Nelson Mandela is dead

JOHANNESBURG — Nelson Mandela,
South Africa's first black president and
an enduring icon of the struggle against
racial oppression, died on Thursday, the
government announced, leaving the
nation without its moral center at a
time of growing dissatisfaction with the
country's leaders.
Mr. Mandela spent 27 years in prison
after being convicted of treason by the
white minority government, only to
forge a peaceful end to white rule by
negotiating with his captors after his
release in 1990. He led the African
National Congress, long a banned
liberation movement, to a resounding
electoral victory in 1994, the first fully
democratic election in the country's
history.
Mr. Mandela served just one term as
South Africa's president and had not
been seen in public since 2010, when
the nation hosted the soccer World Cup.
But his decades in prison and his
insistence on forgiveness over
vengeance made him a potent symbol
of the struggle to end this country's
brutally codified system of racial
domination, and of the power of
peaceful resolution in even the most
intractable conflicts.
Years after he retreated from public life,
his name still resonated as an emblem
of his effort to transcend decades of
racial division and create what South
Africans called a Rainbow Nation.
Yet Mr. Mandela's death comes during a
period of deep unease and painful self-
examination for South Africa.
In the past year and a half, the country
has faced perhaps its most serious
unrest since the end of apartheid,
provoked by a wave of wildcat strikes
by angry miners, a deadly response on
the part of the police, a messy
leadership struggle within the A.N.C.
and the deepening fissures between
South Africa's rulers and its
impoverished masses.
Scandals over corruption involving
senior members of the party have fed a
broader perception that Mr. Mandela's
near saintly legacy from the years of
struggle has been eroded by a more
recent scramble for self-enrichment
among a newer elite.
After spending decades in penurious
exile, many political figures returned to
find themselves at the center of a grab
for power and money. President Jacob
Zuma was charged with corruption
before rising to the presidency in 2009,
though the charges were dropped on
largely technical grounds. He has faced
renewed scrutiny in the past year over
$27 million spent in renovations to his
house in rural Zululand.
Graphic cellphone videos of police
officers abusing people they have
detained have further fueled anger at a
government seen increasingly out of
touch with the lives of ordinary South
Africans.
Mr. Mandela served as president from
1994 to 1999, stepping aside at the age
of 75 to allow his deputy, Thabo Mbeki,
to run and take the reins. Mr. Mandela
spent his early retirement years
focused on charitable causes for
children and later speaking out about
AIDS, which has killed millions of
Africans, including his son Makgatho,
who died in 2005.
Mr. Mandela retreated from public life in
2004 at the age of 85, largely
withdrawing to his homes in the
upscale Johannesburg suburb of
Houghton and his ancestral village in
the Eastern Cape, Qunu