Transcript:
PRESIDENT OBAMA: (Cheers and applause.) Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you so much. (Laughter.)
AUDIENCE: Yes, we can! Yes, we can! Yes, we can!
OBAMA:
Thank you. To Mama Graça Machel, members of the Mandela family, the
Machel family, to President Ramaphosa who you can see is inspiring new
hope in this great country – (cheers and applause) – professor, doctor,
distinguished guests, to Mama Sisulu and the Sisulu family, to the
people of South Africa – (cheers and applause) – it is a singular honor
for me to be here with all of you as we gather to celebrate the birth
and life of one of history's true giants.
Let me begin by a
correction – (laughter) – and a few confessions. The correction is that I
am a very good dancer. (Laughter.) I just want to be clear about that.
Michelle is a little better.
The confessions. Number one, I was
not exactly invited to be here. I was ordered in a very nice way to be
here by Graça Machel. (Cheers.)
Confession number two: I
forgot my geography and the fact that right now it's winter in South
Africa. (Laughter.) I didn't bring a coat, and this morning I had to
send somebody out to the mall because I am wearing long johns.
(Laughter.) I was born in Hawaii.
Confession number three: When
my staff told me that I was to deliver a lecture, I thought back to the
stuffy old professors in bow ties and tweed, and I wondered if this was
one more sign of the stage of life that I'm entering, along with gray
hair and slightly failing eyesight. I thought about the fact that my
daughters think anything I tell them is a lecture. (Laughter.) I thought
about the American press and how they often got frustrated at my
long-winded answers at press conferences, when my responses didn't
conform to two-minute soundbites. But given the strange and uncertain
times that we are in – and they are strange, and they are uncertain –
with each day's news cycles bringing more head-spinning and disturbing
headlines, I thought maybe it would be useful to step back for a moment
and try to get some perspective. So I hope you'll indulge me, despite
the slight chill, as I spend much of this lecture reflecting on where
we've been, and how we arrived at this present moment, in the hope that
it will offer us a roadmap for where we need to go next.
One
hundred years ago, Madiba was born in the village of M – oh, see there, I
always get that – (laughter) – I got to get my Ms right when I'm in
South Africa. Mvezo – I got it. (Cheers and applause.) Truthfully, it's
because it's so cold my lips stuck. (Laughter.) So in his autobiography
he describes a happy childhood; he's looking after cattle, he's playing
with the other boys, eventually attends a school where his teacher gave
him the English name Nelson. And as many of you know, he's quoted
saying, "Why she bestowed this particular name upon me, I have no idea."
There was no reason to believe that a young black boy at this time, in
this place, could in any way alter history. After all, South Africa was
then less than a decade removed from full British control. Already, laws
were being codified to implement racial segregation and subjugation,
the network of laws that would be known as apartheid. Most of Africa,
including my father's homeland, was under colonial rule. The dominant
European powers, having ended a horrific world war just a few months
after Madiba's birth, viewed this continent and its people primarily as
spoils in a contest for territory and abundant natural resources and
cheap labor. And the inferiority of the black race, an indifference
towards black culture and interests and aspirations, was a given.
And such a view of the world – that certain races, certain nations,
certain groups were inherently superior, and that violence and coercion
is the primary basis for governance, that the strong necessarily exploit
the weak, that wealth is determined primarily by conquest – that view
of the world was hardly confined to relations between Europe and Africa,
or relations between whites and blacks. Whites were happy to exploit
other whites when they could. And by the way, blacks were often willing
to exploit other blacks. And around the globe, the majority of people
lived at subsistence levels, without a say in the politics or economic
forces that determined their lives. Often they were subject to the whims
and cruelties of distant leaders. The average person saw no possibility
of advancing from the circumstances of their birth. Women were almost
uniformly subordinate to men. Privilege and status was rigidly bound by
caste and color and ethnicity and religion. And even in my own country,
even in democracies like the United States, founded on a declaration
that all men are created equal, racial segregation and systemic
discrimination was the law in almost half the country and the norm
throughout the rest of the country.
That was the world just 100
years ago. There are people alive today who were alive in that world.
It is hard, then, to overstate the remarkable transformations that have
taken place since that time. A second World War, even more terrible than
the first, along with a cascade of liberation movements from Africa to
Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, would finally bring an end to
colonial rule. More and more peoples, having witnessed the horrors of
totalitarianism, the repeated mass slaughters of the 20th century, began
to embrace a new vision for humanity, a new idea, one based not only on
the principle of national self-determination, but also on the
principles of democracy and rule of law and civil rights and the
inherent dignity of every single individual.
In those nations
with market-based economies, suddenly union movements developed; and
health and safety and commercial regulations were instituted; and access
to public education was expanded; and social welfare systems emerged,
all with the aim of constraining the excesses of capitalism and
enhancing its ability to provide opportunity not just to some but to all
people. And the result was unmatched economic growth and a growth of
the middle class. And in my own country, the moral force of the civil
rights movement not only overthrew Jim Crow laws but it opened up the
floodgates for women and historically marginalized groups to reimagine
themselves, to find their own voices, to make their own claims to full
citizenship.
