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| 1st Black President of the Republic of South Africa, Nelson Mandela |
JOHANNESBURG — Nelson
Mandela, South Africa’s first black president and an enduring icon of the
struggle against racial oppression, died on Thursday 5, 2013 the government
announced, leaving the nation without its moral center at a time of growing
dissatisfaction with the country’s leaders.
“Our nation has lost its greatest son,”
President Jacob Zuma said in a televised address late Thursday night, adding
that Mr. Mandela had died at 8:50 p.m. local time. “His tireless struggle for
freedom earned him the respect of the world. His humility, his compassion and
his humanity earned him their love.”
Mr. Zuma called Mr.
Mandela’s death “the moment of our deepest sorrow,” and said that South
Africa’s thoughts were now with the former president’s family. “They have
sacrificed much and endured much so that our people could be free,” he said.
Mr. Mandela spent 27
years in prison after being convicted of treason by the white minority
government, only to forge a peaceful end to white rule by negotiating with his
captors after his release in 1990. He led the African National Congress, long a
banned liberation movement, to a resounding electoral victory in 1994, the
first fully democratic election in the country’s history.
Mr. Mandela, who was
95, served just one term as South Africa’s president and had not been seen in
public since 2010, when the nation hosted the soccer World Cup. But his decades
in prison and his insistence on forgiveness over vengeance made him a potent
symbol of the struggle to end this country’s brutally codified system of racial
domination, and of the power of peaceful resolution in even the most
intractable conflicts.
Years after he
retreated from public life, his name still resonated as an emblem of his effort
to transcend decades of racial division and create what South Africans called a
Rainbow Nation.
“His commitment to
transfer power and reconcile with those who jailed him set an example that all
humanity should aspire to,” a grim President Obama said Thursday evening,
describing Mr. Mandela as an “influential, courageous and profoundly good” man
who inspired millions — including himself — to a spirit of reconciliation.
Mr. Mandela and Mr.
Obama both served as the first black leaders of their nations, and both men won
the Nobel Peace Prize. But the American president has shied away from
comparisons, often noting that his own sacrifices would never compare to the
ones that Mr. Mandela endured.
Mr. Obama said that
the world would “not likely see the likes of Nelson Mandela again,” and he
noted that the former South African president had once said that he was “not a
saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.”
Mr. Zuma did not
announce the specific cause of Mr. Mandela’s death, but he had battling
pneumonia and other lung ailments for the past six months, and had been in and
out of the hospital. Though his death was announced close to midnight, when
most in this nation of early risers are asleep, a small crowd quickly gathered
outside the house where he once lived in Soweto, on Vilekazi Street.
“Nelson Mandela,
there is no one like you,” they sang, stamping their feet in unison to a praise
song usually sung in joy. But in the midnight darkness, sadness tinged the
melody.
“He was our father,
our mother, our everything,” said Numfundo Matli, 28, a housekeeper who joined
the impromptu celebration of Mr. Mandela’s life. “What will we do without him?”
His death comes
during a period of deep unease and painful self-examination for South Africa.
In the past year and
a half, the country has faced perhaps its most serious unrest since the end of
apartheid, provoked by a wave of wildcat strikes by angry miners, a deadly
response on the part of the police, a messy leadership struggle within the
A.N.C. and the deepening fissures between South Africa’s rulers and its
impoverished masses.
Scandals over
corruption involving senior members of the party have fed a broader perception
that Mr. Mandela’s near saintly legacy from the years of struggle has been
eroded by a more recent scramble for self-enrichment among a newer elite.
After spending
decades in penurious exile, many political figures returned to find themselves
at the center of a grab for power and money. Mr. Zuma himself was charged with
corruption before rising to the presidency in 2009, though the charges were
dropped on largely technical grounds. He has faced renewed scrutiny in the past
year over $27 million spent in renovations to his house in rural Zululand.
Mr. Mandela served as president
from 1994 to 1999, stepping aside to allow his deputy, Thabo Mbeki, to run and
take the reins. Mr. Mandela spent his early retirement years focused on
charitable causes for children and later speaking out about AIDS, which has
killed millions of Africans, including his son Makgatho, who died in 2005.
Mr. Mandela
retreated from public life in 2004 at the age of 85, largely withdrawing to his
homes in the upscale Johannesburg suburb of Houghton and his ancestral village
in the Eastern Cape, Qunu.
