with mandela. >> he was a close friend of

nelson mandela and a fellow activist and one of the first recruits for the african national congress also known as the mk, he was arrested and charged for sabotage for plotting to overthrow the government with mandela and he served time in prison next to mandela on robin island so let's go now live to johannesburg, he by the way is just one of three surviving co-defendants of the revonia trial and we go to the stadium to hear his remarks, andrew. >> we have temporarily lost the feed and we will get that right back to you but i want to turn to ms. moja, he had a key role in the government in the 90s, can you talk a little bit more about it. >> he played a role because they were part of the group that knew one another very well very been together very well and having

confidence in one another, almost like we are in a circle, we are confident as people can talk to. so people in south africa really respected him for that and they felt that what they were saying and the advice that was given to the government almost like coleading with his mandela so that was very important in the country. >> and he plays a role now in the anc as the deputy president. let's talk a little bit about where the anc is today. >> i think that anc is at cross roads at the moment and at that time mediva also pushes the anc to that cross road in some ways. we are going for elections next year, in a few months and we are going to have elections. this is a time that in a way

which i regard what is happening in south africa is the normal progression of democracy. >> okay, let's actually go

>> we are having problems again with our feed from johannesburg, obviously it's a stormy day and wondering if it's effecting our satellite but let's go back to talking about where south africa is today and where it was in the 90s and i want to ask you tony at what point as an african/american did you become conscious of nelson mandela's story? >> i was working here in new york. it was the middle 80s and i was working for entertainment tonight and not in news at the time and i was covering entertainment news for et and the guests and you will remember

the great film with kevin klein and about the life and times of steven eco. >> a movement. >> a name that we have not heard much of as we remember the life of nelson mandela as opposed to me, telling everyone who is watching of the life and take a moment and talk about steven and what an amazing figure he was and the film that captured in a way that was unrelenting what it was like to live in south africa in the apartheid years. >> and i think we can extend that conversation to where we started where you were talking about when and where did you become aware of nelson mandela for all of us, where and when,

so maybe let's start with that and we will move on. and i recall my own sort of liken counter with mandela or getting to know who mandela was and i remember he was in prison and my sister comes to me and said you know there is this guy called nelson mandela and they asked him, say, will you continue with the bad things or will you change and he said i'll continue. and they decided not to release him and we are like what is this guy and what did he do? that is little information. then mandela was taken away from us and no image of him and didn't know what the expect in 1990 when he stepped out. >> what he looked like. >> we had pictures of him and some of the pictures we have seen but very, very few. >> when we went into prison he was a young boxer. >> the nelson mandela that came

out was a different man than what we had in our imagination in terms of looks and i'm talking just his appearance like what, that is him. and for me what also is interesting is watching him transform. he walked out. he changed the prison clothes into a suit, he walked out with a suit and he changed the suit into traditional garb so this transformation of this man that is experiencing all the time to the time that he stepped down from government, aging and seeing him ailing and walking and on for the dancing president to the ailing mandela and so on. this seems to have happened in a short period of time. it's like having lived his dream in a compressed way. >> 30 years basically. >> and you saw the toll of all those years in prison in real time, right? >> yes. >> the effects of the illnesses,

the prostate cancer, the tb and problems with the vision and the rock quarry, right, you saw that in real time. >> yes. >> and we will get back to the conversation. >> we will come back. >> we had multiple conversations going on as we have been listening to speakers and i want to get to some of that in a moment. >> and allan schauffler is live in the stadium and allan what can you tell us? >> right now the people here in the stadium are listening to andrew malaghani talk about nelson mandela, the heritage and history and the future that south africa faces. i can tell you the crowd is more happier when the dancing and singing starts. there is a lot of energy built up and having people in the rain and listening to speakers is going to be a little tough today but we understand the speeches will be interrupted periodically

