boo books, songs from the struggle to older people that lived through pit it. in the last hour here, we ve seen a string of police vehicles going into the house. and family members. kind of show us the crowd as you re describing this. is there a way for them to get a shot of this? reporter: yeah. al, we re doing that right now. and this is the scene. you know, you can perhaps make out in the distance there the south african flag. the flag of the rainbow nation. earlier they were singing the national anthem. all 12 languages of that national anthem. a real musical representation of multi-colored south africa. i mean, you know, it s very early in the morning here. people heard the news late at night.
era for our country and its people. today we celebrate not the victory of a party, but a victory for all the people of south africa. he was always very measured, always one that resisted being bombastic and boisterous. not the victory of a party, but the victory of all in south africa. always trying to reconcile. and the times i was around him in private, you were certainly around him a lot more than i was, he always had this strange balance of humility and gravitas that you just didn t see in other people. yes. but at the same time, you know, what i think we tend to forget is that nelson mandela was a human being. he had all these wonderful traits, but i remember one time when i told him after i had
and american society learn from the example of nelson mandela? i think back to civil rights movement, ghandi with his principle of civil disobedience, that helped to give the movement life. so what is mandela s message? well, today we re hearing even very conservative senators and other figures talking about the spirit of forgiveness that he embody embodied in south africa. my question tonight, rev, is can we import that spirit of forgiveness and apply it to the hundreds of thousands of people incarcerated who for the rest of their lives, you know, will be stigmatized by this. could we figure out a way to forgive them, maybe expunge some of those records.
fascinating things about the reaction which is in its first few hours, the reaction to nelson mandela s death is the youth. the youth of this response. this is an incredibly young country where the majority of people have no memory of apartheid. it is something from the history books. it is something that they learn about in school or from their parents, perhaps. but president obama put it incredibly well in that statement earlier. and he used one of nelson mandela s best known phrases when he said i fought against white domination and black domination to say this is not someone who was fighting just against the apartheid regime, but against racism right across the races. he said when he came to power as president in 1994 that he didn t want to push the white man into the sea. and perhaps in part for that reason, that is why he is so adored by people of all races.
a right people in this country take for granted. but there the turnout was very high as i recall. when you look at these photos, here are photos of the actual lines in 1994 that you and i saw personally there in south africa. and when you think of the fact that i talked to people, elderly ladies. i talked to a lady that was there in her late 80s who i said you can t stand here another day. she d been there for the second day. she said we waited all our lives. we never were given the right to vote. this is 1994. now, again, we fight to maintain voting rights now with voter i.d. and all. they had no right at all to vote until 1994. i remember talking to people that couldn t read or write. they couldn t understand but they had learned enough to go and exercise their right on a