MORE on the life and death of Nelson Mandela, Madiba, from the PBS NewsHour after this video of N'Kosi Sikeleli iAfrika....And I have more on Nelson Mandela at Nelson Mandela (1918-2013), Inspiration To World, Dies At 95 Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika & Nelson Mandela (from Wikipedia) 5DEZ13 http://bucknacktssordidtawdryblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/nelson-mandela-1918-2013-inspiration-to.html
http://youtu.be/MFW7845XO3g
South African President Zuma on Mandela's death: 'Our people have lost a father'
The world remembers Nelson Mandela
South African President Jacob Zuma mourns the death of Nelson Mandela Thursday.Former South African president Nelson Mandela dies Thursday at the age of 95.
Counting himself among the millions influenced by Mandela, President Barack Obama on Thursday mourned the death of the anti-apartheid icon with whom he shares the distinction of being his nation's first black president.
"He no longer belongs to us. He belongs to the ages," Obama said in a somber appearance at the White House.
South African President Jacob Zuma addressed a nation in mourning.
"We've lost our greatest son. Our nation has lost its greatest son. Our people have lost a father," Zuma said. "Although we knew that this day would come, nothing can diminish our sense of a profound and enduring loss."
PBS NewsHour will continue to update this post as world leaders and others from around the globe speak on the loss of the former South African President and activist.
President Obama speaks to the nation on the passing of Nelson Mandela:
GWEN IFILL: Nelson Mandela's death was formally announced late today by South Africa's current president, Jacob Zuma.
He expressed the country's love and sense of loss for their iconic leader, often referred to, out of respect, by his clan name, Madiba.
PRESIDENT JACOB ZUMA, South Africa: Our beloved Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, the founding president of our democratic nation, has departed.
He passed on peacefully in the company of his family around 20:50 on the 5th of December, 2013. He is now resting. He is now at peace.
Our nation has lost its greatest son. Our people have lost a father. Although we knew that this day would come, nothing can diminish our sense of a profound and enduring loss. His tireless struggle for freedom earned him the respect of the world.
His humility, his compassion, and his humanity earned him their love. Our thoughts and prayers are with the Mandela family. Our thoughts are with the South African people, who today mourn the loss of the one person who, more than any other, came to embody their sense of a common nationhood.
Our thoughts are with the millions of people across the world who embraced Madiba as their own and who saw his cause as their cause.
This is the moment of our deepest sorrow. Our nation has lost its greatest son.
Yet, what made Nelson Mandela great was precisely what made him human. We saw in him what we seek in ourselves.
As we gather, wherever we are in the country and wherever we are in the world, let us recall the values for which Madiba fought. Let us reaffirm his vision of a society in which none is exploited, oppressed or dispossessed by another.
Let us commit ourselves to strive together -- sparing neither strength nor courage -- to build a united, non-racial, non-sexist, democratic and prosperous South Africa.
Let us express, each in our own way, the deep gratitude we feel for a life spent in service of the people of this country and in the cause of humanity.
That is indeed the moment of our deepest sorrow. Yet it must also be the moment of our greatest determination, a determination to live as Madiba has lived, to strive as Madiba has strived, and to not rest until we have realized his vision of a truly united South Africa, a peaceful and prosperous Africa, and a better world.
We will always love you, Madiba. May your soul rest in peace.
God bless Africa.
JUDY WOODRUFF: That was South Africa's president, Jacob Zuma.
UPDATED 6:20 EST:
Message from The Nelson Mandela Foundation, The Nelson Mandela Children's Fund and The Mandela Rhodes Foundation:
"It is with the deepest regret that we have learned of the passing of our founder, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela - Madiba. The Presidency of the Republic of South Africa will shortly make further official announcements.Gathering outside Mandela's house:
We want to express our sadness at this time. No words can adequately describe this enormous loss to our nation and to the world.
We give thanks for his life, his leadership, his devotion to humanity and humanitarian causes. We salute our friend, colleague and comrade and thank him for his sacrifices for our freedom. The three charitable organisations that he created dedicate ourselves to continue promoting his extraordinay legacy.
Hamba Kahle Madiba"
More and more people are arriving at Madiba's house
REPORT AIR DATE: Dec. 5, 2013
Remembering South African leader Nelson Mandela's long walk to freedom
SUMMARY
Nelson Mandela will be remembered by the world for his peaceful pursuit of equal rights for all South Africans and as the post-apartheid nation's first president. Former NewsHour senior correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault looks back at the activist and peacemaker's 27 years in prison and his victory over decades of oppression.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And now to a personal retrospective on the life of Nelson Mandela from one of our own.Former NewsHour senior correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault covered the South African leader for more than a decade, and interviewed him on a number of occasions, from the time he left prison to his election as South Africa's president.
