On December 10, 2015 Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois asked for and was granted permission to address the full Senate for a few minutes regarding the passing of Nelson Mandela.
This is what he had to say:
“Mr. President, I would like to join my colleagues and people all around the world in expressing my condolences to the people of South Africa on the passing of their great leader Nelson Mandela.
Nelson Mandela ended his extraordinary autobiography, entitled “Long Walk to Freedom,” with these words:
“I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom comes responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended.”
Sadly, President Nelson Mandela’s long walk and his noble life are indeed now ended, but his influence on the world will endure for a long time to come. As the editorial cartoonist for the Washington Post put it, Nelson Mandela was “larger than life–and death.”
Through enormous strength of character and a determination unlike many people in this world, Nelson Mandela helped his beloved South Africa to end the vicious system of apartheid and begin a new walk toward multiracial democracy. His dream, he often said, was that South Africa would become “a rainbow nation at peace with itself and with the world.”
Nelson Mandela astonished the world with his capacity to forgive–even to forgive those who jailed him and persecuted his family. There was an interview on television I saw yesterday morning on ABC in which Nelson Mandela spoke about his imprisonment shortly after he had been released. He had spent 27 years in prison, part of it on Robben Island, which I have had the opportunity to visit, to actually stand in Nelson Mandela’s tiny cell. It is an island off of Capetown. The waters around it are shark infested so the prisoners won’t try to escape from that island. They can just barely make out the land mass away from that island, but they are separated–separated on this piece of land in the middle of this ocean. There Nelson Mandela lived for almost 25 years. He lived in this cell, many times in isolation. He labored in a quarry nearby, which we visited. The sunlight bouncing off of the rocks in that quarry virtually blinded him for the rest of his life. He wore sunglasses and begged photographers not to use flashbulbs the rest of his life because of the damage that had been done to his eyes.
The prisoners on Robben Island–many of them sharing his political philosophy and opposing apartheid–tried to create a university atmosphere where they taught one another all they could remember and all they knew. They devoured information from the outside world in an effort to try to keep in touch with what was going on.
In this interview, as he was released from his imprisonment, Nelson Mandela was asked by the interviewer about his warden and his guards at the prison. He talked about the deep emotional ties they developed, how this guard he came to know–I believe his name was Gregory–was a real gentleman, in the words of Nelson Mandela, and how, when Mandela was finally released, there was a moment of emotion as they knew they would part after all these years of such a close relationship. I recall that story because so many times when I have given commencement addresses I have used as an example Nelson Mandela’s decision, when elected President of South Africa, to invite that guard from his prison to be there as one of his honored guests at his inauguration as President of South Africa. That, to me, speaks volumes” (source: Congressional Record: http://thomas.loc.gov).
See video: Mandela’s forgiveness http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8w8Bez4yqc