Former President Barack Obama celebrated Nelson Mandela’s life and legacy in South Africa on Tuesday with a speech that focused not only on the freedom Mandela came to symbolize, but the long walk it took to get there.
“We have to follow Madiba’s example of persistence and hope,” Obama said, using Mandela’s clan name. “It’s tempting right now to give in to cynicism. To believe that recent shifts in global politics are too powerful to push back. That the pendulum has swung permanently. Just as people spoke about the triumph of democracy in the ’90s, now you’re hearing people talk about the end of democracy and the triumph of tribalism and the strong man. We have to resist that cynicism, because we’ve been through darker times.”
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