She prepared this remembrance.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: To my generation, the one that came of age in the '60s, Nelson Mandela was a towering man of myth and legend, of action and passion, of selfless sacrifice.
And before any of us ever dreamed, he became the embodiment of a notorious decades-long struggling against white oppression. Many would call that victory a miracle, Mandela the miracle maker.
These rare images from the book "Mandela: The Authorized Portrait" help us tell the story of Mandela's long walk to freedom.
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born on July 18, 1918, in a tiny rural village in the Transkei on South Africa's eastern coast. But it was here in neighboring Qunu that the man who was to become a legend was nurtured, spending some of the happiest years of his boyhood.
Qunu is a gentle place of rolling hills and farms, where children still play Mandela did when he wasn't laboring in these fields as a herd boy, looking after his mother few sheep and calves. In time, they would call him Madiba, his Xhosa clan name for respect.
Here, Xhosa boys, even ones like Mandela, descended from royalty, were shaped by Xhosa ritual and taboo, tradition that taught respect and responsibility for others. As Mandela grew into manhood, the Xhosa mantle of responsibility led him to fight against oppressive white minority rule that deprived and demeaned Mandela and his fellow Africans.
In 1948, oppression was legalized into a system known as apartheid. As a young lawyer in the 1940s, Mandela joined the African National Congress, an organization then dedicated to peacefully pursuing equal rights for all South Africans.
Mandela emerged as one of its leaders, staging mass rallies, strikes and campaigns of defiance against apartheid's unjust laws. But by 1960, the harsh white government's resistance to the ANC's peaceful process caused Mandela and his ANC colleagues to launch a military wing operating underground.
Their armed resistance was called Umkhonto we Sizwe, Spear of the Nation. The campaign was aimed at military industrial and civil installations, and not soft or human targets. But in time, the ANC's bombings and urban guerrilla warfare resulted in the deaths of more than 60 people, though exact figures aren't known. But their acts bore no comparison to the thousands murdered and otherwise disappeared by the regime.
NELSON MANDELA: There are many people who feel that it is useful and futile for us to continue talking peace and nonviolence against a government whose reply is only savage attacks on an unarmed and defenseless people.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: In 1962, a vicious crackdown by the apartheid state was unleashed, and Mandela was caught up in the regime's wide net.
As he sat in prison, his ANC colleagues were also rounded up at a farm in an area outside of Johannesburg called Rivonia and jailed. In 1963, during what came to be called the Rivonia trial, the government tried and convicted Mandela and seven of the top command of the ANC on charges of sabotage aimed at fomenting violent revolution, a capital offense.
In June 1964, the eight were sentenced to life in prison. Even from his cell on Robben Island, the Alcatraz-like site of the country's harshest, most remote prison, six miles off the coast of Cape Town, Mandela was uncompromising, says Helen Suzman, then a particularly representative who spoke out against apartheid.
HELEN SUZMAN, former South African politician: He had no hesitation. He rattled off all the complaints about the bad food, the fact he was sleeping on sleeping rolls, not proper mattresses, the fact that the visits were too few and far between, and mostly about the behavior of a warden, yes, who has a tattoo on the back of his hand of the swastika. And he said, this man really is very bad. He treats us badly.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: But even then, Mandela was ever the statesman.
HELEN SUZMAN: His bearing, his self-confidence, remarkably self-confident man. He was never making outrageous remarks about the government. He was always thoughtful. And what he said was, you know, in keeping with someone who wanted peace.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And he used the captive audience in prison to educate his young followers for the future he envisioned. They even called it Mandela University.
Tokyo Sexwale was one of the students.
TOKYO SEXWALE, African National Congress: And that's where he was teaching of the spirit of reconciliation, studying history, studying science, studying everything that we were supposed to equip ourselves, economics, to prepare ourselves for the new South Africa.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Mandela's life sentence removed him physically from the fight against apartheid, but his spirit was felt throughout the townships of South Africa.
The government pressed hard to retain control of a black population that refused to be silenced. In 1985, I made my first trip to the land of Mandela's birth to find out what was driving the country's people, black and white, and also to determine how much of Mandela's spirit was still alive.
