
Though removed from society, he carried with him the conviction to be unbending on principles but not on tactics. He had learnt from the military officials, in Algeria, that the point of war is to bring the enemy to the negotiating table. War should never be waged to perpetuate war. Nelson Mandela had persuaded Albert Luthuli, with difficulty, to consent to the armed struggle to win the peace, achieve harmony and create unity.
Nelson Mandela was single minded about where the armed struggle should go. In the sixties as opposition to the regime grew, more and more of us who were young and impatient and involved in making the country ungovernable ended up on Robben Island.
When I first saw Nelson Mandela, tending tomatoes on the island, I was cynical of his style of leadership. Our generation wanted a total revolution. Nelson Mandela took us in hand. When our hearts were inflamed, he engaged our brains. We saw where he was leading and the constructive leadership he was offering.
His unconditional release, in 1990, allowed him to demonstrate that the chaos which was going out of control had to be reined in. When Chris Hani was assassinated, Mandela became the leader South Africa never had. He calmed the people. He drove the negotiating process. He assumed the presidency in the name of the people. He became the first peoples’ president. He reached out to them and they reached out for him. He worked, with his Madiba magic, to realise his ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons lived together in harmony with equal opportunities. Proclaiming reconciliation he used sport, personal visits, oratory and a moral standing to unify the population and manifest a new patriotism.
He dazzled the country and the world with his common touch, his implicit belief in the rule of law, his insistence on transparency and his full commitment to accountability. He went where no president went before. Also, he did not stand above the people. He stood with the people. South Africa was a peoples’ republic.
For us in the Congress of the People, and for me as a political role player, what needs to be done is clear. We need to guarantee that the ideal that Nelson Mandela expressed over forty years ago, and the ideal that he worked so hard to realise, is an ideal we have to make our own and cherish so that “sun may never set on the glorious achievement” he masterminded.

If we deviate from the road that Nelson Mandela walked with us, if we devalue transparency, and defeat accountability, the “glorious achievement” will have decayed into an ugly failure.
When we witness how every country in the world stopped to honour Nelson Mandela on hearing of his passing away, our Nelson Mandela, the peoples’ Nelson Mandela, Africa’s Nelson Mandela and the world’s Nelson Mandela, it must behoove us to treasure his legacy and walk in his footsteps.
We have a role model who changed everything that appeared impossible to change. He changed people who never thought they would change. He changed how government should relate with the governed by making the improbable, probable. He changed the paradigm of the operation of government.

Today, all of us who bear witness to what we have seen and heard must do more than shed crocodile tears. We have the modern world’s greatest legacy to carry forward and to burnish so that it continues to be a light to the world.

For us in COPE the legacy of Nelson Mandela is a beautiful responsibility to guard and guard it we will with everything we are possessed.
On the island he was my professor. Everything that I am, I owe to Nelson Mandela. Everything I hope to achieve was instilled by Nelson Mandela. Everything I hope to give the people is that which Nelson Mandela was concerned to give.

The Congress of the People will honour Nelson Mandela by doing what he articulated so movingly in the shadow of imminent death. We will fight domination of one group by another. We will defend our Constitution which bears his signature. We will strive with everything we are worth to keep our society free. We will work to create economic opportunity for all and achieve harmony amongst all our people.
It was our privilege to know Nelson Mandela and our honour to work with him. Now that he is no more, we take upon ourselves the responsibility to continue with his work and bring happiness to the nation and the world.

Individually, we do not have his charisma, his vast reservoir of love, his unique wisdom, but together as a nation touched by him and influenced by him, we can continue to achieve what he performed single handedly. He was a true colossus but we as his people can be that also. Let us be what Nelson Mandela taught us to be.

Rest well my teacher, guide and leader. We acknowledge humbly that you served us well and taught us to do the same. This we will do.