Almost every personal and professional road he traveled—whether that road meant establishing the first black law firm in South Africa, forming the African National Congress Youth League, or refusing a pardon due to continued injustice—was a brave and powerful example of the long journey to freedom.
Explanation:
In 2000, a quarter of South African citizens between the ages of 15- and 45-years old tested positive for HIV/AIDS. In a time and place with four million infected people and incalculable stigma, Nelson Mandela called for bold new measures to be taken in the fight against AIDS.
While he regretted not doing enough while he was in office, Nelson Mandela single-handedly set a new agenda for the future fight against HIV/AIDS with a groundbreaking speech in 2000 at an International AIDS conference in Durban. Combined with his public meeting with the revolutionary South African HIV/AIDS activist Zackie Achmat in 2002 and his relentless engagement with the fight through the later years of his life, Nelson Mandela was a devoted advocate for HIV+ South Africans all the way up until his death in 2013.
When Nelson Mandela was on trial in 1962 for leaving the country illegally and for inciting a workers’ strike, he donned the traditional dress of Thembu polities, declined legal representation and argued that he was a black man in a white man’s court. Insisting on the illegitimacy of the process, he used the platform to amplify the voice of a movement rather than to defend himself. He was clear that white supremacy was a system and that his struggle was all about dismantling it. Fifteen years later, Mandela wrote from prison a long reflection on the Black Consciousness Movement, in the course of which he said,
"Those who help to perpetuate white supremacy are the enemies of the people, even if they are black, while those who oppose all forms of racism form part of the people irrespective of their colour.
In the
Western Roman Empire, the fall of the west left a power vacuum that set the
stage for the rise of fragmented regional kingdoms.
In India,
the tradition of weak centralized power coupled with the Hindu caste system
contributed to the social stability after the fall of the Gupta empire.