Mourners hail Mandela's courage, conviction, 'remarkable lack of bitterness'

L-R: Nelson Mandela and Bill Clinton

Nelson Mandela's willingness to forgive and forget helped peacefully end an era of white domination in his native South Africa. But as news of his death spread, mourners there and around the world professed that he, himself, would never be forgotten.

"Mandela's biggest legacy ... was his remarkable lack of bitterness and the way he did not only talk about reconciliation, but he made reconciliation happen in South Africa," said F.W. de Klerk, South Africa's last white president before giving way to Mandela, the country's first black leader.

South Africa's current leader announced late Thursday that, after years suffering from health ailments, the man known widely by his clan name of Madiba died at 8:50 p.m. (1:50 p.m. ET) surrounded by family.

He was 95.

"He is now resting. He is now at peace," President Jacob Zuma said late Thursday. "Our nation has lost its greatest son. Our people have lost a father."

Special report: Nelson Mandela

The official SAPA news agency reported early Friday that Mandela's body had been moved to a military hospital in Pretoria. It's expected to be embalmed in the next three to four days, after which there will be a public memorial service at a Johannesburg soccer stadium, according to government sources.

Then, his casket will lie in state for several days in Pretoria, and next week -- probably Friday or Saturday -- it will be flown to his ancestral hometown of Qunu for a state funeral and burial, the sources said.

Until that funeral, Zuma has ordered flags around South Africa to be "flown at half-mast," something that other countries including the United States and United Kingdom are also doing.

The African National Congress -- the political party long associated with Mandela -- said "our nation has lost a colossus, an epitome of humility, equality, justice, peace and the hope of millions."

"The large African Baobab, who loved Africa as much as he loved South Africa, has fallen," the party said in a statement, comparing Mandela to a sturdy tree found in Africa. "Its trunk and seeds will nourish the earth for decades to come."

As news spreads, mourners recall 'remarkable man'

Throngs -- some of them in pajamas, due to the late hour -- gathered outside Mandela's house in a Johannesburg suburb after word of his death was announced, with people of all races singing, dancing and otherwise paying tribute to the late leader. Some said the news hadn't sunk in yet, while others expressed relief that he died peacefully, according to the official SAPA news agency.

"We must pay tribute to Mandela, the best state leader of all time," said 23-year-old Zaid Paruk.

Similar scenes broke out elsewhere in the country including Soweto, southwest of Johannesburg, where some celebrated Mandela's life draped in ANC and South African flags.

Leon Curling-Hope said she was at a work Christmas party when revelers began singing the national anthem upon hearing the news.

"Everyone is emotional but the messages that are going out are of love and happiness," said Curling-Hope, a CNN iReporter. "Everyone is holding each other singing and talking about the great memories we all have."

Describing him as "a remarkable man," de Klerk told CNN's Christiane Amanpour, "South Africa, notwithstanding political differences, stands united today, in mourning."

Carrying on the work of Mandela

While the pain resonated most in his homeland, news of Mandela's death echoed worldwide.

Moments after Zuma spoke, the U.N. Security Council had a moment of silence in his honor, with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon later calling Mandela "a giant for justice and a down-to-earth inspiration." Irish leader Enda Kenny said Mandela's name "became synonymous with the pursuit of dignity and freedom across the globe."

"A great light has gone out in the world," tweeted British Prime Minister David Cameron. "Nelson Mandela was a hero of our time."

Reaction from U.S. politicians was similarly swift, with ex-Presidents George H. W. Bush calling Mandela "a man of tremendous moral courage" and Bill Clinton remembering him as "a man of uncommon grace and compassion, for whom abandoning bitterness and embracing adversaries was not just a political strategy but a way of life."

Obama: 'He belongs to the ages'

"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," said current U.S. President Barack Obama, the first black leader of his own country who said his first public activism was an anti-apartheid protest. "He no longer belongs to us. He belongs to the ages."

