Nelson Mandela passes at age 95

By Tracy Connor, Staff Writer, NBC News

Nelson Mandela, the revered South African anti-apartheid icon who spent 27 years in prison, led his country to democracy and became its first black president, died Thursday at home. He was 95.

"He is now resting," said South African President Jacob Zuma. "He is now at peace."

"Our nation has lost his greatest son," he continued. "Our people have lost their father."

A state funeral will be held, and Zuma called for mourners to conduct themselves with "the dignity and respect" that Mandela personified.

"Wherever we are in the country, wherever we are in the world, let us reaffirm his vision of a society… in which none is exploited, oppressed or dispossessed by another," he said as tributes began pouring in from across the world.

Though he was in power for only five years, Mandela was a figure of enormous moral influence the world over – a symbol of revolution, resistance and triumph over racial segregation.

He inspired a generation of activists, left celebrities and world leaders star-struck, won the Nobel Peace Prize and raised millions for humanitarian causes.

South Africa is still bedeviled by challenges, from class inequality to political corruption to AIDS. And with Mandela’s death, it has lost a beacon of optimism.


Feb. 1990: NBC's Robin Lloyd reports on Nelson Mandela on the eve of his release from prison in 1990. Mandela's name has become a rallying cry for the overthrow of apartheid, but no one but prison guards and visitors have actually seen him since he was jailed 27 years ago.

In his jailhouse memoirs, Mandela wrote that even after spending so many years in a Spartan cell on Robben Island – with one visitor a year and one letter every six months – he still had faith in human nature.

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion,” he wrote in “Long Walk to Freedom.”

“People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”

Mandela retired from public life in 2004 with the half-joking directive, “Don’t call me, I’ll call you,” and had largely stepped out of the spotlight, spending much of his time with family in his childhood village.

His health had been fragile in recent years. He had spent almost three months in a hospital in Pretoria after being admitted in June for a recurring lung infection. He was released on Sept. 1.

In his later years, Mandela was known to his countrymen simply as Madiba, the name of his tribe and a mark of great honor. But when he was born on July 18, 1918, he was named Rolihlahla, which translated roughly – and prophetically – to “troublemaker.”

Mandela was nine when his father died, and he was sent from his rural village to the provincial capital to be raised by a fellow chief. The first member of his family to get a formal education, he went to boarding school and then enrolled in South Africa’s elite Fort Hare University, where his activism unfurled with a student boycott.

As a young law scholar, he joined the resurgent African National Congress just a few years before the National Party – controlled by the Afrikaners, the descendants of Dutch and French settlers – came to power on a platform of apartheid, in which the government enforced racial segregation and stripped non-whites of economic and political power.

As an ANC leader, Mandela advocated peaceful resistance against government discrimination and oppression – until 1961, when he launched a military wing called Spear of the Nation and a campaign of sabotage.


April, 1994: Former political prisoner Nelson Mandela is on the verge of being elected South Africa's first black president.

The next year, he was arrested and soon hit with treason charges. At the opening of his trial in 1964, he said his adoption of armed struggle was a last resort born of bloody crackdowns by the government.

“Fifty years of non-violence had brought the African people nothing but more and more repressive legislation and fewer and few rights,” he said from the dock.

“I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal for which I hope to live for and achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

He was sentenced to life in prison and sent to Robben Island. As inmate No. 466/64, he slept on the floor of a six-foot-wide cell, did hard labor in a quarry, organized fellow prisoners – and earned a law degree by correspondence.

As the years passed, his incarceration drew ever more attention, with intensifying cries for his release as a global anti-apartheid movement gained traction. Songs were dedicated to him and 600 million people watched the Free Mandela concert at London’s Wembley Stadium in 1988.

In 1985, he turned down the government’s offer to free him if he renounced armed struggle against apartheid. It wasn’t until South African President P.W. Botha had a stroke and was replaced by F.W. de Klerk in 1989 that the stage was set for his release.

After a ban on the ANC was repealed, a whiter-haired Mandela walked out prison before a jubilant crowd and told a rally in Cape Town that the fight was far from over.

“Our struggle has reached a decisive moment,” he said. “We have waited too long for our freedom. We can no longer wait.”

Over the next two years, Mandela proved himself a formidable negotiator as he pushed South Africa toward its first multiracial elections amid tension and violence. He and de Klerk were honored with the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts.

When the elections were held in April 1994, the ex-prisoner became the next president and embarked on a mission of racial reconciliation, government rebuilding and economic rehabilitation.

Springbok captain Francois Pienaar receives the Rugby World Cup from South African President Nelson Mandela at Ellis Park in Johannesburg on June 24, 1995.

A year into his tenure, with racial tensions threatening to explode into civil war, Mandela orchestrated an iconic, unifying moment: He donned the green jersey of the Springboks rugby team – beloved by whites, despised by blacks – to present the World Cup trophy to the team captain while the stunned crowd erupted in cheers of “Nelson! Nelson!”