by song and tributes to nelson mandela and should keep the energy up here. we will also hear from a number of the mandela family, that is the next part of the program including from four of his grandchildren and then we will move on to the speeches from world leaders, barack obama being the first to speak and castro being the last and zuma the current president will give the keynote address later. we started just about an hour late with the african national anthem, by the joyous celebrations choir and scheduled to run until 3:00 south africa time and we expect it will be a lot later than that, this will be a long, long day and it's lightening up in here a bit. every once this a while we get a hint the rain may stop and we can hope in the next couple hours it quiets down and gives the crowd a break. >> we are going to gong him the

revolutionary of our time and a lot of times when we do think about nelson mandela we forget that he really was a revolutionary at one point in his life taking up an arms struggle. i wonder if our guests can put

that into context for us, that period of the anc when an arms struggle was part of the struggle for rights. >> it gets us to 1960, doesn't it? >> yeah, and i think there is often a miss conception and people think the arms struggle was always part of the african national congress strategy but it wasn't. as you mentioned it was really the event of shopville and the people in shopville that prompted young people and at that time nelson mandela was a young man and members of the anc says we cannot keep talking peace and negotiations. >> remind us of shopville for people in my generation with children literally getting shot in the back. >> overpass laws. >> over past laws. >> it was sort of a mass

campaign to show the anger and it was meant to be a peaceful demonstration and as happened in south africa quite regularly one of the commanding officers in the police station fired one shot and all the police officers started firing. and it was also i think what made it really important is it was almost a first event to do with south africa that became a global event and pictures went around the world and suddenly the south african government found itself on the back foot, explaining how an event could have happened and the two levels that was going on in the anc and what was going on in the south african government in shopville and it gets banned after shopville because obviously the government would like to have blamed them for the event. so i think shopville was a pivotal point in the sort of turning anc peaceful movement

into a movement, continuing with negotiations but also using the struggle as a way to prompt the nationalist party to negotiate. >> all right, we are going to continue the conversation and we will be back as well to hear from a member of >> and now a techknow minute...

ourselves to the values that mediva stood for, in the spirit here, we hope that you will continue to stand by us and encourage us, guide us, because of you. as a family we have no option except by the principals of mandela because he would accept no less, let's be aware of coming from the place and far beyond our borders, that we dare

not to phase the legacy and we ask you to do the same. and the next generation of leaders, and who will make the world a better place, our generation needs a new breed of leader like mediva. and many other lives. and so, friends, death has made the final call for his glorious life and he is gone from before our eyes, but never from our hearts and minds. and we mourn today, let

>> we are going to take a quick look at the weather they are experiencing in south africa and bring in metrologist nicole mitchell and good morning. >> as we have been able to see from a lot of the images coming from this morning we are definitely under a disturbed area and looking at a lot of clouds in general and those periods on-and-off of rain through the day and the temperature is 58 fahrenheit for us or looking at that in celsius that is 9 degrees and going into basically the 60s today and staying pretty much what we have. a lot of this is light rain, the darker colors are the heavier rain pockets and it will remain with areas of light rain for that, that is actually been feshl in this part of the world to get the rain and hopefully not causing many problems for the ceremony today and we will keep you posted on the weather

later on in the morning and back to you guys. >> nicole i want a five-day forecast because there are a number of events. >> you will get that later. >> south africa's five-day forecast, thank you very much, thank you. >> it's really unusual nicole to have rain and one of the early comments in the ceremony was in africa when it rains it is a way for the gods to say they are welcoming you to the gate of heaven, that was one of the early lines we will remember from the morning.

right, you are absolutely right on that point. >> let's go to al jazeera's del waters. >> and moon is the next major speaker taking the stages in a few moments and, in fact, all of them are major after mandela's death, they are calling mandela equality for human rights and he met mandela in 2009, when he heard of his passing he said he recalled that first meeting and moon saying at the time that mandela told him it's not only me, and you heard this on the stage earlier today, he said there were hundreds and hundreds of unknown and known people who worked for the cause. and the chief said he was deeply moved by that statement and mandela's words still guide