Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first black president and an enduring icon of the struggle against racial oppression, died on Thursday in Johannesburg at the age of 95, the government announced, the New York Times reports.
Mr Mandela peacefully ended white-minority rule after his release in 1990 from 27 years of imprisonment on treason charges. In 1994, he was elected president of South Africa in the country’s first fully democratic elections, and he served one term.
He developed a lung infection recently, after spending three months in the hospital. At the time of his death, South African President Jacob Zuma said Mr Mandela was at peace.
His last public appearance was in 2010, when his country hosted the World Cup, but he provided a moral center for South Africa by his steady insistence on forgiveness rather than vengeance, becoming a symbol of the power of peace and resolution in tough situations. In honor of Mr Mandela, the UN Security Council in New York stood for a minute of silence Thursday.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who campaigned against apartheid with Mr Mandela, said he was “not only an amazing gift to humankind, he made South Africans and Africans feel good about being who we are. He made us walk tall. God be praised.”
President Barack Obama said he was one of millions of people inspired by the life Mr Mandela had led. “He no longer belongs to us—he belongs to the ages,” he said, adding that Mr Mandela “took history in his hands and bent the arc of the moral universe towards justice.”
