Barack Obama's speech at Nelson Mandela memorial service honours his hero's legacy.

In a rain soaked stadium in Soweto  South Africans by the tens of thousands have gathered alongside close to 100 world leaders at a memorial service for Nelson Mandela.

Several world leaders addressed the crowd, including US President Barack Obama.

President Obama‘s speech at Nelson Mandela memorial service has been republished in full below:

Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.

To Graca Machel and the Mandela family, to President Zuma and members of the Government, to heads of State and Government past and present, distinguished guests.

It is a singular honour to be with you today to celebrate a life like no other.

To the people of South Africa. People of every race and every walk of life, the world thanks you for sharing Nelson Mandela with us.

His struggle was your struggle.

His triumph was your struggle.

His triumph was your triumph, your dignity and your hope found expression in his life and your freedom, your democracy is his cherished legacy.

It is hard to eulogise any man, to capture in words not just the facts and the dates that make a life but the essential truth of a person, the private joys and sorrows, acquired moments and unique qualities that illuminates someone’s soul. How much harder to do so for someone who moved billions around the world.

Born during World War I, far from the corridors of power, a boy raised herding cattle and tutored by the elders of his tribe, Madiba would emerge as the last great liberator of the 20th century.

Like Ghandi he would lead a resistance movement, a movement that at its start had little prospect for success. Like Dr King, he would give potent voice to the claims of the oppressed and the moral necessity of racial justice. He would endure a brutal imprisonment that began in the time of Kennedy and reach the final days of the Cold War, emerging from prison without the force of arms he would, like Abraham Lincoln, hold his country together when it threatened to break apart.

And like America’s founding fathers he would erect a constitutional order to preserve freedomfor future generations. A commitment to democracy and rule of law, ratified not only by his election but by his willingness to step down from power after only one term.

Given the sweep of his life, the scope of his accomplishments, the adoration that he so rightly earned, it’s tempting, I think, to remember Nelson Mandela as an icon, smiling and serene, detached from the tawdry affairs of lesser men but Madiba himself strongly resisted such a lifeless portrait.

Instead, Madiba insisted on sharing with us his doubts and his fears, his miscalculations along with his victories. I am not a saint, he said, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.

It was precisely because he could admit to imperfection, because he could be so full of good humour, even mischief despite the heavy burdens that he carried that we loved him so.

He was not a bust made of marble, he was a man of flesh and blood, a son and a husband, a father and a friend. And that’s why we learn so much from him and that’s why we can learn from him still.

For nothing he achieved was inevitable. In the ark of his life we see a man who earned his place in history through struggle and shrewdness and persistence and faith.

He tells us what is possible not just in the pages of history books but in our own lives as well. And showed us the power of action, of taking risk on behalf of our ideals.

Perhaps Mandela was right that he inherited a proud rebelliousness, a stubborn sense of fairness from his father and we know he shared with millions of black and coloured South Africans the anger born of 1,000 sleights, 1,000 indignities, 1,000 unremembered moments, a desire to fight the system that imprisoned my people, he said.

But like other early giants of the ANC, Madiba disciplined his … anger and channelled his desire to fight into organisation and platforms and strategies for action so men and women could stand up for their God-given dignity. Moreover, he accepted the consequences of his actions knowing that standing up to powerful interests and injustice carries a price.

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 live together in harmony and equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve but if needs be it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

Mandela taught us the power of action but he also taught us the power of ideas. The importance of reason and arguments, the need to study not only those who you agree with but also those who you don’t agree with.

He understood that ideas cannot be contained by prison walls or extinguished by prison walls or extinguished by a sniper’s bullet. He turned his trial into an indictment of apartheid because of his eloquence and his passion but also because of his training as an advocate.

He used decades of prison to sharpen his arguments but also to spread his thirst for knowledge to others in the movement. And he learned the language and the customs or his oppressors so that one day he might better convey to them how their own freedom depend upon his.

Mandela demonstrated that action and ideas are not enough, no matter how right they must also bechiselled in the law and institutions.

He was practical, testing his beliefs against the hard surface of circumstance and history. On core principles he was unyielding, which is why he could rebuff offers of unconditional release reminding the apartheid regime that prisoners cannot enter into contracts.

