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 as lost his greatest son," he continued. "Our people have lost their father."
A state funeral will be held.
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.”
South
Africa's anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela turned 93 today, as 12
million school children celebrated his life in song. Brian Williams
reports.
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.
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.”
April, 1994: Former political prisoner Nelson Mandela is on the verge of being elected South Africa's first black president.
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.
 |
Philip Littleton / AFP - Getty Images, file
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.
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