A Quote by Lisa Madigan

I am inspired by Nelson Mandela. I was a volunteer teacher in South Africa during apartheid, where I witnessed his success liberating black South Africans.

Lisa Madigan

Quote Topics

Africa Am Apartheid Black His Inspired Liberating Mandela Nelson South South Africa Success Teacher Volunteer Witnessed

Quote Author

Lisa Madigan
American - Public Servant
Born: July 30, 1966

Nelson Mandela was an outstanding leader and a mentor for me. I was in South Africa at the time he was released. I was in South Africa when he was inaugurated as the first president.

Gail Kelly

When [Nelson Mandela] was in prison I admired him for his moral strength... Of his period in power I can see few results. Apartheid no longer exists, at least to all appearances, but no one understands what the new government in South Africa is doing.

Mengistu Haile Mariam

Very sad to hear about the passing of Nelson Mandela. He was a true inspiration for human rights and equality for South Africa and the reason apartheid no longer exists there. The world will never forget his capacity for forgiveness and magnanimity. RIP

Bryan Adams

Nelson Mandela sat in a South African prison for 27 years. He was nonviolent. He negotiated his way out of jail. His honor and suffering of 27 years in a South African prison is really ultimately what brought about the freedom of South Africa. That is nonviolence.

Coretta Scott King

I remember my emotions the day we watched Nelson Mandela walk out of prison Writing & literature in South Africa during the anti-apartheid years, became a 'cultural weapon.' You had to use it to fight apartheid & some of us resisted that in the end, you recognize that you are facing a government that has no scruples about using culture & art to oppress you.

Achmat Dangor

I was born in South Africa during apartheid, a system of laws that made it illegal for people to mix in South Africa. And this was obviously awkward because I grew up in a mixed family. My mother's a black woman, South African Xhosa woman... and my father's Swiss, from Switzerland.

Trevor Noah

We want Nelson Mandela and the people of South Africa to know that we will stand shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, until apartheid is eradicated.

Ron Dellums

I was 15 years old when I first heard the name Mandela, or Madiba, as he is fondly known in Africa. In apartheid South Africa he was public enemy number one. Shrouded in secrecy, myth and rumour, the media called him 'The Black Pimpernel'.

Kumi Naidoo

My job is not done. I address my songs now to the third world. I am popular all over Asia and Africa and the Middle East, not to speak of South Africa, where I'm trying to go to see Nelson Mandela.

Nina Simone

In 1985, I joined my mother in a protest against apartheid in which we were arrested at the South African embassy in Washington, D.C. And she was at President-elect Mandela's side in Johannesburg when he claimed victory in South Africa's first free elections.

Bernice King

My maternal family are South African and when I was small and my parents separated my mother and I went back to South Africa. So for me the emergence of my own childhood consciousness was in the context of 1970s and 1980s apartheid South Africa and the movement there.

Rachel Holmes

Nelson Mandela's contribution to the people of South Africa has been immeasurable and I look forward to helping with his work all over the country.

Afeni Shakur

It's a blessing that South Africa has a man like Nelson Mandela.

Desmond Tutu

As we mourn President Mandela’s passing we must ask ourselves the fundamental question - what shall we do to respond to the tasks of building a democratic, non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous South Africa, a people-centred society free of hunger, poverty, disease and inequality, as well as Africa’s renaissance, to whose attainment President Nelson Mandela dedicated his whole life?