It was in service of this long walk towards
freedom and justice and equal opportunity that Nelson Mandela devoted
his life. At the outset, his struggle was particular to this place, to
his homeland – a fight to end apartheid, a fight to ensure lasting
political and social and economic equality for its disenfranchised
non-white citizens. But through his sacrifice and unwavering leadership
and, perhaps most of all, through his moral example, Mandela and the
movement he led would come to signify something larger. He came to
embody the universal aspirations of dispossessed people all around the
world, their hopes for a better life, the possibility of a moral
transformation in the conduct of human affairs.
Madiba's light
shone so brightly, even from that narrow Robben Island cell, that in the
late '70s he could inspire a young college student on the other side of
the world to reexamine his own priorities, could make me consider the
small role I might play in bending the arc of the world towards justice.
And when later, as a law student, I witnessed Madiba emerge from
prison, just a few months, you'll recall, after the fall of the Berlin
Wall, I felt the same wave of hope that washed through hearts all around
the world.
Do you remember that feeling? It seemed as if the
forces of progress were on the march, that they were inexorable. Each
step he took, you felt this is the moment when the old structures of
violence and repression and ancient hatreds that had so long stunted
people's lives and confined the human spirit – that all that was
crumbling before our eyes. And then as Madiba guided this nation through
negotiation painstakingly, reconciliation, its first fair and free
elections; as we all witnessed the grace and the generosity with which
he embraced former enemies, the wisdom for him to step away from power
once he felt his job was complete, we understood that – (applause) – we
understood it was not just the subjugated, the oppressed who were being
freed from the shackles of the past. The subjugator was being offered a
gift, being given a chance to see in a new way, being given a chance to
participate in the work of building a better world.
And during
the last decades of the 20th century, the progressive, democratic vision
that Nelson Mandela represented in many ways set the terms of
international political debate. It doesn't mean that vision was always
victorious, but it set the terms, the parameters; it guided how we
thought about the meaning of progress, and it continued to propel the
world forward. Yes, there were still tragedies – bloody civil wars from
the Balkans to the Congo. Despite the fact that ethnic and sectarian
strife still flared up with heartbreaking regularity, despite all that
as a consequence of the continuation of nuclear détente, and a peaceful
and prosperous Japan, and a unified Europe anchored in NATO, and the
entry of China into the world's system of trade – all that greatly
reduced the prospect of war between the world's great powers. And from
Europe to Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, dictatorships began to
give way to democracies. The march was on. A respect for human rights
and the rule of law, enumerated in a declaration by the United Nations,
became the guiding norm for the majority of nations, even in places
where the reality fell far short of the ideal. Even when those human
rights were violated, those who violated human rights were on the
defensive.
And with these geopolitical changes came sweeping
economic changes. The introduction of market-based principles, in which
previously closed economies along with the forces of global integration
powered by new technologies, suddenly unleashed entrepreneurial talents
to those that once had been relegated to the periphery of the world
economy, who hadn't counted. Suddenly they counted. They had some power;
they had the possibilities of doing business. And then came scientific
breakthroughs and new infrastructure and the reduction of armed
conflicts. And suddenly a billion people were lifted out of poverty, and
once-starving nations were able to feed themselves, and infant
mortality rates plummeted. And meanwhile, the spread of the internet
made it possible for people to connect across oceans, and cultures and
continents instantly were brought together, and potentially, all the
world's knowledge could be in the hands of a small child in even the
most remote village.
That's what happened just over the course
of a few decades. And all that progress is real. It has been broad, and
it has been deep, and it all happened in what – by the standards of
human history – was nothing more than a blink of an eye. And now an
entire generation has grown up in a world that by most measures has
gotten steadily freer and healthier and wealthier and less violent and
more tolerant during the course of their lifetimes.
It should
make us hopeful. But if we cannot deny the very real strides that our
world has made since that moment when Madiba took those steps out of
confinement, we also have to recognize all the ways that the
international order has fallen short of its promise. In fact, it is in
part because of the failures of governments and powerful elites to
squarely address the shortcomings and contradictions of this
international order that we now see much of the world threatening to
return to an older, a more dangerous, a more brutal way of doing
business.
So we have to start by admitting that whatever laws
may have existed on the books, whatever wonderful pronouncements existed
in constitutions, whatever nice words were spoken during these last
several decades at international conferences or in the halls of the
United Nations, the previous structures of privilege and power and
injustice and exploitation never completely went away. They were never
fully dislodged. (Applause.) Caste differences still impact the life
chances of people on the Indian subcontinent. Ethnic and religious
differences still determine who gets opportunity from the Central Europe
to the Gulf. It is a plain fact that racial discrimination still exists
in both the United States and South Africa. (Cheers and applause.) And
it is also a fact that the accumulated disadvantages of years of
institutionalized oppression have created yawning disparities in income,
and in wealth, and in education, and in health, in personal safety, in
access to credit. Women and girls around the world continue to be
blocked from positions of power and authority. (Cheers and applause.)
