Inaugural Address
by Nelson Mandela (excerpt)
Your Majesties, Your Highnesses, Distinguished Guests, Comrades and Friends:
Today, all of us do, by our presence here, and by our celebrations in other parts of our country and the world, confer glory and
hope to newborn liberty.
Out of the experience of an extraordinary human disaster that lasted too long, must be born a society of which all humanity
will be proud.
Our daily deeds as ordinary South Africans must produce an actual South African reality that will reinforce humanity's belief in
justice, strengthen its confidence in the nobility of the human soul and sustain all our hopes for a glorious life for all.
All this we owe both to ourselves and to the peoples of the world who are so well represented here today.
To my compatriots, I have no hesitation in saying that each one of us is as intimately attached to the soil of this beautiful
country as are the famous jacaranda trees of Pretoria and the mimosa trees of the bushveld.
Each time one of us touches the soil of this land, we feel a sense of personal renewal. The national mood changes as the
seasons change. We are moved by a sense of joy and exhilaration when the grass turns green and the flowers bloom.
That spiritual and physical oneness we all share with this common homeland explains the depth of the pain we all carried in
our hearts as we saw our country tear itself apart in a terrible conflict, and as we saw it spurned, outlawed and isolated by the
peoples of the world, precisely because it has become the universal base of the pernicious ideology and practice of racism and
racial oppression
We, the people of South Africa, feel fulfilled that humanity has taken us back into its bosom, that we, who were outlaws not so
long ago, have today been given the rare privilege to be host to the nations of the world on our own soil.

The time for the healing of the wounds has come. The moment to bridge the chasms that divide us has come. The time to
build is upon us.
We have, at last, achieved our political emancipation. We pledge ourselves to liberate all our people from the continuing
bondage of poverty, deprivation, suffering, gender and other discrimination. We succeeded to take our last steps to freedom
in conditions of relative peace. We commit ourselves to the construction of a complete, just and lasting peace.
We have triumphed in the effort to implant hope in the breasts of the millions of our people. We enter into a covenant that we
shall build the society in which all South Africans, both black and white, will be able to walk tall, without any fear in their hearts,
assured of their inalienable right to human dignity - a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world.
We dedicate this day to all the heroes and heroines in this country and the rest of the world who sacrificed in many ways and
surrendered their lives so that we could be free. Their dreams have become reality. Freedom is their reward.
We understand it still, that there is no easy road to freedom. We know it well that none of us acting alone can achieve success.
We must therefore act together as a united people, for national reconciliation, for nation building, for the birth of a new world.
Let there be justice for all. Let there be peace for all. Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all. Let each know that for
each the body, the mind and the soul have been freed to fulfill themselves. Never, never and never again shall it be that this
beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another and suffer the indignity of being the skunk of the world.
Let freedom reign. The sun shall never set on so glorious a human achievement.
God bless Africa!
Thank you.

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