all right. i think i ve lost mr. young ambassador young. rohit, let me ask you. in terms of the president reporter: but the presenter was asking rohit, are you with me? yes, rohit. the president of the united states said that the first political engagement he ever had in life was involved in anti-apartheid demonstrations as a college student. that s the kind of impact he s had globally. and it is that generation that is now many of us in our 50s and older. but you re telling me there are people half our age and younger that are out there that are celebrating his life tonight. reporter: that s absolutely right, al. and one of the really
time forget where we start with people. nelson mandela was ostracized and called a terrorist, and now the whole world is taking turns eulogizing, memorializing, and extolling him. the shame would be that it just be the personal victory for him, because clearly he earned that. but that he would want it to be a victory for what he stood for and not that you just went from calling him a terrorist to calling him the great statesman he became and will be always remembered as. but do what i say. emulate what i tried to teach. right. and understand this didn t happen miraculously. that he was an individual, a human being, a man who lived a life and made this happen. this didn t just happen miraculously. when i think about apartheid, i think how people were banned. and mandela was banned for a long time before he was even in prison. you couldn t be in a room with
with three strikes and you re out, you have some people who have been there for so many years you re saying can we find ways in our memorializing mandela to actualize it. that s the key. and james peterson, what can the president be influenced by nelson mandela mean for us as a nation and us politicly? i love all the stuff you ve been saying about nelson mandela and i love what jonathan alter just said. and i hope people can hear that, because if you want to really talk about how to use celebrate and commemorate the life of mandela, one of the things you can do is take his prison narrative, his narrative of being in prison for 27 years and remember he goes into prison as a terrorist. right? he is a terrorist in terms of how the south african government sees him. so in order for us to understand how do we import that spirit like jonathan is saying is you ve got to take that narrative and think about what was his mentality when he came out? to embrace those who imprisoned
been his own allies? well, he dealt with them with magnanimity. he had people he put in place to help him realize that dream. and i don t know what he did behind closed doors pl all though i m told the nelson mandela we all see in public could be a different mandela when he was in negotiations. but he had that steely character that i think behind closed doors could come out a little more strongly than what you saw in public. because in the end what you saw were a group of people who marched with mandela instead of in front of him. and you didn t hear all that bickering and the kind of disenchantment today that you currently have with a young democracy, but he managed in his own way to speak behind closed doors when we had to speak forcefully, but always to put that conciliatory face before
suddenly these people were going to vote. i moved to london in the early 90s. one of the things. of the 50s and 60s in america. you have this majority being oppressed in so many ways being o presed. and i watched a change now. and to some extent. but he lives on and in so many ways in south africa today. in a spiritual sense. he was in so many ways the conscience of the nation. he is in so many ways the standard by which every other leader and everything that happens there is judged. and it all goes back to those days in the early 90s when mandela was released from prison and making his mark on the country and again that moment that people were able to vote.