He chose to serve only one five-year term – during which he divorced his second wife, Winnie, a controversial activist, and married his third, Graca, the widow of the late president of Mozambique.

After leaving politics, he concentrated on his philanthropic foundation. He began speaking out on AIDS, which had ravaged his country and which some critics said he had not made a priority as president.

When he officially announced he was leaving public life in 2004, it signaled he was slowing down, but he still made his presence known. For his 89th birthday, he launched a “council of elders,” statesmen and women from around the world who would promote peace. For his 90th, he celebrated at a star-studded concert in London’s Hyde Park.

As he noted in 2003, “If there is anything that would kill me it is to wake up in the morning not knowing what to do.”

In April, de Klerk was asked on the BBC if he feared that Mandela’s eventual death would expose fissures in South Africa that his grandfatherly presence had kept knitted together.

De Klerk said that Madiba would be just as unifying a force in death.

“When Mandela goes, it will be a moment when all South Africans put away their political differences, take hands, and will together honor maybe the biggest South African that has ever lived,” he said.

 

may he rest in peace...the world has lost one of it's greatest leaders of all time

 

This is really tragic.

I have some uneasiness regarding South Africa from hereon out. He was a father...and in fact, the progenitor of the modern South Africa. It's a shame that he passed on. Much of his legacy will never be seen in his eyes one of these days.

It's been fun. Maybe you forever be in humble respite.

 

RIP

The world has lost its Greatest freedom fighter!

 

I find it very sad that there were far more posts on Facebook about and actor who died than there were for Nelson Mandela. I just don't think the younger generations have any ideal what he did for the world. RIP

 

Madiba would be sorely missed. He did what some people thought impossible of not retaliating against the people who made Apartheid possible. He ranks with Martin Luther King Jr. in being one of the greatest Black leaders in the world. To be born on his birthday is special. It is like being born on MLK's birthday. Like King there would be nothing like him in our lifetimes.

 

May the great leader never be forgotten. RIP Nelson Mandela

 

Such a loss for a world without direction and purpose.

Rest in peace Nelson. You were a kind, brave, intelligent and compassionate man who has left a huge hole in a world that does not know how to give all that you were.

 

I think that depends on your friends. I've seen far more posts about this great man and of friends changing their fb pics to one of Nelson in honor of him

 

In the early 80's, I did not know who Nelson Mandela was. I recall seeing a music video called Free Nelson Mandela. I recall a film made by HBO called Mandela and it starred Danny Glover as Mandela and Alfre Woodard as his wife Winnie. It is from this film I learned the story of Nelson Mandela and Apartheid in South Africa. Two more movies were made with Mandela being the central figure. There was De Klerk and Mandela; a film about the relationship of those two men and the relationship was a bit rocky until Mandela was elected president. That film starred Sidney Poitier as Mandela and Michael Caine as De Klerk. Then Morgan Freeman played Mandela in the film Invictus, directed by Clint Eastwood. As William Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, "He was a man. Take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again." I don't think there will ever be a man like Nelson Mandela, a man who fought without resorting to violence and who became the president of a country that had that had a system that had imprisoned him for 27 years. He had lived a very full life. May he Rest In Final Peace.

 

I am proud as an African that this man came out of my continent and was an ICON all over the world. Bill Clinton once told this great man, all of us would want to be him on our best day. He is peerless and has been a blessing to the world. Goodbye Madiba and may your ancestors keep you in their bosom

 

Every immediate death touches people one way or another. It's a quick impulse from the emotional response.

But as Tarshi said...it really depends on your location and circle. However, Walker's death, while I personally never cared for him as an actor, he has contributed to worldwide charities and set some of his own.

That being said, as long as they've contributed something, their mark on the world will forever be etched.

 

Though I know he is no saint and has flaws and might have had some hands directly or indirectly in necklacing black or white south Africans in his early days of ANC.... But one can not forget the changed man that Mandela became later on his years and the hard work that he put to unify not only South Africa but the entire world and his tireless task to bring peaceful and harmony to the globe.

I am amazed how many ppl on cyberspace and in real world think of him as a terrorist. But they refer to William Wallace as a patriot while they are inhaling their buttered popcorn and watching the Patriot starring Mel Gibson....

Also I am shocked Mandela was on US terrorist list until 2008??????

Anyhow RIP great warrior.
May your tireless soul finally rest in peace.

 

RIP - May his influence be felt for millennia!

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May he rest in peace, he was/is a blessing to all humanity. He made this world better.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umkhonto_we_Sizwe#Military_campaign

terrorism and torture.
No matter how noble and right the intentions are, those are never acceptable.

If there is an afterlife I don't think he'll be in heaven.

 

I've first read about SA when I saw a photo of a segregated beach on Time magazine weeks before Soweto happened. From then on I read and watched almost everything about South Africa in documentaries from local and public tv,Sunrise Semester on CBS,and movies. In the 80's and 90's more news,listened to the daughter of Albert Luthuli,and saw South Africa Now on my local PBS station. I heard of Steve Biko than Nelson Mandela.