Grief, Deep Admiration Expressed Worldwide for the Revered Nelson Mandela

By Sudarsan Raghavan, Craig Timberg and DeNeen L. Brown, The Washington Post

06 December 13

lags across several continents fell to half staff early Friday, and South Africans poured into the streets at daybreak in mourning for Nelson Mandela, a liberator whose life spanned nearly a century and whose model for dignity and peace-making was admired across the world.

The death Thursday of Mandela, 95 and long ill, was at once thoroughly foretold and unexpectedly jarring, as people recalled his graceful leadership through what appeared to be an intractable racial crisis in South Africa and his ability to embody hope for moral progress in a beleaguered and often-unjust world. Mandela's death spurred the rarest of outpourings - one nearly universal and unanimous. Mandela's face appeared on newspaper front pages from Berlin to Beirut, often with just a few somber words and the years of his life: 1918-2013. His death spurred social media tributes in the United States and China.

In South Africa, where Mandela rose from prisoner to president, crowds gathered to sing and dance outside his home in Houghton, an upscale Johannesburg neighborhood, where he died with his family beside him. Makeshift tributes of candles, flowers and photographs were piled against trees and buildings. In Soweto - the home to some of the worst apartheid-era strife - black and white South Africans joined hands in mourning.

Speaking in Soweto on Friday, South African President Jacob Zuma announced that Mandela's funeral would be held on Dec. 15. He said South Africa would observe "a national week of mourning" until then.

Meanwhile, crowds were congregating in a mall in Sandton, where a huge statue of Mandela stands in a square named after him. Mourners placed bouquets of flowers and notes near the statue. South Africans also gathered in Pretoria, the seat of government, to remember him.

Media outlets in South Africa reported that Mandela's body had been transported to a military hospital in Pretoria. There, it will most likely be embalmed and prepared for a public memorial service. The state has not yet announced a date for Mandela's funeral.

"The messages we have received since last night have heartened and overwhelmed us," said Mandela's grandson, Mandla Mandela, on Friday, the first statement from the Mandela family since the death, Agence France-Presse reported. "He is an embodiment of strength, struggle and survival, principles that are cherished by humanity," he said.

South Africans learned of Mandela's death late Thursday local time, when Zuma said in an address that the nation's "greatest son" was "now at peace."

On Friday, the African National Congress, the party that Mandela led for decades, first from behind bars and then as South Africa's president, was gathering to honor their leader's legacy. South African media reported that Zuma planned to lead a delegation to Mandela's home later in the day.

Though Mandela had been absent from public life for several years as he battled illness, his death spurred rich tributes from around the world.

President Obama, who like Mandela was his country's first black president, said: "Today he's gone home, and we've lost one of the most influential, courageous and profoundly good human beings that any of us will share time with on this Earth. He no longer belongs to us; he belongs to the ages."

Obama ordered U.S. flags flown at half-staff until sunset Monday to honor Mandela.

Hillary Rodham Clinton on Twitter called Mandela an "unconquerable soul." Chinese President Xi Jinping sent a letter of condolence to Zuma, saying China will remember Mandela's devotion to "human progress."

In public remarks at a women's forum in Rangoon, Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese Nobel Peace Prize winner, said Mandela was a "great human being who raised the standard of humanity." The Indian government declared five days of state mourning for a man described by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as a "true Gandhian," another nonviolent liberation fighter.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, in a letter to Zuma, expressed his "great sorrow and deep grief," adding that Mandela "gave meaning and spirit to the long road toward liberty gloriously."

Some South Africans broke into tears describing Mandela's importance in televised interviews. Desmond Tutu, a close friend of Mandela's and a fellow fighter against apartheid, wrote in the Mail & Guardian, a South African newspaper, that Mandela was an "amazing gift to us and the world," and he called on other South African leaders to emulate him.

Though relations between blacks and whites have been transformed over the last two decades, South Africa is still riven by problems, with a youth unemployment rate near 50 percent and among the world's highest income disparities. The reality of multiracial democracy has proved harder and far less equal than many expected when it arrived in 1994, but love for Mandela has never dimmed.

Longtime newscaster Mathatha Tsedu said on a national news channel, "This is a man who had no unfulfilled missions."

The Johannesburg stock market paused trading for five minutes at midday on Friday.

In Washington, two men dressed in military uniforms walked out and lowered the flag at the South African Embassy at about 8:50 p.m. Thursday. Peace Nganwa, a student from South Africa, led the crowd in the singing of the South African anthem.

Dijon Anderson, 41, a teacher who lives in Bowie, Md., joined other mourners who gathered in the deepening darkness outside the embassy on Massachusetts Avenue, where a statue of Mandela stands beyond a padlocked fence, his right fist raised.

Anderson recalled Mandela's visit to Howard University in the 1990s and said he had to pull off the road when he heard of his death Thursday. "I was driving to pick up my boys from school. I pulled over," Anderson said. "It's monumental. He led an incredible life. He died at 95. That is a long life. But it still hurts."

Alexandria Mayor William D. Euille, the first African American to hold that position, said: "Wow. . . . Despite the fact that we knew it was going to happen at some point in time because of his health issues, it's a real loss to his family, his country and the world at large."

Former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), issuing one of the countless statements prepared by politicians during Mandela's months of declining health, said, "President Mandela's life is the closest thing we have to proof of God."

Mandela's death comes amid reminders of his many sacrifices, depicted in "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom," a biopic based on his best-selling autobiography. Britain's Prince William was attending the London premiere of the movie as the news spread across the world. "We were just reminded of what an extraordinary and inspiring man Nelson Mandela was," the tuxedo-clad prince said.

In the United States, activists on both sides of the mass apartheid protests of the 1980s paid homage to the movement's symbol of resistance. At a time when campus sit-ins rocked to the anthem "Free Nelson Mandela," then-State Department official Chester Crocker was pushing President Ronald Reagan's "constructive engagement" with South Africa's white minority as an alternative to cutting financial ties. On Thursday, he remembered Mandela as being "tough as nails, highly principled and committed to reconciliation."

"I've respected him for many, many years," said Crocker, who recalled receiving a phone call from Mandela during a later visit to South Africa. Mandela wanted a copy of Crocker's book and asked him to deliver it personally. "This was a person with an enormous, really winning human touch. He understood that he had the special capacity to help the last generation of [white] leaders to escape the political and mental prison they were trapped in."

Another potent vignette came from James M. Kilby, 71, who as a teenager in 1958 was among 20 black students who walked past hecklers and into Warren County High School in Front Royal, Va. His father, a farmer and janitor with a sixth-grade education, had filed a lawsuit that forced the school to admit blacks. Kilby has echoed his father's activism in quieter ways, including in a 1986 letter he sent to South African President P.W. Botha, berating him for the country's apartheid policies and asking him to imagine what his life would be like if his skin were black.

When Kilby heard Thursday of Mandela's death, he couldn't help thinking of his father. "I love my father, and my father was brave, and I would consider Nelson Mandela another brave man," he said.

Recalling the difficulty of the segregation battle, he said his family members harbored no bitterness, even though they became targets of vandalism and threats. "And when Nelson Mandela got out of prison he wasn't bitter, and he really proved that through his reconciliation with those that punished him and those that tried to hurt him. . . . He was just an exceptional human being."