But as he showed in painstaking negotiations to transfer power and draft new laws he was not afraid to compromise for the sake of a larger goal. And because he was not only a leader of a movement but a skilful politician, the constitution that emerged was worthy of this multiracial democracy, true to his vision of laws that protect minority as well as majority rights and the precious freedoms of every South African.

And finally, Mandela understood the ties that bind the human spirit.

There’s a word in South Africa -Ubuntu.

A word that captures Mandela’s greatest gift, his recognition that we are all bound together in ways that are invisible to the eye, that there’s a oneness to humanity, that we achieve ourselves by sharing ourselves with others and caring for those around us.

We can never know how much of this sense was innate in him or how much was shaped in a dark and solitary cell. But we remember the gestures large and small, introducing his jailers as honoured guests at his inauguration, taking a pitch in a Springbok uniform, turning his family’s heart break into a call to confront HIV AIDS that revealed the depths of his empathy and his understanding.

He not only embodied Ubuntu-  he taught millions to find the truth within themselves.

It took a man like Madiba to free not just the prisoner but the jailer as well. To show that you must trust others so that may – they may trust you. To teach that reconciliation is not just a matter of ignoring a cruel past but a means of confronting it with inclusion and generosity and truth. He changed laws but he also changed hearts.

For the people of Africa, for those he inspired around the globe, Madiba’s passing is a time of mourning and a time to celebrate a heroic life.

But I believe it should also prompt in each of us a time for self- reflection, with honesty, regardless of our station or our circumstance we must ask how well have I applied his lessons in my own life.

It’s a question I ask myself as a man and as a president. We know that like South Africa the US had to overcome centuries of racialsubjugation. It took the sacrifice of countless people, known and unknown, to see the new day.Michelle and I are beneficiaries of that struggle. But in America and in South Africa and incountries all around the globe we cannot allow our progress to cloud the fact that our work is notyet done. The struggles that follow the victory of formal equality or universal franchise may not beas filled with drama and moral clarity as those that came before but they are no less important.

For around the world today we still see children suffering from hunger and disease. We still see run down schools, we still see young people without prospects for the future. Around the world today men and women are still in prison for their political beliefs and are still persecuted for whatthey look like and how they worship and who they love. That is happening today.

And so we too must act on behalf of justice. We too must act on behalf of peace. There are too many people who happily embrace Madiba’s legacy of racial reconciliation but passionately resist even modest reforms that would challenge chronic poverty and growing inequality.

There are too many leaders who claim solidarity with Madiba’s struggle for freedom but do not tolerate dissent from their own people. And there are too many of us, too many of us on the sidelines comfortable in complacency or cynicism when our voices must be heard.

The questions we face today, how to promote equality and justice, how to uphold freedom and human rights, how to endconflict and sectarian war, these thins do not have eas answers.

But there are no easy answers in front of that child born in World War I. Nelson Mandela reminds us that it always seems impossible until it is done. South Africa shows that it is true. South Africa shows we can change, that we can choose a world defined not byour differences but by our common hopes. We can choose a world defined not by conflict butby peace and justice and … opportunity.

We will never see the likes of Nelson Mandela again.

But let me say to the young people of Africa, and the young people of Africa, and the young people around the world, young people around the world, you too can make his life work your own. Over 30 years ago, while still a student, I learned of Nelson Mandela and the struggles taking place in this beautiful land and it stirs something in me.

It woke me up to my responsibilities, to others and to myself, and it set me on an improbable journey that finds me here today. And while I will always fall short of Madiba’s example, he makes me want to be a better man.

He speaks to what’s best inside us. After this great liberator is laid to rest and when we’ve returned to our cities and villages and rejoined our daily routines, let us search for his strength, let us search for his largeness of spirit somewhere inside of ourselves and when the night grows dark, when injustice weighs heavy on our hearts, when our best laid plans seem beyond our reach, let us think of Madiba and the words that brought him comfort within the four walls of his cell.

“It matters not how straight the gate, how charged the punishment, the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul. “

What a magnificent soul it was.

We will miss him deeply.

May God bless the memory of Nelson Mandela.

May God bless the people of South Africa.