Nobel
laureate and human rights campaigner spent 27 years in prison.Nelson
Mandela, the anti-apartheid icon who became the first president of a
democratic South Africa, passed away Thursday at his home in
Johannesburg after a prolonged lung infection. He was 95.
South
African President Jacob Zuma announced that Mandela, "the
founding president of our democratic nation, has departed,"
adding that he "passed on peacefully."
"Our
nation has lost its greatest son. Our people have lost a father,"
Zuma said.
"Our
thoughts are with the millions of people who embraced Mandela as
their own and who saw his cause as their cause.… This is the moment
of our deepest sorrow.”
Mandela
will be accorded a state funeral, Zuma said, and national flags will
be lowered to half-mast.
"We
saw in him what we seek in ourselves. And in him we saw so much of
ourselves," he said. "Nelson Mandela brought us together
and it is together that we will bid him farewell."
Mandela's
respiratory problems in recent years may have been connected to his
imprisonment, when he contracted tuberculosis after working in a
prison quarry. He had been in hospital in recent months.
Mandela
was a prominent international figure for more than half a century,
first as a leading human rights campaigner in South Africa and then
as the world's best-known political prisoner.
Source:
cbc
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