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NELSON MANDELA HELD A MIRROR TO HUMANITY – AND SHOWED US WHAT
SOLIDARITY MEANS  
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Zohran Mamdani
July 18, 2026
The Guardian
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_ In a speech given on Wednesday in honor of Nelson Mandela Day, New
York’s mayor reflects on what Madiba can teach us in a fractured era
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‘Solidarity is not perfection. Solidarity is not purity. Solidarity
is people choosing one another, sometimes even over themselves.,
Per-Anders Pettersson/Getty Images

 

What a privilege it is to be together to honor the leadership of the
Nelson Mandela [[link removed]]
Foundation. For 27 years, this organization has insisted that
Madiba’s legacy belongs not only in museums, but in movements for
freedom too. 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
[[link removed]] 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 10 minutes and you will find yourself in front of Cuny’s Aaron
Davis Hall. It was there, on 21 June 1990, only four months after he
had been released from Robben Island, that Madiba arrived for a town
hall with ABC News’s 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 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 whether 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 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
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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?

_Who else is leading a cause that we will glorify in retrospect, but
is being vilified in the present? Who else needs our solidarity?_

Why must Dr 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 Durán
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.

_ZOHRAN MAMDANI is mayor of New York City_

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