Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani: Good evening. Before I say anything else, allow me to first say thank you. What a privilege it is to be together to honor the leadership of the Nelson Mandela Foundation. For 27 years, this organization has insisted that Madiba's legacy belongs not only in museums, but in movements for freedom too. Thank you for the work you have done and for all you will continue to do. I want to thank Mbongiseni Buthelezi for organizing this evening and for inviting me to speak tonight. Above all, I would like to recognize a man whose legacy lives on in the millions that he inspired.
Madiba lives in every protest for justice, every call for democracy, every march with a righteous demand. Madiba lives in every township and slum where dignity remains just out of reach, and he lives in each person who reaches for that dignity, who works all day and then returns home with food for the hungry and medicine for the sick.
Madiba lives each time someone bears witness to oppression, or want, or misery, and does not accept it as inevitable, but rather as something that we each can fight.
So many of us are only where we are today – can only conceive of the principled as possible – because Madiba showed us the path.
By every measure, Madiba was first. Mzansi's first Black President. South Africa's first head of state elected in a democratic election, when he was voted in by South Africans of every skin color.
But for a five-year-old in 1996 Cape Town, who saw Madiba's face on banners waving from building facades, he represented a different kind of first altogether. Madiba was the first president I ever knew – a man who, it seemed, had the power to change the world.
It's difficult to explain what that meant as a child, so let me put it this way – next to my childhood fridge magnets of David Seaman, Sylvain Wiltord, and the Arsenal squad was a magnet of Madiba in a Bafana Bafana kit.
When I return to those early years of my life, the lesson I remember most is that justice must be more than an ideal, it must be material. And I remember a leader, larger than life, who saw the same world I was just starting to glimpse and was trying, always trying, to use his power to change it.
In the years before his death, Madiba was elevated into a pantheon beyond mere mortals. Today, the Nobel Peace Center describes him as "a Messiah for millions of people."
If anyone was deserving of such reverence, it was Madiba. Perhaps it was him that Riky Rick was thinking about when he rapped: "everything I do they wanna do/ everything I say they wanna say."
And yet tonight, as we gather to recommit ourselves to what Madiba's leadership showed could be made possible, we must also recognize that to treat him as more myth than man is to do him a grave disservice. It is to sanctify a man who famously once said: "I am not a saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying."
He was a man, as subject to self-doubt as any of us. He was a member of a movement as inclined towards infighting as any collective on a long, winding march towards a noble goal. He was a leader who won seismic victories and yet the struggle to win the South Africa he dreamed of is still there to be won.
What a gift it is that Madiba was flawed like each of us – for it is impossible to emulate a messiah; all one can do is worship. And it is his humanity that allows us to look towards the next generation of leaders and say sincerely: you, too, can be Madiba.
We are together this evening to launch the Mandela Foundation Global Leadership Forum – to continue the struggle for dignity that guided Madiba for nearly a century. We are together to chart a course through the turbulent waters that lie before us – a global landscape roiled by strongmen and corruption, where rights are stolen away in the dead of night and apartheid, in different forms, endures.
We are together, all of us, searching for answers, seeking to make sense of these fractures, straining to lead amidst upheaval. Often, on occasions like these, the person fortunate enough to stand where I stand now will look out at the audience and ask them to imagine if Madiba was here today, what he would have said, what he would have done. Why not ask ourselves instead: when he was here, what did he say? And what did we say in return?
We need not travel far to find the answer. Open these doors, walk two minutes to the B or D at 42nd Street, and take the train to 125th. Walk ten minutes and you will find yourself in front of CUNY's Aaron Davis Hall. It was there, on June 21, 1990, only four months after he had been released from Robben Island, that Madiba arrived for a town hall with ABC News' Ted Koppel.
The eyes of the world had been firmly fixed upon Madiba since he had emerged from prison that February, just as they had been for decades – but for the first time, he could look back and answer whether he was everything he had been made out to be.
