Ndelika Mandela on 'climate apartheid,' how to stay hopeful and her granddad's legacy

This week marks the tenth anniversary of the passing of Nelson Mandela. His activism against apartheid sent him to prison for 27 years. After that system of racial segregation came to an end and Mandela was released, he went on to become president of South Africa.

Today, he is survived by 17 grandchildren. The eldest is 58-year-old Ndileka Mandela, a former ICU nurse leads the Thembekile Mandela Foundation, which focuses on health, education and youth development in South Africa's rural villages.

This week, she traveled to Dubai for the U.N. climate conference COP28 to participate in a panel entitled "Strategies in She called for an end to "climate apartheid" — a term she's using to jar people into action to help countries in the Global South who she says are unfairly burdened with the impacts of a changing planet. But she says it's also a phrase that implies there's a way out of the morass — just as apartheid was overcome in South Africa.