What -- what are you singing about? Tell me, what is this about? What is the song about?
GIRL: Mandela, Mandela.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Mandela?
GIRL: Mandela.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Mandela and...
(CROSSTALK)
WOMAN: We want Mandela to be released from jail.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Really?
WOMAN: And those who are exile to come back.
MAN: There's one man we all respect and we take him -- we call him our father, none other than Nelson Mandela.
If and only if that man can be released, and then we can see the direction of South Africa.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: From those otherwise dark days, a new direction was on the horizon, as pressure at home and abroad mounted on the regime.
The apartheid system was crumbling. Mandela, who had been moved to a different prison, began four years of secret negotiations with the government that would eventually lead to the release of many of the political prisoners and the unbanning of the ANC. Change seemed inevitable. And the South African foreign minister admitted as much in an interview with me following my reporting on South Africa for NewsHour in 1985.
ROELOF FREDERIK "PIK" BOTHA, former South Africa Foreign Minister: I made my position clear. We have said that we have outgrown apartheid.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: But Mandela's own release would not come for another five years, in 1990.
After 27 years, Nelson Mandela took his first steps as a free man. He was 71 years old. And few had seen him or any up-to-date photograph of him in all those years. At his side were now Winnie Mandela, his defiant wife who had kept his name and his message alive, and other comrades from the African National Congress.
NELSON MANDELA: Friends, comrades and fellow South Africans, I greet you all in the name of peace, democracy and freedom for all.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
NELSON MANDELA: I stand here, before you, not as a prophet, but as a humble servant of you, the people. Today, the majority of South Africans, black and white, recognize that apartheid has no future.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
NELSON MANDELA: It has to be ended by our own decisive mass action in order to build peace and security.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: I left for South Africa as soon as I saw those pictures. And within a few days from his release from prison, I found myself sitting with him in his backyard in the black township of Soweto, where I soon gleaned insight into Mandela's iron resolve, as well as his humility.
NELSON MANDELA: We fought back. And as I -- I must stress again, I was not the only one who fought back. We all fought back.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: In what way? I mean, in what...
NELSON MANDELA: And the amount of bravery, of courage that was displayed was absolutely marvelous. And we had hunger strikes and resisted doing anything which we considered to be humiliating.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Were you aware of this mythical character that was being built up in the outside world, through portraits on television, movies, this sort of thing? And did that concern you at all, or...
NELSON MANDELA: Well, that worried me a bit.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Why?
NELSON MANDELA: Because I wanted to be presented as I am. And I'm an ordinary human being, with weaknesses. And you don't want that to be built up into something that you are not.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Still, Nelson Mandela was the man of the hour, and he wasted no time on efforts to dismantle the apartheid regime, even before a full United Nations assembly in 1990.
NELSON MANDELA: We know also that you harbor the hope that we will not relent or falter in the pursuit of that common vision, which should result in the transformation of South Africa into a country of democracy, justice, and peace.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: In 1993, the year before apartheid ended, Mandela shared his vision of a new South Africa as he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with the man who had seen the handwriting on the wall and acted, the last apartheid president, F.W. De Klerk.
NELSON MANDELA: South Africa will be like a microcosm of the new way that is striving to be born. This must be a world of democracy and respect for human rights.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: But, in South Africa, change was accompanied as the last gasp of the regime as it backed black-on-black violence.
Still, Mandela's way prevailed. And on the 27th of April, 1994, Mandela himself voted for the first time in his life, at age 75.
A few days before, Mandela and I sat down in Johannesburg, and I got a rare glimpse into his steely side when I asked him about De Klerk's assertion that a liberation movement wouldn't know how to govern and that Mandela's presidency wouldn't be as powerful as his.
NELSON MANDELA: My power of persuasion is sufficient.
I have wielded power as a prisoner, without occupying any position, and Mr. De Klerk had to recognize that. We have taken decisions and forced him to use his legal powers. The decision was taken by us.
Take, for example, how he dismissed two ministers. We gave him an ultimatum that you must appoint a judicial commission to investigate the question of violence. He must dismiss a certain two ministers. And he came out and he said he would never do that.
We embarked on mass action. He was forced to do exactly what he said he would never do. So, we have wielded power even before we assumed the government of the country. And that is how the situation should be examined.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: On May 10, 1994, Nelson Mandela took another giant step on a journey that took him from prisoner to president.