They continue to be prevented from getting a basic education. They are
disproportionately victimized by violence and abuse. They're still paid
less than men for doing the same work. That's still happening. (Cheers
and applause.) Economic opportunity, for all the magnificence of the
global economy, all the shining skyscrapers that have transformed the
landscape around the world, entire neighborhoods, entire cities, entire
regions, entire nations have been bypassed.
In other words, for far too many people, the more things have changed, the more things stayed the same. (Applause.)
And while globalization and technology have opened up new
opportunities, have driven remarkable economic growth in previously
struggling parts of the world, globalization has also upended the
agricultural and manufacturing sectors in many countries. It's also
greatly reduced the demand for certain workers, has helped weaken unions
and labor's bargaining power. It's made it easier for capital to avoid
tax laws and the regulations of nation-states – can just move billions,
trillions of dollars with a tap of a computer key.
And the
result of all these trends has been an explosion in economic inequality.
It's meant that a few dozen individuals control the same amount of
wealth as the poorest half of humanity. (Applause.) That's not an
exaggeration, that's a statistic. Think about that. In many
middle-income and developing countries, new wealth has just tracked the
old bad deal that people got because it reinforced or even compounded
existing patterns of inequality, the only difference is it created even
greater opportunities for corruption on an epic scale. And for once
solidly middle-class families in advanced economies like the United
States, these trends have meant greater economic insecurity, especially
for those who don't have specialized skills, people who were in
manufacturing, people working in factories, people working on farms.
In every country just about, the disproportionate economic clout of
those at the top has provided these individuals with wildly
disproportionate influence on their countries' political life and on its
media; on what policies are pursued and whose interests end up being
ignored. Now, it should be noted that this new international elite, the
professional class that supports them, differs in important respects
from the ruling aristocracies of old. It includes many who are
self-made. It includes champions of meritocracy. And although still
mostly white and male, as a group they reflect a diversity of
nationalities and ethnicities that would have not existed a hundred
years ago. A decent percentage consider themselves liberal in their
politics, modern and cosmopolitan in their outlook. Unburdened by
parochialism, or nationalism, or overt racial prejudice or strong
religious sentiment, they are equally comfortable in New York or London
or Shanghai or Nairobi or Buenos Aires, or Johannesburg. Many are
sincere and effective in their philanthropy. Some of them count Nelson
Mandela among their heroes. Some even supported Barack Obama for the
presidency of the United States, and by virtue of my status as a former
head of state, some of them consider me as an honorary member of the
club. (Laughter.) And I get invited to these fancy things, you know?
(Laughter.) They'll fly me out.
But what's nevertheless true is
that in their business dealings, many titans of industry and finance
are increasingly detached from any single locale or nation-state, and
they live lives more and more insulated from the struggles of ordinary
people in their countries of origin. (Applause.) And their decisions –
their decisions to shut down a manufacturing plant, or to try to
minimize their tax bill by shifting profits to a tax haven with the help
of high-priced accountants or lawyers, or their decision to take
advantage of lower-cost immigrant labor, or their decision to pay a
bribe – are often done without malice; it's just a rational response,
they consider, to the demands of their balance sheets and their
shareholders and competitive pressures.
But too often, these
decisions are also made without reference to notions of human solidarity
– or a ground-level understanding of the consequences that will be felt
by particular people in particular communities by the decisions that
are made. And from their board rooms or retreats, global decision-makers
don't get a chance to see sometimes the pain in the faces of laid-off
workers. Their kids don't suffer when cuts in public education and
health care result as a consequence of a reduced tax base because of tax
avoidance. They can't hear the resentment of an older tradesman when he
complains that a newcomer doesn't speak his language on a job site
where he once worked. They're less subject to the discomfort and the
displacement that some of their countrymen may feel as globalization
scrambles not only existing economic arrangements, but traditional
social and religious mores.
Which is why, at the end of the
20th century, while some Western commentators were declaring the end of
history and the inevitable triumph of liberal democracy and the virtues
of the global supply chain, so many missed signs of a brewing backlash –
a backlash that arrived in so many forms. It announced itself most
violently with 9/11 and the emergence of transnational terrorist
networks, fueled by an ideology that perverted one of the world's great
religions and asserted a struggle not just between Islam and the West
but between Islam and modernity, and an ill-advised U.S. invasion of
Iraq didn't help, accelerating a sectarian conflict. (Applause.) Russia,
already humiliated by its reduced influence since the collapse of the
Soviet Union, feeling threatened by democratic movements along its
borders, suddenly started reasserting authoritarian control and in some
cases meddling with its neighbors. China, emboldened by its economic
success, started bristling against criticism of its human rights record;
it framed the promotion of universal values as nothing more than
foreign meddling, imperialism under a new name. Within the United
States, within the European Union, challenges to globalization first
came from the left but then came more forcefully from the right, as you
started seeing populist movements – which, by the way, are often
cynically funded by right-wing billionaires intent on reducing
government constraints on their business interests – these movements
tapped the unease that was felt by many people who lived outside of the
urban cores; fears that economic security was slipping away, that their
social status and privileges were eroding, that their cultural
identities were being threatened by outsiders, somebody that didn't look
like them or sound like them or pray as they did.
