Farewell Madiba
Rolihlahla Nelson Dalibunga Mandela, fondly known as Madiba, died at the age of 95, at around 9pm on Thursday, December 5.
Mandela is regarded as the Father of the Nation, and the founding President of a democracy that is now almost 20 years old.
Mandela was released from prison in 1990, after 27 years in prison and negotiated a peaceful end to the Apartheid regime with leaders of South Africa’s white-minority government.
Three years later, he won the Nobel Peace Prize and served as the nation’s first black President from 1994 to 1999.
“He passed on peacefully in the company of his family around 20.50pm on December 5,” President Jacob Zuma said on a national broadcast shortly before midnight of December 5.
“He is now resting, he is now at peace. Our nation has lost its greatest son.”
Tributes flooded in on the news of the passing away from Mandela.
Former President Thabo Mbeki said the death of Mandela signals the end of an historic era characterised by the heroic deeds of his generation.
“As we mourn President Mandela’s passing, we must ask ourselves the fundamental question – what shall we do to respond to the tasks of building a democratic, non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous South Africa, a people-centred society free of hunger, poverty, disease and inequality, as well as Africa’s renaissance, to whose attainment President Nelson Mandela dedicated his whole life?” said Mbeki in a statement.
Fellow Nobel Peace prize-winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu said: “He transcended race and class in his personal actions, through his warmth and through his willingness to listen and to empathise with others. He restored others’ faith in Africa and Africans.”
Barack Obama, the US President, also paid tribute to South Africa’s first black President, calling him “influential, courageous and profoundly good”.
“Through his fierce dignity and unbending will to sacrifice his own freedom for the freedom of others, he transformed South Africa and moved all of us,” Obama said.
With South Africa hosting the Soccer World Cup in 2010 – something that only became possible because of Mandela’s work of reconciliation – it was befitting that among the tributes came from Fifa president Joseph Blatter.
“It is in deep mourning that I pay my respects to an extraordinary person, probably one of the greatest humanists of our time and a dear friend of mine,” said Blatter.
So much has been said and written of Mandela, who was born into the Madiba clan in Mvezo, Transkei, on July 18, 1918.
His government focused on dismantling the legacy of Apartheid through tackling institutionalised racism, poverty and inequality, and fostering racial reconciliation.
Politically an African nationalist and democratic socialist, he also served as the President of the African National Congress (ANC) from 1991 to 1997.
Mandela, according to the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory, received more than 695 awards, including the US Congressional Medal during his lifetime that has impacted so many lives.
He also has scores of honorary degrees, honorary citizenships and honorary memberships of organisations.
What more can attest to his legacy than the multitude of streets, roads, boulevards, avenues, bridges, highways, stadia, squares, plazas, parks, gardens, trails, halls, buildings, housing developments, schools, universities and other educational institutions that have been named after Mandela.
This is a man who was driven by an unshakeable belief in the equality of all people, and even though shrouded in controversy for what he believed and fought for, Mandela remains a world icon who breathed fresh air of hope, tolerance and reconciliation in South Africa.
The ideal of a Rainbow Nation belongs to Mandela, and his dream of a united South Africa remains admirable.
