Our dear elder, our commander in struggle, our moral compass across the ocean. Today I do not speak about you. I speak to you.
You were never simply an American to us. You were part of us. You belonged to the same moral family as Martin Luther King Jr, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Patrice Lumumba, Julius Nyerere, Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela.
You stood in that sacred lineage of giants who refused to bow before injustice. With your passing, a generation of giants has grown smaller. But their example continues to grow bigger.
When the world trembled, you stood steady. When hatred roared, you answered with hope. Your passing marks the end of an era and the closing of a chapter written in courage, sacrifice and an unyielding faith in human dignity.
As a young organiser working alongside Dr Martin Luther King Jnr, you stood on the frontlines of the struggle against segregation, economic exclusion and racial injustice.
You marched. You organised for economic empowerment, insisting that civil rights without economic justice will ring hollow.
When Dr Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968, a generation was shaken. Yet you refused to allow despair to triumph over hope. You carried forward the message that the struggle was larger than anyone’s life. Your presidential campaigns in 1984 and 1988 were not only bids for office. They were declarations that America’s democracy belonged to all its people – black, white, Latino, working class, immigrant, poor and marginalised.
You expanded the political imagination of a nation.
But your moral compass was never confined to American borders. You were an internationalist who confronted injustice wherever it reared its ugly head. During the darkest days of apartheid, when many global leaders buried their heads in the sand, you stood firmly with the oppressed people of South Africa. Your bond of solidarity with the oppressed people was forged in conviction, not convenience.
Perhaps more than any other American of your generation, you built a bridge of friendship between the people of the US and the people of South Africa. It was a bridge forged in struggle, sacrifice and shared tears. You did not treat our pain as distant news. You carried it as your own burden.
When apartheid sought to suffocate us, your voice thundered across the Atlantic. You raised your voice in American cities against apartheid brutality. You called for sanctions when it was unpopular.
You loved the people of South Africa, not as a symbolic cause, but as brothers and sisters bound together by a shared history of resistance. For South Africans, you were more than an ally. You were family. You understood that the struggle against apartheid was inseparable from the global fight against racism and inequality. You embraced our struggle as if it was yours. You celebrated Madiba’s freedom as if chains had fallen from your own wrists. When freedom came in 1994, you rejoiced with us.
Your journey was long, principled and global. From the streets of Chicago to the townships and villages of South Africa, you carried one consistent message: injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere!
The last time I saw you was at the funeral of Mama Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. There you stood, with visible scars of long years of struggle, but still fierce and determined in spirit. Even in grief, your presence carried the weight of history.
I remember thinking then that you were one of the last living bridges to that generation of moral titans.
I have no doubt you were deeply troubled in recent years by the erosion of political decorum and truth in global discourse. You were disappointed by the posture of Donald Trump towards South Africa, your home far from home.
You were America’s moral ambassador. In seasons when anger tempted many of us to turn away from the US, especially when Trump spoke recklessly about our country and peddled lies about genocide, we remembered you.
We remembered that America was not only about noise, arrogance, spectacle and bullying. It was also about Jesse Jackson and millions of ordinary Americans whose hearts continue, against a raging tide, to ignite the flames of freedom and global peace.
Now you have joined a galaxy of stars in Martin Luther King, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela and many others. And we are left with the echo of your footsteps and the weight of your example.
Your voice may now be silent, but your legacy is not.
- Monama is a government communicator and public servant. He writes in his personal capacity