And perhaps
more than anything else, the devastating impact of the 2008 financial
crisis, in which the reckless behavior of financial elites resulted in
years of hardship for ordinary people all around the world, made all the
previous assurances of experts ring hollow – all those assurances that
somehow financial regulators knew what they were doing, that somebody
was minding the store, that global economic integration was an
unadulterated good. Because of the actions taken by governments during
and after that crisis, including, I should add, by aggressive steps by
my administration, the global economy has now returned to healthy
growth. But the credibility of the international system, the faith in
experts in places like Washington or Brussels, all that had taken a
blow.
And a politics of fear and resentment and retrenchment
began to appear, and that kind of politics is now on the move. It's on
the move at a pace that would have seemed unimaginable just a few years
ago. I am not being alarmist, I am simply stating the facts. Look
around. (Applause.) Strongman politics are ascendant suddenly, whereby
elections and some pretense of democracy are maintained – the form of it
– but those in power seek to undermine every institution or norm that
gives democracy meaning. (Applause.) In the West, you've got far-right
parties that oftentimes are based not just on platforms of protectionism
and closed borders, but also on barely hidden racial nationalism. Many
developing countries now are looking at China's model of authoritarian
control combined with mercantilist capitalism as preferable to the
messiness of democracy. Who needs free speech as long as the economy is
going good? The free press is under attack. Censorship and state control
of media is on the rise. Social media – once seen as a mechanism to
promote knowledge and understanding and solidarity – has proved to be
just as effective promoting hatred and paranoia and propaganda and
conspiracy theories. (Applause.)
So on Madiba's 100th birthday,
we now stand at a crossroads – a moment in time at which two very
different visions of humanity's future compete for the hearts and the
minds of citizens around the world. Two different stories, two different
narratives about who we are and who we should be. How should we
respond?
Should we see that wave of hope that we felt with
Madiba's release from prison, from the Berlin Wall coming down – should
we see that hope that we had as naïve and misguided? Should we
understand the last 25 years of global integration as nothing more than a
detour from the previous inevitable cycle of history – where might
makes right, and politics is a hostile competition between tribes and
races and religions, and nations compete in a zero-sum game, constantly
teetering on the edge of conflict until full-blown war breaks out? Is
that what we think?
Let me tell you what I believe. I believe
in Nelson Mandela's vision. I believe in a vision shared by Gandhi and
King and Abraham Lincoln. I believe in a vision of equality and justice
and freedom and multi-racial democracy, built on the premise that all
people are created equal, and they're endowed by our creator with
certain inalienable rights. (Cheers and applause.) And I believe that a
world governed by such principles is possible and that it can achieve
more peace and more cooperation in pursuit of a common good. That's what
I believe.
And I believe we have no choice but to move
forward; that those of us who believe in democracy and civil rights and a
common humanity have a better story to tell. And I believe this not
just based on sentiment, I believe it based on hard evidence.
The fact that the world's most prosperous and successful societies, the
ones with the highest living standards and the highest levels of
satisfaction among their people, happen to be those which have most
closely approximated the liberal, progressive ideal that we talk about
and have nurtured the talents and contributions of all their citizens.
The fact that authoritarian governments have been shown time and time
again to breed corruption, because they're not accountable; to repress
their people; to lose touch eventually with reality; to engage in bigger
and bigger lies that ultimately result in economic and political and
cultural and scientific stagnation. Look at history. Look at the facts.
The fact that countries which rely on rabid nationalism and xenophobia
and doctrines of tribal, racial or religious superiority as their main
organizing principle, the thing that holds people together – eventually
those countries find themselves consumed by civil war or external war.
Check the history books.
The fact that technology cannot be put
back in a bottle, so we're stuck with the fact that we now live close
together and populations are going to be moving, and environmental
challenges are not going to go away on their own, so that the only way
to effectively address problems like climate change or mass migration or
pandemic disease will be to develop systems for more international
cooperation, not less. (Applause.)
We have a better story to
tell. But to say that our vision for the future is better is not to say
that it will inevitably win. Because history also shows the power of
fear. History shows the lasting hold of greed and the desire to dominate
others in the minds of men. Especially men. (Laughter and applause.)
History shows how easily people can be convinced to turn on those who
look different, or worship God in a different way. So if we're truly to
continue Madiba's long walk towards freedom, we're going to have to work
harder and we're going to have to be smarter. We're going to have to
learn from the mistakes of the recent past. And so in the brief time
remaining, let me just suggest a few guideposts for the road ahead,
guideposts that draw from Madiba's work, his words, the lessons of his
life.
First, Madiba shows those of us who believe in freedom
and democracy we are going to have to fight harder to reduce inequality
and promote lasting economic opportunity for all people. (Applause.)