NELSON MANDELA: We enter into a covenant that we shall build the society in which all South Africans, both black and white, will be able to walk tall, without any fear in their hearts, assured of their inalienable right to human dignity -- a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Elements of the repressive apartheid past remained, but Mandela and his young government rose above them, insisting on forgiveness and reconciliation, which would become the hallmark of his presidency.
NELSON MANDELA: It is necessary for one to heal the wounds of the past if you're going to build your country and to have unity.
I am working with people who fought me very bitterly before the elections. It was my responsibility, as the man who is leading the majority party, my responsibility to heal the wounds of the past and to work with people who were my opponents.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Mandela kept his part of the bargain, enabling a forum offering amnesty in exchange for truth about apartheid-era atrocities on all sides. It was called the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Countless black victims came forward, but almost none of the whites who had ordered or committed atrocities did or told the truth. But the process is credited with averting a bloodbath as the government changed from white to black hands. Moreover, Mandela's government put to rest concerns that the ANC's past leftist rhetoric would lead to nationalizing the economy. Instead, he told the world his country would be a democratic, capitalist society, and kept his word.
Mandela's government also established principles of redress aimed at bringing blacks into the economic mainstream, while building millions of houses and providing basic services that didn't exist for the poor, not enough and not fast enough for all, but enough to earn the gratitude of millions and the patience of most of its long-suffering people.
But Mandela's own personal life suffered. The Mandelas divorced. Mandela stepped down after serving only one term, setting a new standard on a continent of presidents for life.
At the same time, Mandela had set the bar so high, it would be close to impossible for anyone to fill his shoes or to think of South Africa as anything but a miracle nation, a perception that would belie South Africa's down-to-earth realities and create problems for anyone not the icon Mandela had become, not least because the icon stayed in the adoring public's eye.
On his 80th birthday, Mandela married his third wife, Graca Machel, widow of Mozambican President Samora Machel.
As his physical walk became more labored, Mandela announced his retirement from public life.
NELSON MANDELA: Don't call me.
(LAUGHTER)
NELSON MANDELA: I will call you.
(LAUGHTER)
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: But, even in his later years, Mandela kept on walking, joined by his wife in their advocacy for the world's children and boldly making up for the silence and inattention on HIV and AIDS dating back to his own time in office.
Mandela had come to realize the disease was overwhelming the country he loved and threatening the very future he sought to ensure, not least taking the life of his one remaining son. Mandela took on AIDS as a public crusade and spoke out forcefully about the need for others in high positions to join him, though few did.
NELSON MANDELA: I am alive because the people gave me love and support. And that is why I am here today to deal with your questions. So, there is no difference whatsoever between somebody who is HIV-positive and myself.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Mandela was equally passionate about children, the nation's, his own and Graca Machel's. And in time, he even brought Winnie back into the family fold.
And that extended family will join a cast of millions who will honor him from far and near as he becomes an ancestor, buried in the Mandela family cemetery in his quiet village of Qunu, free at last from his epic journey, free to take a moment of rest on his now long walk to eternity.
GWEN IFILL: That's Charlayne Hunter-Gault.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/remember/july-dec13/obit_12-05.html
ANALYSIS AIR DATE: Dec. 5, 2013
GWEN IFILL: For more on Nelson Mandela's
life and legacy, we turn to four people who knew him or watched South
Africa's emergence from apartheid.Why the world aspires to live up to the legacy left by Mandela
SUMMARY
Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff reflect on Nelson Mandela's life with Donald Gips, former U.S. ambassador to South Africa, John Stremlau of the Carter Center, Gay McDougall, Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa, and Douglas Foster, author of "After Mandela: The Struggle for Freedom in Post-Apartheid South Africa."
Gay McDougall was a member the South African Election Commission, which administered the country's first democratic non-racial elections in 1994. Prior to that, she served as director of the Southern Africa Project of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Douglas Foster is the author of "After Mandela: The Struggle for Freedom in Post-Apartheid South Africa." He's an associate professor at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. Donald Gips served as U.S. ambassador to South Africa from 2009 to 2013. And John Stremlau is vice president for peace programs at the Carter Center. He taught at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.
Welcome to you all.
Gay McDougall, what is your first reaction tonight on hearing of the loss of Nelson Mandela?
GAY MCDOUGALL, Member, Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa: Well, I'm terribly sad.
Of course, we all expected it. We knew it was coming. But, nevertheless, it is a shock. And it's quite saddening. I think, first of all, of the people of South Africa who will be mourning in a very special way. But I think of us all around the world have lost a hero, a hero that we desperately needed when he came forward and gave us hope.
