Blog Post #11

Nelson Mandela died Thursday, December 5, 2013. South African President Jacob Zuma said of Mandela, “He is now resting. He is now at peace. Our nation has lost its greatest son. Our people have lost a father. What made Nelson Mandela great was precisely what made him human. We saw in him what we seek in ourselves” (Karimi, 2013). In recent months, Mandela battled many health issues including a recurring lung infection that led to many hospitalizations. “With advancing age and bouts of illness, Mandela retreated to a quiet life at his boyhood home in the nations Eastern Cape Province, where he said he was most at peace. He was later moved to his home in the Johannesburg suburb of Houghton, where he died” Karimi, 2013). Mandela was a man of peace, an apartheid revolutionary. “His defiance of white minority rule and incarceration for fighting against segregation focused the world’s attention on apartheid, the legalized racial segregation enforced by the South African government until 1994” (Karimi, 2013). After 27 years of imprisonment, Mandela served as President of South Africa from May 1994-June 1999. Despite rampant political violence before Mandela’s presidential term in 1994, South Africa avoided a civil war in part to the leadership of Nelson Mandala and former South African President F. W. de Klerk. When asked how he’d like to be remembered Mandela answered, “not as anyone unique or special,  but as part of a great team in this country that has struggled for many years, for decades and even centuries. The greatest glory of living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time you fall” (Karimi, 2013).

Observation: A moment of silence for Nelson Mandela.