Now, I don't believe in economic determinism. Human beings don't live
on bread alone. But they need bread. And history shows that societies
which tolerate vast differences in wealth feed resentments and reduce
solidarity and actually grow more slowly; and that once people achieve
more than mere subsistence, then they're measuring their well-being by
how they compare to their neighbors, and whether their children can
expect to live a better life. And when economic power is concentrated in
the hands of the few, history also shows that political power is sure
to follow – and that dynamic eats away at democracy. Sometimes it may be
straight-out corruption, but sometimes it may not involve the exchange
of money; it's just folks who are that wealthy get what they want, and
it undermines human freedom.
And Madiba understood this. This
is not new. He warned us about this. He said: "Where globalization
means, as it so often does, that the rich and the powerful now have new
means to further enrich and empower themselves at the cost of the poorer
and the weaker, [then] we have a responsibility to protest in the name
of universal freedom." That's what he said. (Applause.) So if we are
serious about universal freedom today, if we care about social justice
today, then we have a responsibility to do something about it. And I
would respectfully amend what Madiba said. I don't do it often, but I'd
say it's not enough for us to protest; we're going to have to build,
we're going to have to innovate, we're going to have to figure out how
do we close this widening chasm of wealth and opportunity both within
countries and between them. (Applause.)
And how we achieve this
is going to vary country to country, and I know your new president is
committed to rolling up his sleeves and trying to do so. But we can
learn from the last 70 years that it will not involve unregulated,
unbridled, unethical capitalism. It also won't involve old-style
command-and-control socialism form the top. That was tried; it didn't
work very well. For almost all countries, progress is going to depend on
an inclusive market-based system – one that offers education for every
child; that protects collective bargaining and secures the rights of
every worker – (applause) – that breaks up monopolies to encourage
competition in small and medium-sized businesses; and has laws that root
out corruption and ensures fair dealing in business; that maintains
some form of progressive taxation so that rich people are still rich but
they're giving a little bit back to make sure that everybody else has
something to pay for universal health care and retirement security, and
invests in infrastructure and scientific research that builds platforms
for innovation.
I should add, by the way, right now I'm
actually surprised by how much money I got, and let me tell you
something: I don't have half as much as most of these folks or a tenth
or a hundredth. There's only so much you can eat. There's only so big a
house you can have. (Cheers and applause.) There's only so many nice
trips you can take. I mean, it's enough. (Laughter.) You don't have to
take a vow of poverty just to say, "Well, let me help out and let a few
of the other folks – let me look at that child out there who doesn't
have enough to eat or needs some school fees, let me help him out. I'll
pay a little more in taxes. It's okay. I can afford it." (Cheers and
applause.) I mean, it shows a poverty of ambition to just want to take
more and more and more, instead of saying, "Wow, I've got so much. Who
can I help? How can I give more and more and more?" (Cheers and
applause.) That's ambition. That's impact. That's influence. What an
amazing gift to be able to help people, not just yourself. (Applause.)
Where was I? I ad-libbed. (Laughter.) You get the point.
It
involves promoting an inclusive capitalism both within nations and
between nations. And as we pursue, for example, the Sustainable
Development Goals, we have to get past the charity mindset. We've got to
bring more resources to the forgotten pockets of the world through
investment and entrepreneurship, because there is talent everywhere in
the world if given an opportunity. (Cheers and applause.)
When
it comes to the international system of commerce and trade, it's
legitimate for poorer countries to continue to seek access to wealthier
markets. And by the way, wealthier markets, that's not the big problem
that you're having – that a small African country is sending you tea and
flowers. That's not your biggest economic challenge. It's also proper
for advanced economies like the United States to insist on reciprocity
from nations like China that are no longer solely poor countries, to
make sure that they're providing access to their markets and that they
stop taking intellectual property and hacking our servers. (Laughter.)
But even as there are discussions to be had around trade and commerce,
it's important to recognize this reality: while the outsourcing of jobs
from north to south, from east to west, while a lot of that was a
dominant trend in the late 20th century, the biggest challenge to
workers in countries like mine today is technology. And the biggest
challenge for your new president when we think about how we're going to
employ more people here is going to be also technology, because
artificial intelligence is here and it is accelerating, and you're going
to have driverless cars, and you're going to have more and more
automated services, and that's going to make the job of giving everybody
work that is meaningful tougher, and we're going to have to be more
imaginative, and the pact of change is going to require us to do more
fundamental reimagining of our social and political arrangements, to
protect the economic security and the dignity that comes with a job.
It's not just money that a job provides; it provides dignity and
structure and a sense of place and a sense of purpose. (Applause.) And
so we're going to have to consider new ways of thinking about these
problems, like a universal income, review of our workweek, how we
retrain our young people, how we make everybody an entrepreneur at some
level. But we're going to have to worry about economics if we want to
get democracy back on track.
Second, Madiba teaches us that
some principles really are universal – and the most important one is the
principle that we are bound together by a common humanity and that each
individual has inherent dignity and worth.
