‘We have lost our greatest son’
Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first black president, dies at 95
World leaders from across the globe are publicly mourning as they prepare to gather in South Africa for the state funeral of Nelson Mandela — the man who led his country out from under the brutal oppression of white minority rule.
Thursday, after announcing Mandela’s death, South African President Jacob Zuma said the country will honour the man that many in his country knew affectionately as Madiba with a state funeral in the coming weeks. Until then, South African flags will be lowered to half-staff to mark the death of the nation’s first black president at the age of 95.
“Although we knew that this day would come, nothing can diminish our sense of a profound and enduring loss,” Zuma said on state television, broadcast around the world.
“He is now resting. He is now at peace,” Zuma said, adding he died “peacefully” while in the company of his family. “Our nation has lost its greatest son. Our people have lost a father.”
Outside Mandela’s home in Johannesburg, crowds of South Africans gathered to mourn their former leader.
They sang songs and burned candles, coming together to celebrate and to cry with one another.
“I’m still in disbelief,” one 16-year-old said outside Mandela’s home. “He represents hope for me. He shows that if you believe in something and it’s the right thing, you can achieve.
“Without him we’d have been a fatherless nation.”
Mandela’s death came five months before the 20th anniversary of his inauguration as president, a day for which he endured 27 years’ imprisonment at the hands of the apartheid government.
Large gatherings of mourners are expected in coming days as the country prepares a formal farewell for a man who helped guide the country from racial conflict to all-race elections in 1994.
Speaking before the House of Commons in Ottawa, Prime Minister Stephen Harper held up Mandela’s life as an example for people the world over.
“There is no more powerful example of the success against racial discrimination as that of Nelson Mandela,” Harper said. “With Mr. Mandela now gone, the world is losing a great moral light.
“He showed how people can shape better tomorrows, and do so in their own time,” the prime minister told the Commons.
NDP Leader Tom Mulcair crossed the aisle to shake Harper’s hand, before adding his own voice to chorus of remembrance.
“The light that he brought to the world will continue to shine long after him,” Mulcair said.
Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau offered his own condolences, saying, “Nelson Mandela will forever occupy a place in the hearts, minds and imaginations of the entire world.”
MP Irwin Cotler, the Liberal justice critic, reflected on the life of a man he was once counsel to when Mandela was a prisoner of conscience.
“Mandela was the embodiment of the three great struggles of the 20th century. The long march towards freedom, as he put it. The march for democracy. And the march for equality,” Cotler said.
In Washington, U. S. President Barack Obama — himself the first black leader of his country — reflected on what Mandela meant to the world, and to him.
“We have lost one of the most influential, courageous, and profoundly good human beings that any of us will share time with on this Earth,” Obama said. “He no longer belongs to us — he belongs to the ages.”
“For now, let us pause and give thanks for the fact that Nelson Mandela lived — a man who took history in his hands, and bent the arc of the moral universe toward justice,” the U.S. president said, drawing on the words of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
Meanwhile, at Nelson Mandela Square in an upscale neighbourhood of Johannesburg, six people stood at the foot of a six-metre bronze statue of Mandela, paying homage to the leader. The six were two whites, two blacks and two of Indian descent, and represented South Africa’s “rainbow nation” that Mandela had fought and sacrificed for.
“For 23 years, I walked a path with this man since he was released,” said Sonja Pocock, a white 46-year-old pharmaceutical sales representative. “I’m from the old regime. He’s like my grandfather. He is my grandfather.”
Retired archbishop Desmond Tutu, who together with Mandela and South Africa’s last white president, F. W. de Klerk, earned a Nobel Peace Prize for reconciling his fractured nation, invited its citizens to pray.
“He transcended race and class in his personal actions, through his warmth and through his willingness to listen and to empathize with others,” Tutu said in a statement. “He taught us that to respect those with whom we are politically or socially or culturally at odds is not a sign of weakness, but a mark of self-respect.”
At the United Nations, the Security Council paused for a moment of silence to honour Mandela.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the departed leader “a giant for justice.”
“No one did more in our time to advance the values and aspirations of the United Nations,” Ban told reporters.
“Nelson Mandela showed what is possible for our world, and within each one of us, if we believe a dream and work together for justice and humanity,” he said.
Brian Mulroney, who as Canada’s prime minister was a leading international voice for Mandela’s release, spoke of the empty space that would have been left in the world had Mandela never lived.
“It is hard to imagine how much poorer the world would be, were we not to have been blessed by the power of the life of Mandela — the teacher of his people, a model for leadership everywhere,” Mulroney said in a statement.
Conservative Sen. Hugh Segal, Mulroney’s former chief of staff, remembered when South Africa’s apartheid government was seeking sanction relief from Canada. “Prime Minister Mulroney said to caucus and later to officials, ‘ We will lighten sanctions when Nelson Mandela says so, from a prison cell or the office of the president.’
“Mulroney meant every word,” Segal said in an email.
In a statement released by the Ali Center, legendary boxer Muhammad Ali said: “What I will remember most about Mr. Mandela is that he was a man whose heart, soul and spirit could not be contained or restrained by racial and economic injustices, metal bars or the burden of hate and revenge. He taught us forgiveness on a grand scale.
“He made us realize, we are our brother’s keeper and that our brothers come in all colours.”
‘Our nation has lost its greatest son. Our people have lost a father.’ JACOB ZUMA South African president ‘He no longer belongs to us, he belongs to the ages.’ BARACK OBAMA United States president ‘The world has lost one of its great moral leaders. Despite his long years of captivity, Mr. Mandela left prison with a heart closed to calls for a settling of scores. Instead, he was filled by a longing for truth and reconciliation, and for an understanding between all peoples.’ STEPHEN HARPER Canadian prime minister ‘He was a source of inspiration for all — from the most humble and impoverished to the world’s most powerful. The light that he brought to the world will continue to shine long after him.’
THOMAS MULCAIR NDP leader ‘Truly a citizen of the world, Nelson Mandela’s contribution to world freedom is simply unparalleled, and he will forever occupy a place in the hearts, minds and imaginations of people across the globe.’
JUSTIN TRUDEAU Liberal leader ‘Nelson Mandela was an inspiration not only for South Africa but really a global inspiration, and particularly for the young, who saw in him a hope for a better world. He was a person who had no bitterness in him; no anger in him.’
IRWIN COTLER Liberal MP and a member of Mandela’s legal team ‘A great light has gone out in the world. Nelson Mandela was a hero of our time.’
DAVID CAMERON British Prime Minister ‘No one did more in our time to advance the values and aspirations of the United Nations.’
BAN KI-MOON UN secretary-general ‘He transcended race and class in his personal actions, through his warmth and through his willingness to listen and to empathize with others. And he restored others’ faith in Africa and Africans. Over the past 24 years, Madiba taught us how to come together and to believe in ourselves and each other. He was a unifier from the moment he walked out of prison. We are relieved that his suffering is over, but our relief is drowned by our grief.’
DESMOND TUTU South Africa’s archbishop