Mr Speaker, Mr Deputy President, colleagues, we are gathered here today to pay our respects to the most revered person of our age. We are humbled and proud that, like him, we can call ourselves South Africans.

Today, our thoughts and prayers are with Madiba's immediate family here in the gallery with us today, his entire South African family and the global community that seeks to uphold the values he embodied. His death has united the world in grief. However, it has also united us in hope. He showed us that service and sacrifice do indeed leave the world a better place; human beings can leave the world a better place.

More has been written about Madiba than about any other person this century. So, what is there to add? The hon Deputy President spoke about our pain and we all feel that pain. It is truly remarkable to see that pain reverberating around the world like no other event could have, joining all of us together in experiencing it.

However, time will heal our pain. What must remain, and indeed what must grow within us, is a sense of the enormous responsibility we have inherited to continue his work. He has handed the baton to us and we dare not drop it.

I found the best summary of our responsibility in the words of Mrs Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King Jr, who, like Madiba, became a global icon in the same cause. Mrs King said:

The struggle for freedom is never finally won. You earn it and win it in every generation.

Now, we know that if anybody earned freedom, it was Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela. Indeed, he earned it for all of us. I was particularly struck by the word "earn" in that sentence, because we want to believe that freedom is a right. In an era full of demands, it is helpful to hear the word "earn" again. It reminds us to ask ourselves: How do we earn our freedom now?

Madiba's most famous phrase was: "It's a long walk to freedom", which is also the title of his autobiography, which I think many of us have returned to in the last few days. The long walk to freedom is not yet done. The destination is not yet reached. It never is. Ahead of us still lies a long walk to the kind of freedom that each South African can use to improve their lives. Freedom you can use is freedom fulfilled.

Today, we must face the fact, in this House, that millions of South Africans have formal freedoms but still cannot use it to improve their lives, because they lack the education, security, health and the means to do so. Our work in taking Madiba's legacy forward is to ensure that many more South Africans are able to use the freedoms that he bequeathed them and that they appreciate, like him, the discipline and the diligence required to use your freedoms. Otherwise we betray his legacy.

Of the millions of words written and spoken about Madiba in the last few days, there are none more famous than the words he spoke in the dock during the treason trial. We know them well.

I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for, and to see realised. But ... if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

However profound and well known that passage is, it is also important to dig a bit deeper. Just a few short sentences above those words, in his most famous speech, are these:

Political division, based on colour, is entirely artificial and, when it disappears, so will the domination of one colour group by another. The ANC has spent half a century fighting against racialism.

He further said: "When it triumphs, as it most certainly must, it will not change that policy." These are profound words indeed.

The best tribute we can pay Madiba now is to ensure that our political debate focuses on issues of how best we can ensure that each South African child, whatever the circumstances of their birth, inherits freedom they can use. Let his death open that new chapter.

Lala ngoxolo, Tata. Asoze sikulibale. [Kwaqhwatywa.] [Rest in peace, Tata. We will never forget you. [Applause.]]