Now, it's
surprising that we have to affirm this truth today. More than a quarter
century after Madiba walked out of prison, I still have to stand here at
a lecture and devote some time to saying that black people and white
people and Asian people and Latin American people and women and men and
gays and straights, that we are all human, that our differences are
superficial, and that we should treat each other with care and respect. I
would have thought we would have figured that out by now. I thought
that basic notion was well established. (Applause.) But it turns out, as
we're seeing in this recent drift into reactionary politics, that the
struggle for basic justice is never truly finished. So we've got to
constantly be on the lookout and fight for people who seek to elevate
themselves by putting somebody else down. And by the way, we also have
to actively resist – this is important, particularly in some countries
in Africa like my own father's homeland; I've made this point before –
we have to resist the notion that basic human rights like freedom to
dissent, or the right of women to fully participate in the society, or
the right of minorities to equal treatment, or the rights of people not
to be beat up and jailed because of their sexual orientation – we have
to be careful not to say that somehow, well, that doesn't apply to us,
that those are Western ideas rather than universal imperatives.
(Applause.)
Again, Madiba, he anticipated things. He knew what
he was talking about. In 1964, before he received the sentence that
condemned him to die in prison, he explained from the dock that, "The
Magna Carta, the Petition of Rights, the Bill of Rights are documents
which are held in veneration by democrats throughout the world." In
other words, he didn't say well, those books weren't written by South
Africans so I just – I can't claim them. No, he said that's part of my
inheritance. That's part of the human inheritance. That applies here in
this country, to me, and to you. And that's part of what gave him the
moral authority that the apartheid regime could never claim, because he
was more familiar with their best values than they were. (Laughter.) He
had read their documents more carefully than they had. And he went on to
say, "Political division based on color is entirely artificial and,
when it disappears, so will the domination of one color group by
another." That's Nelson Mandela speaking in 1964, when I was three years
old. (Applause.)
What was true then remains true today. Basic
truths do not change. It is a truth that can be embraced by the English,
and by the Indian, and by the Mexican and by the Bantu and by the Luo
and by the American. It is a truth that lies at the heart of every world
religion – that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto
us. (Applause.) That we see ourselves in other people. That we can
recognize common hopes and common dreams. And it is a truth that is
incompatible with any form of discrimination based on race or religion
or gender or sexual orientation. And it is a truth that, by the way,
when embraced, actually delivers practical benefits, since it ensures
that a society can draw upon the talents and energy and skill of all its
people. And if you doubt that, just ask the French football team that
just won the World Cup. (Cheers and applause.) Because not all of those
folks – not all of those folks look like Gauls to me. (Laughter.) But
they're French. They're French. (Laughter.)
Embracing our
common humanity does not mean that we have to abandon our unique ethnic
and national and religious identities. Madiba never stopped being proud
of his tribal heritage. He didn't stop being proud of being a black man
and being a South African. But he believed, as I believe, that you can
be proud of your heritage without denigrating those of a different
heritage. (Applause.) In fact, you dishonor your heritage. It would make
me think that you're a little insecure about your heritage if you've
got to put somebody else's heritage down. (Laughter.) Yeah, that's
right. (Laughter.) Don't you get a sense sometimes – again, I'm
ad-libbing here – that these people who are so intent on putting people
down and puffing themselves up that they're small-hearted, that there's
something they're just afraid of. Madiba knew that we cannot claim
justice for ourselves when it's only reserved for some. Madiba
understood that we can't say we've got a just society simply because we
replaced the color of the person on top of an unjust system, so the
person looks like us even though they're doing the same stuff, and
somehow now we've got justice. That doesn't work. (Cheers and applause.)
It's not justice if now you're on top, so I'm going to do the same
thing that those folks were doing to me and now I'm going to do it to
you. That's not justice. "I detest racialism," he said, "whether it
comes from a black man or a white man."
Now, we have to
acknowledge that there is disorientation that comes from rapid change
and modernization, and the fact that the world has shrunk, and we're
going to have to find ways to lessen the fears of those who feel
threatened. In the West's current debate around immigration, for
example, it's not wrong to insist that national borders matter; whether
you're a citizen or not is going to matter to a government, that laws
need to be followed; that in the public realm newcomers should make an
effort to adapt to the language and customs of their new home. Those are
legitimate things and we have to be able to engage people who do feel
as if things are not orderly. But that can't be an excuse for
immigration policies based on race, or ethnicity, or religion. There's
got to be some consistency. And we can enforce the law while respecting
the essential humanity of those who are striving for a better life.
(Cheers and applause.) For a mother with a child in her arms, we can
recognize that could be somebody in our family, that could be my child.
Third, Madiba reminds us that democracy is about more than just elections.
When he was freed from prison, Madiba's popularity – well, you couldn't
even measure it. He could have been president for life. Am I wrong?
