Nelson Mandela, former South African president and anti-apartheid leader, dies at 95

Nelson Mandela, who spent 27 years as a prisoner in South Africa for opposing apartheid, then emerged to become his country’s first black president, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and an enduring symbol of integrity, principle and resilience, died Thursday at 95.

The announcement was made by South African president Jacob Zuma, who said in a nationally televised address,” Our nation has lost its greatest son. Our people have lost a father. Although we knew that this day would come, nothing can diminish our sense of a profound and enduring loss.”

Mandela had spent almost three months in a Pretoria hospital after being admitted in June with a recurring lung infection. He died at his Johannesburg home and Zuma said he would be accorded a full state funeral.

In Washington, President Obama called him one of the “most influential, courageous and profoundly good” people to ever have lived.

“He achieved more than could be expected of any man,” an emotional Obama said, in remarks from the White House, adding: “He belongs to the ages.”

Ironically, the leader hailed as a symbol of peace at one point was on a U.S. terror watch list because of his affiliation with the ANC, which was designated a terrorist organization by South Africa’s apartheid government. He was finally taken off the list in 2008.

Mandela, although initially committed to non-violence, had, in fact, once been involved with the militant wing of the ANC, which was founded in association with the South African Communist Party and carried out a campaign of violence against government targets.

The man who died an anti-apartheid hero, world statesman and symbol of the strength of the human spirit was born Rolihlahla Mandela in a village near Umtata in the Transkei on July 18, 1918. Rolihlahla literally means “pulling the branch of a tree” but more colloquially, “troublemaker.”

His father was primary councilor to the Acting Paramount Chief of Thembuland and after his father’s death, the 9-year-old Mandela became the chief’s ward. He received the English name Nelson from a primary school teacher at his mission school

After 20 years of leading a non-violent campaign against the South African government, his philosophy switched to armed struggle. In 1964 he was sentenced to life imprisonment for plotting to overthrow the government by violence.

For 18 of his 27 years in prison, he was inmate #46664 on Robben Island, a notorious maximum security facility off Cape Town, where he became a worldwide symbol of resistance to racial oppression.

Finally released … prison, … on February 11, 1990, he was elected president of the ANC in 1991.

In 1993 he and President Frederik Willem De Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and in 1994, at the age of 75, he was inaugurated as the first black president of South Africa.

His philosophy of learning to love instead of hate made him one of the moral leaders of his era.

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

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

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