There were many interested in making clear that he was not. Koppel had disguised an ambush as a town hall. In the audience, as well as joining by satellite from South Africa. sat questioners he had preselected, each poised to attack and isolate Madiba.
Ken Adelman, a conservative pundit who would later become one of the loudest advocates for the invasion of Iraq, interrogated Madiba on the relationship he held with world leaders that the United States considered foes. Madiba refused to take the bait, responding: "One of the mistakes which some political analysts make is to think that their enemies should be our enemies."
Koos van der Merwe, a leader of the South African Conservative Party, lectured Madiba as if he was an unruly schoolboy, saying: "Leave the violent campaign alone, come and sit down, become a normal person and talk – and lastly, forget communism."
Madiba smiled. Then, in Afrikaans, he replied: "I am happy to know you. I hope that one day we shall have the opportunity to discuss the affairs of our country."
You can imagine how the rest of the 80 minutes unfolded. Again and again, Madiba was condescended to and painted as a terrorist, a violent extremist, an obstacle to peace. After each hostile question, Koppel twisted the knife, waiting to see if Madiba would bleed. And each time, Madiba answered the questions asked of him – calmly and slowly.
And then an hour into the event, Koppel returned to a question about Madiba's support for the Palestinian cause. Did that solidarity, he asked, mean Madiba was willing to alienate the Jewish community?
It was a question so contrived that Madiba had to ask Koppel what exactly he meant. It is also a question that, frankly, rings familiar – one that I have been asked in similar forms many times myself – whether opposing Israeli war crimes and violations of international law somehow makes you hateful toward a people.
Madiba refused the premise. Instead, he flipped it into a different kind of question – about whether a politics of universalism can exist if it is riddled with exceptions. Whether any of us are free if some of us are not.
Towards the end of his answer, he said: "You can call it being political, or a moral question, but anybody who changes his principles depending on with whom he is dealing? That is not a man who can lead a nation."
Hypocrisy, political convenience – these forces possess a gravitational pull. So often, it is easier to make a concession, to relinquish a long-held belief, to abandon a principle than to hold firm.
That was true when the world asked Madiba to compromise on apartheid. It was true when many asked him to abandon the Palestinian struggle for freedom. And it remains true today.
But in that moment, as Ted Koppel pressured him under bright lights, Madiba showed us the power of solidarity universal and unyielding – solidarity extended to all, solidarity even when the injustice is contested, solidarity even when there are many who seek to deny what you know to be true. Solidarity, as Pope Francis told us, is uncomfortable. Solidarity, as Madiba proved for 95 years, is not just a value. It is a strategy.
In his demand of solidarity from himself and from each of us, Madiba becomes more than a man, more than a messiah: he becomes a mirror. When we hear his refusal to abandon those with whom he shared common cause, do we recognize ourselves? When we hear his willingness to lose power before he loses himself, do we recognize ourselves? When we hear his devotion to solidarity, not as an abstract concept but as a call to action, do we recognize ourselves? Or do we recognize only the version of Mandela that asks nothing of us? Too many do.
I think of the Tories in the United Kingdom, who described Madiba upon his passing as a "true global hero," despite having spent the 1980s opposing sanctions, opposing the ANC, and opposing his release.
I think of those at the highest levels of our federal government, who claimed to venerate Madiba, but kept him on terrorist watchlists until 2008, when he was 90 years old.
I think of the jailers who abused Madiba, who left him with eyesight permanently damaged from working in a lime quarry without protection, and still attended his funeral.
I think of each of these people, each of these moments of hypocrisy, and I find myself at a loss. And then I remember Madiba – a man with the capacity to forgive, a man who extended solidarity to all.
It was only through that solidarity that South Africa could envision a future different than the past. It is only through that solidarity that we can do the same.
Three days from now, the world will mark Nelson Mandela Day. Children in elementary schools will make presentations, world leaders will issue statements, and millions will come together to honor Madiba's legacy. We will mark Mandela Day here in New York City too. New Yorkers across the five boroughs will reflect on Madiba's endless march towards freedom.