(Laughter.) Who was going to run against him? (Laughter.) I mean,
Ramaphosa was popular, but come on. (Laughter.) Plus he was a young – he
was too young. Had he chose, Madiba could have governed by executive
fiat, unconstrained by check and balances. But instead he helped guide
South Africa through the drafting of a new Constitution, drawing from
all the institutional practices and democratic ideals that had proven to
be most sturdy, mindful of the fact that no single individual possesses
a monopoly on wisdom. No individual – not Mandela, not Obama – are
entirely immune to the corrupting influences of absolute power, if you
can do whatever you want and everyone's too afraid to tell you when
you're making a mistake. No one is immune from the dangers of that.
Mandela understood this. He said, "Democracy is based on the majority
principle. This is especially true in a country such as ours where the
vast majority have been systematically denied their rights. At the same
time, democracy also requires the rights of political and other
minorities be safeguarded." He understood it's not just about who has
the most votes. It's also about the civic culture that we build that
makes democracy work.
So we have to stop pretending that
countries that just hold an election where sometimes the winner somehow
magically gets 90 percent of the vote because all the opposition is
locked up – (laughter) – or can't get on TV, is a democracy. Democracy
depends on strong institutions and it's about minority rights and checks
and balances, and freedom of speech and freedom of expression and a
free press, and the right to protest and petition the government, and an
independent judiciary, and everybody having to follow the law.
And yes, democracy can be messy, and it can be slow, and it can be
frustrating. I know, I promise. (Laughter.) But the efficiency that's
offered by an autocrat, that's a false promise. Don't take that one,
because it leads invariably to more consolidation of wealth at the top
and power at the top, and it makes it easier to conceal corruption and
abuse. For all its imperfections, real democracy best upholds the idea
that government exists to serve the individual and not the other way
around. (Applause.) And it is the only form of government that has the
possibility of making that idea real.
So for those of us who
are interested in strengthening democracy, let's also stop – it's time
for us to stop paying all of our attention to the world's capitals and
the centers of power and to start focusing more on the grassroots,
because that's where democratic legitimacy comes from. Not from the top
down, not from abstract theories, not just from experts, but from the
bottom up. Knowing the lives of those who are struggling.
As a
community organizer, I learned as much from a laid-off steel worker in
Chicago or a single mom in a poor neighborhood that I visited as I
learned from the finest economists in the Oval Office. Democracy means
being in touch and in tune with life as it's lived in our communities,
and that's what we should expect from our leaders, and it depends upon
cultivating leaders at the grassroots who can help bring about change
and implement it on the ground and can tell leaders in fancy buildings,
this isn't working down here.
And to make democracy work,
Madiba shows us that we also have to keep teaching our children, and
ourselves – and this is really hard – to engage with people not only who
look different but who hold different views. This is hard. (Applause.)
Most of us prefer to surround ourselves with opinions that validate
what we already believe. You notice the people who you think are smart
are the people who agree with you. (Laughter.) Funny how that works. But
democracy demands that we're able also to get inside the reality of
people who are different than us so we can understand their point of
view. Maybe we can change their minds, but maybe they'll change ours.
And you can't do this if you just out of hand disregard what your
opponents have to say from the start. And you can't do it if you insist
that those who aren't like you – because they're white, or because
they're male – that somehow there's no way they can understand what I'm
feeling, that somehow they lack standing to speak on certain matters.
Madiba, he lived this complexity. In prison, he studied Afrikaans so
that he could better understand the people who were jailing him. And
when he got out of prison, he extended a hand to those who had jailed
him, because he knew that they had to be a part of the democratic South
Africa that he wanted to build. "To make peace with an enemy," he wrote,
"one must work with that enemy, and that enemy becomes one's partner."
So those who traffic in absolutes when it comes to policy, whether it's
on the left or the right, they make democracy unworkable. You can't
expect to get 100 percent of what you want all the time; sometimes, you
have to compromise. That doesn't mean abandoning your principles, but
instead it means holding on to those principles and then having the
confidence that they're going to stand up to a serious democratic
debate. That's how America's Founders intended our system to work – that
through the testing of ideas and the application of reason and proof it
would be possible to arrive at a basis for common ground.
And
I should add for this to work, we have to actually believe in an
objective reality. This is another one of these things that I didn't
have to lecture about. You have to believe in facts. (Laughter.) Without
facts, there is no basis for cooperation. If I say this is a podium and
you say this is an elephant, it's going to be hard for us to cooperate.
(Laughter.) I can find common ground for those who oppose the Paris
Accords because, for example, they might say, well, it's not going to
work, you can't get everybody to cooperate, or they might say it's more
important for us to provide cheap energy for the poor, even if it means
in the short term that there's more pollution. At least I can have a
debate with them about that and I can show them why I think clean energy
is the better path, especially for poor countries, that you can
leapfrog old technologies. (Cheers.) I can't find common ground if
somebody says climate change is just not happening, when almost all of
the world's scientists tell us it is. I don't know where to start
talking to you about this. (Laughter.) If you start saying it's an
elaborate hoax, I don't know what to – (laughter) – where do we start?
