WEBVTT

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(Crowd cheering and clapping hands...)

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Thank you.....

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Crowd cheering continues...

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Thank you....

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Thank you so much..

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Thank you..

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To Graça Machel and the Mandela family..

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To President Zuma and the members of the government,

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to heads of states and goverment, past and present,distinguished guests..

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It is a singular honour to be with you today to celebrate a life like no other.

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To the people of South Africa [CROWD CHEERING]

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people of every race and every walk of life, the world thanks you for sharing Nelson Mandela with us.

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His struggle was your struggle. His triumph was your triumph.

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Your dignity and your hope found expression in his life and your freedom, your democracy is his cherished legacy.

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It is hard to eulogize any man, to capture in words not just the facts and the dates that make a life, but the essential truth of a person

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their private joys and sorrows; the quiet moments and unique qualities that illuminate someone’s soul.

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How much harder to do so for a giant of history, who moved a nation toward justice,

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and in the process moved billions around the world.

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Born during World War I, far from the corridors of power, a boy raised herding cattle and tutored by the elders of his Thembu tribe,

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Madiba would emerge as the last great liberator of the 20th century, like Gandhi, he would lead a resistance movement,

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a movement that at its start had little prospect for success.

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Like Dr King, he would give potent voice to the claims of the oppressed and the moral necessity of racial justice.

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He would endure a brutal imprisonment that began in the time of Kennedy and Khrushchev, and reached the final days of the Cold War.

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Emerging from prison, without the force of arms, he would, like Abraham Lincoln, hold his country together when it threatened to break apart.

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And like America’s Founding Fathers, he would erect a constitutional order to preserve freedom for future generations.

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A commitment to democracy and rule of law ratified not only by his election, but by his willingness to step down from power after only one term.

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( crowd cheeing... continues)

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Given the sweep of his life, the scope of his accomplishments, the adoration that he so rightly earned,

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it’s tempting I think to remember Nelson Mandela as an icon, smiling and serene,

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detached from the tawdry affairs of lesser men. But Madiba himself strongly resisted such a lifeless portrait.

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(Crowd cheering.......)

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Instead, Mandela insisted on sharing with us his doubts and his fears, his miscalculations along with his victories

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"I am not a saint", he said “unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.”

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It was precisely because he could admit to imperfection -- because he could be so full of good humor, even mischief,

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despite the heavy burdens he carried -- that we loved him so.

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He was not a bust made of marble; he was a man of flesh and blood -- a son and a husband, a father and a friend.

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And that’s why we learned so much from him, and that’s why we can learn from him still. For nothing he achieved was inevitable.

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In the arc of his life, we see a man who earned his place in history through struggle and shrewdness, and persistence and faith.

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He tells us what is possible not just in the pages of history books, but in our own lives as well.

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Mandela showed us the power of action; of taking risks on behalf of our ideals.

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Perhaps Madiba was right that he inherited, “a proud rebelliousness, a stubborn sense of fairness” from his father.

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