RELATED INFORMATION
Remembering activist and peacemaker Nelson Mandela
And I want to pick up with you, Professor John Stremlau.
You taught, as Gwen just said, in South Africa for a number of years after Nelson Mandela was released. What did you see of the man? What did he mean to his country?
JOHN STREMLAU, Carter Center: Well, he means everything for his country.
And I think the challenge is to live up to the example he set, as President Obama indicated. What was great about Mandela was his respect for the rule of law. Think about it just for a moment -- 27 years in jail under an illegitimate legal system, and to come and to defend the rule of law above all else.
When he was asked to appear in court as a sitting president, his advisers said, no, no, no, you can't do it. You can't appear in this case on rugby and discrimination that he had asserted. It was a libel suit of some sort. And he said, look, no man is above the law, and so I will be there.
I think he inherited this stubborn sense of freedom -- fairness, as he described himself once, from his father. It was that stubborn sense of fairness which kept the process on track. And we Americans owe him and the country of South Africa a great debt, because nothing would have torn this country apart in the 1970s and perhaps into the '80s than a race war in South Africa.
So, I -- all I want to do is to celebrate this wonderful, wonderful man.
GWEN IFILL: I would actually like to pick up that, Ambassador Gips, because, by the time you arrived in Johannesburg as ambassador from the U.S., you had been appointed by an African-American president.
You went -- you were there and saw the legacy, the real legacy, the current-day legacy of Nelson Mandela in South Africa. And how did it resonate?
DONALD GIPS, Former U.S. Ambassador to South Africa: It resonated incredibly. His presence still drives the country.
You know, from people on the street to people in government, everyone aspires to live up to the legacy he left. It is a difficult challenge to live up to someone of his iconic nature, but he really inspired all of us, I think, around the world.
And the message that he left for all of us is one that I think the world needs, whether it's our Congress or people around the world, of putting -- putting aside our differences to work for the greater good.
You know, I was so inspired -- my most inspiring moment in South Africa was actually holding some of the letters that he wrote from prison at the Center for Memory and reading about what he gave up to fight for freedom and to fight for a better South Africa for everyone.
And I think if -- given what he gave up, we all need to take this moment and decide how we can make the world a better place.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Douglas Foster, you got to know the Mandela family.
In the last decade, you moved to South Africa for a time to write a book about what -- after Mandela, the struggle for freedom after his time as president. What -- how did you experience this? What would you add to this question of his effect on the country?
DOUGLAS FOSTER, Author, "After Mandela: The Struggle for Freedom in Post-Apartheid South Africa": Sure.
I got to know the old man, as everybody calls him in South Africa, through his grandchildren, primarily through his grandson Ndaba. And the last time I saw him at his home in Johannesburg, he did this typically puckish, mischievous thing.
As my son and I entered the room, he said, "Ah, it's nice that young people still come to an old man who has nothing new to say."
I think one of the important legacies of Nelson Mandela is to have given the challenge to the half of the population in South Africa that is 24 and under and didn't have direct experience of conditions under apartheid to understand that this is their moment and a time to shape the freedom that was on in their names.
I think that the South African editor Ferial Haffajee wrote recently that Mandela had prepared his people for his passing in an unusual way, she said -- quote -- "like a good parent" -- unquote.
And I think that's worth marking on a day like this, that most leaders attempt to assert indispensability. That's their sense of their own role in life. I think one of Nelson Mandela's great gifts was to live long enough and also to be conscious enough about what it means to step away from power that he has given his people the gift of dispensability. The great experiment in creating a non-racial, non-sexist, non-homophobic and more egalitarian society at the Southern Tip of Africa survives him.
GWEN IFILL: Ambassador Gips, we know you have to move on from us in a few moments, so I want to circle back to you for a moment and just ask you a sense about whether Nelson Mandela's one term as president of South Africa and his heroic status, whether that had an effect on surrounding countries, on the region, on Africa as a continent?
DONALD GIPS: Oh, I think he inspires people around the continent and around the world.
I think -- I witnessed people coming to South Africa to pay tribute to him during the World Cup and at other moments. There is no greater figure in my lifetime. And I think, as President Obama said, he's his inspiration. So, I think he has inspired people not just in South Africa or in Africa, but around the world.
But, in the end, what he did in South Africa is an example that we all need to follow.
GWEN IFILL: Gay McDougall, how do you explain the essence of Nelson Mandela? What gave him that impossible-to-understand strength that he had to come out of prison after 27 years and to go on to be the great leader that he was?