We will think of organizations like Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, or JFREJ, who came together for the first time the week of the Ted Koppel town hall to show, in fact, how many Jewish New Yorkers stood in solidarity with Madiba, and to hold a Shabbat service that raised $50,000 dollars for the anti-apartheid struggle. And as we remember Madiba the man, some, myself included, will ask ourselves a harder question: who are we treating today the way Madiba was treated before history declared him a messiah?
For every kind word of praise we now use to describe Madiba – who is being described today the way Ted Koppel described him then? Who else has seen their humanity made conditional, has been told their freedom can wait? Who else is leading a cause that we will glorify in retrospect, but is being vilified in the present? Who else needs our solidarity?
I think of Omar El Akkad, who wrote a book titled "One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This." That sentence captures one of history's cruelest, most familiar habits. Eventually, almost everyone claims they opposed apartheid. Eventually, almost everyone claims they stood with Madiba, that they stood with Dr. King. Eventually, almost everyone will claim they opposed so much of the injustice that they justify today. But justice is not measured by where we stand after history has issued its verdict. It is measured by where we stand when the verdict is still being rendered.
Why must we wait until thousands more parents bury their children, until thousands more lose their limbs, their homes and their futures to come together and insist upon Palestinian freedom?
Why must Doctor Hussam Abu Safiya wait more than 18 months for freedom in Israeli detention – a detention that continues to this day – after the world watched him be kidnapped as he left his hospital, of him wasting away in prison?
Why must we wait as Umar Khalid enters his sixth year of captivity in Delhi – a political prisoner jailed under the same manufactured charges of terrorism leveled against Madiba?
Why must we wait to stand steadfast alongside immigrants being targeted and preyed upon – whether it was Joan Sebastián Guerrero, shot in the head by ICE in Biddeford, Maine, on Monday, or Amaramiro Emmanuel and Ekpeyong Andrew, two Nigerians killed last week in South African streets where xenophobia builds?
Why must we wait to practice solidarity until it no longer costs us anything?
The responsibility of answering those questions, honestly and fully, rests upon each of us. It is the responsibility of drawing solidarity further into our lives, our politics, the way we walk through the world.
This is no easy task. The world we live in is designed to pull us apart. Profit motives and algorithms are engineered to turn us against one another. The few with much exploit the many with little. We continue to reckon with genocide in Gaza and war across the globe. And as always, there is money to be made and power to be won in demonizing the poor and stoking the fires of racial animus. These are all forces designed to separate us from one another. To turn away from each other. But were these not the same conditions Madiba overcame?
When Madiba arrived on windswept Robben Island, his connection to the outside world severed, was that conducive to solidarity? When Madiba endured decades of racial domination and dehumanization, was that conducive to solidarity? When governments and corporations marshaled extraordinary wealth and power to preserve apartheid, was that conducive to solidarity?
The truth is that solidarity is perhaps best nurtured by the conditions that seek to destroy it. Workers rise up when bosses restrict their rights. Citizens link arms when authoritarians impose brutal crackdowns. Every struggle for a better future began at a moment when that future felt forever out of reach. As Dr. King said the night before he was killed, "only when it is dark enough can you see the stars."
Surely now, it is dark enough. But surely, together in this room, we can see the stars. Those small pockets of light that are working people standing side by side to demand dignity. That are demonstrators marching through the heat and cold to call for an end to war, to suffering. That are those with hardly anything to their name still opening their hands to extend what little they have to those with even less.
Solidarity is not perfection. Solidarity is not purity. Solidarity is people choosing one another, sometimes even over themselves. Solidarity, my friends, so often feels impossible, like something that only a mythical figure could make real. And yet, as Madiba reminds us, through the life he lived, through the leadership he showed, and through the words he spoke: "it always seems impossible until it's done." Let us do it together. Thank you very much.