Johannesburg - Former US president Barack Obama has touched on some of the issues he said continue to hamper the development of women and people of colour worldwide.
Speaking at the Nelson Mandela lecture on Tuesday at the Wanderers Stadium, Obama said prejudice was so entrenched in many institutions, something that made progress for some people extremely hard. Even laws that were put in place could not help because structures of privilege and power never completely went away. "They were never completely destroyed and they still determine who gets opportunities."
Before taking the stage, the crowds had chanted "Yes we can".
He also said it was a "plain fact" that racial discrimination still exists in the US and South Africa, something that made the crowd applaud wildly.
"Institutional oppression has created discrepancies," he said.
He also stated that women were being victimised and blocked from getting positions of authority.
"The more things change, the more they remain the same. Strongmen politics is everywhere. Those in power seek to undermine every institution that gives democracy a meaning."
Obama also said Mandela inspired him while he was a student, making him re-examine his own priorities "to consider the small role I might play in bending the arc towards justice".
Mandela "came to embody the universal aspirations of dispossessed people all around the world with hopes for a better life, and the possibility of a moral transformation in the conduct of human affairs," Obama said.