GAY MCDOUGALL: Well, he is quite a remarkable individual.
That's -- I don't think there's no question about that. He has a certain regalness to him, but also a sort of down-home folksiness to him as well, but I think the mixture of knowing how to handle and to deal with power, yet seeing himself very much as a member of a collective of decision-makers, as a member of a liberation movement, of a political party, of South Africans as a whole.
I will never forget the really transcendent moment that I was privileged to spend -- to share with him when he voted for the first time in 1994. I was there as a member of the commission that ran the elections then. And President Mandela had put my name forward to be on the commission.
But it was a remarkable moment for him and for his nation. And, you know, all of the suffering and struggle that had occurred before that moment was now telescoped through him and into the future, as he dropped his ballot into that box.
So he has been a manifestation of all of the hopes and dreams and aspirations and -- of his country. And he's been able to articulate that and to live a life that was worthy of that.
GWEN IFILL: John Stremlau, I'm curious. In watching Charlayne's piece, it was interesting to see his personality and his political side as well. He talked about his own -- his own -- how much he was convinced in the power of his own moral suasion.
Was that an essential part of his success and his -- his legacy as well?
JOHN STREMLAU: Well, absolutely, Gwen.
The one error in the presentation, which is understandable, is when he said he's just an ordinary man. This was certainly no ordinary man. He had an appreciation of the humanity in all of us. He took an inspiration from Dr. King. He understood what the civil rights struggle was in this country.
And he understood what tolerance and justice is for all. He's helped to make South Africa, which now celebrates next year 20 years of democracy -- we are celebrating 50 years of a movement toward greater racial justice in our own country -- what it meant to be part of a global, truly global community. And he appreciated the interest and support that he got from everywhere.
But he also was willing to sort of look at the individual in his own country and say, you matter, and what you do really does count for something.
And so, as a professor, the born free, so-called, now, the new generation of kids coming along who didn't know apartheid, they have to be reimbued with this Mandela ethic, as was said earlier in the -- in the obituary.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And Douglas Foster, pick up on that, and talk about why he was the beacon that he was for the rest of the world. People do amazing things and -- but -- but when you think about him, I mean, he really stands apart.
DOUGLAS FOSTER: Well, I think it's partly in the context -- if you think about the idea of contingency in history, he stitched together so many divergent parts of South African culture -- divergent parts of South African culture.
He grew up as a shoeless cowherd. He went to the city and made something new of himself as a lawyer. But then he traded in that privilege, that hard-earned privilege to become a figure who was denounced as a terrorist in the United States and in South Africa, endured those prison years, as Charlayne told us, and came out with a singular vision of a different kind of society, and drove towards it so relentlessly.
I think it's that commitment and consistency, the requirement of a very disciplined mind and a very steely man, too. As -- as much as we're tempted on a day like this to only sing praises about the soft and warm side, he didn't succeed by being a pushover. He succeeded by being very tough, very strategic, and -- and committed, absolutely committed to a vision during periods where one wouldn't have guessed that it would succeed.
GWEN IFILL: Gay McDougall, here in Washington, outside of the remodeled South African Embassy, there is a statue going up in which Mandela has his fist in the air. And he's right across the street from Winston Churchill, who has his victory sign in the air. It's quite a place on Massachusetts Avenue.
It's tempting in moment like this to look at the past and -- and not to look at the present and the future. So, as you think about Nelson Mandela tonight, and you think legacy, how do you think about his effect on the present and the future?
GAY MCDOUGALL: Well, I think that he stands for the importance of personal commitment, for being true to one's principles, of working with people who share that kind of a vision, and of modeling a new kind of leadership for the future.
I think these are all lessons that young people in the United States, as well as throughout Africa, are going to continuously turn to. He is a figure that is going to, in many ways, live forever. His lessons to us will live forever.
And so while I think we all of course his passing, I feel that, you know, very soon, we will be taken with how much of a gift his life has been to all of us.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, Gay McDougall, we thank you.
We thank Professor Stremlau, John Stremlau, and Douglas Foster. We also want to thank Ambassador Gips, who was with us for a few minutes. We appreciate your joining us on this day.
DOUGLAS FOSTER: Thank you.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And PBS' special coverage of Mandela's death includes a FRONTLINE documentary, "The Long Walk of Nelson Mandela: An Intimate Portrait of One of the 20th Century's Greatest Leaders." You can watch that online at PBS.org.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/remember/july-dec13/guests_12-05.html
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