Unfortunately, too much of politics today seems to reject the very
concept of objective truth. People just make stuff up. They just make
stuff up. We see it in state-sponsored propaganda; we see it in internet
driven fabrications, we see it in the blurring of lines between news
and entertainment, we see the utter loss of shame among political
leaders where they're caught in a lie and they just double down and they
lie some more. Politicians have always lied, but it used to be if you
caught them lying they'd be like, "Oh man." Now they just keep on lying.
By the way, this is what I think Mama Graça was talking about in terms
of maybe some sense of humility that Madiba felt, like sometimes just
basic stuff, me not completely lying to people seems pretty basic, I
don't think of myself as a great leader just because I don't completely
make stuff up. You'd think that was a base line. Anyway, we see it in
the promotion of anti-intellectualism and the rejection of science from
leaders who find critical thinking and data somehow politically
inconvenient. And, as with the denial of rights, the denial of facts
runs counter to democracy, it could be its undoing, which is why we must
zealously protect independent media; and we have to guard against the
tendency for social media to become purely a platform for spectacle,
outrage, or disinformation; and we have to insist that our schools teach
critical thinking to our young people, not just blind obedience.
Which, I'm sure you are thankful for, leads to my final point: we have to follow Madiba's example of persistence and of hope.
It is tempting 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 are hearing people talk about 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, we've been
in lower valleys and deeper valleys. Yes, by the end of his life, Madiba
embodied the successful struggle for human rights, but the journey was
not easy, it wasn't pre-ordained. The man went to prison for almost
three decades. He split limestone in the heat, he slept in a small cell,
and was repeatedly put in solitary confinement. And I remember talking
to some of his former colleagues saying how they hadn't realized when
they were released, just the sight of a child, the idea of holding a
child, they had missed – it wasn't something available to them, for
decades.
And yet his power actually grew during those years –
and the power of his jailers diminished, because he knew that if you
stick to what's true, if you know what's in your heart, and you're
willing to sacrifice for it, even in the face of overwhelming odds, that
it might not happen tomorrow, it might not happen in the next week, it
might not even happen in your lifetime. Things may go backwards for a
while, but ultimately, right makes might, not the other way around,
ultimately, the better story can win out and as strong as Madiba's
spirit may have been, he would not have sustained that hope had he been
alone in the struggle, part of buoyed him up was that he knew that each
year, the ranks of freedom fighters were replenishing, young men and
women, here in South African, in the ANC and beyond; black and Indian
and white, from across the countryside, across the continent, around the
world, who in those most difficult days would keep working on behalf of
his vision.
And that's what we need right now, we don't just
need one leader, we don't just need one inspiration, what we badly need
right now is that collective spirit. And, I know that those young
people, those hope carriers are gathering around the world. Because
history shows that whenever progress is threatened, and the things we
care about most are in question, we should heed the words of Robert
Kennedy – spoken here in South Africa, he said, "Our answer is the
world's hope: it is to rely on youth. It's to rely on the spirit of the
young."
So, young people, who are in the audience, who are
listening, my message to you is simple, keep believing, keep marching,
keep building, keep raising your voice. Every generation has the
opportunity to remake the world. Mandela said, "Young people are
capable, when aroused, of bringing down the towers of oppression and
raising the banners of freedom." Now is a good time to be aroused. Now
is a good time to be fired up.
And, for those of us who care
about the legacy that we honor here today – about equality and dignity
and democracy and solidarity and kindness, those of us who remain young
at heart, if not in body – we have an obligation to help our youth
succeed. Some of you know, here in South Africa, my Foundation is
convening over the last few days, two hundred young people from across
this continent who are doing the hard work of making change in their
communities; who reflect Madiba's values, who are poised to lead the
way.
People like Abaas Mpindi, a journalist from Uganda, who
founded the Media Challenge Initiative, to help other young people get
the training they need to tell the stories that the world needs to know.
People like Caren Wakoli, an entrepreneur from Kenya, who founded the
Emerging Leaders Foundation to get young people involved in the work of
fighting poverty and promoting human dignity.
People like Enock
Nkulanga, who directs the African Children's mission, which helps
children in Uganda and Kenya get the education that they need and then
in his spare time, Enock advocates for the rights of children around the
globe, and founded an organization called LeadMinds Africa, which does
exactly what it says.
You meet these people, you talk to them,
they will give you hope. They are taking the baton, they know they can't
just rest on the accomplishments of the past, even the accomplishments
of those as momentous as Nelson Mandela's. They stand on the shoulders
of those who came before, including that young black boy born 100 years
ago, but they know that it is now their turn to do the work.
Madiba reminds us that: "No one is born hating another person because of
the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must
learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to
love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart." Love comes more
naturally to the human heart, let's remember that truth. Let's see it
as our North Star, let's be joyful in our struggle to make that truth
manifest here on earth so that in 100 years from now, future generations
will look back and say, "they kept the march going, that's why we live
under new banners of freedom." Thank you very much, South Africa, thank
you.