Kenyan activist: Mandela saved my life

The immensely popular leader largely stayed out of the public spotlight in recent years due to his medical issues, including a hospitalization for a lung infection in June.

On September 1, Mandela was discharged from a Pretoria hospital where he had been receiving treatment since June, according to Zuma's office. He was moved to a home in the Johannesburg suburb of Houghton, where a bedroom was transformed into something akin to an intensive care unit, according to his ex-wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

Last month, Madikizela-Mandela told South Africa's Sunday Independent newspaper that tubes used to clear his lungs meant to prevent infections also made it so that he could not speak. She said then that he "remains quite ill," with doctors tending to him regularly.

"He communicates with the face, you see," Madikizela-Mandela told the newspaper then.

His history of lung problems dates to his days in Robben Island, where he was imprisoned for 27 years as part of his fight to overturn the country's system of racial segregation.

Tokyo Sexwale, who was incarcerated a few meters from Mandela, recalled him as "a very formidable and larger-than-life figure" who was nonetheless "very humble" and loving.

"He was embraced even by white wardens, his own jailers, because he demonstrated that through the power of dialogue ... people on different sides, former enemies can come together," Sexwale told CNN.

Toiled to dismantle entrenched apartheid

Mandela emerged from prison more prominent than ever and in 1994 -- four years after his release and one year after earning the Nobel Peace Prize with de Klerk, who was then South Africa's president -- he became South Africa's first black president.

Statesman, President, ambassador to the world

Mandela left the presidency in 1999, but remained one of South Africa's most respected and revered international ambassadors, a model for world and particularly African leaders.

And a new generation has been introduced to him through movies such as "Invictus" and "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom."

The latter film was in the middle of its London premiere when news broke of Mandela's death, though attendees -- Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, among them -- didn't learn about it until producer Anant Singh came onstage as the closing credits ran. He explained that Mandela's daughters had said the premiere should go on; there then was a moment of silence in Oden Cinema.

"It was as if he was born to teach the age a lesson in humility, in humor and above all else in patience," said Bono, the U2 singer and Africa activist. "In the end, Nelson Mandela showed us how to love rather than hate, not because he had never surrendered to rage or violence, but because he learned that love would do a better job."

Hollywood reacts to loss of a legend

His last high-profile public appearance came in 2010, when South Africa hosted soccer's World Cup. His family members and South African officials have updated the public on his life since, including numerous hospitalizations and his eventual return to his

Mandela has been hailed as a pioneer, a statesman, a hero, someone who maintained his easy smile and demeanor after decades of turmoil. To many South Africans, he was known simply, affectionately as Tata -- the word for father in Xhosa tribe.

"What made Nelson Mandela great was precisely what made him human," said Zuma. "We saw in him what we seek in ourselves."

A man of many handshakes

How Bill Clinton boosts Obama’s re-election bid at U.S. Democrat Convention

UNITED States’ (U.S.) former President Bill Clinton on Wednesday lent his signature charisma to President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign at the Democrat Convention, arguing that his party’s candidate had placed American on a path to renewed prosperity.

Therefore, Clinton declared before hundreds of delegates and by extension, millions of American voters and viewers globally that Obama deserved four more years to finish the job. Early in his speech, Clinton formally nominated Obama as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate. “I want to nominate a man who’s cool on the outside — but who burns for America on the inside.”

The two-term former president told the Democratic convention that he believed “with all my heart” that the 44th president had led a remarkable, if incomplete, recovery. Addressing a split electorate less than nine weeks ahead of November’s election, Clinton said Obama had saved the economy from collapse and laid the foundation for the kind of growth seen during his own presidency in the 1990s. “No president – not me or any of my predecessors -– no one could have fully repaired all the damage he found in just four years,” Clinton said.

“He has laid the foundations for a new, modern successful economy of shared prosperity, and if you will renew the president’s contract, you will feel it. You will feel it.”

“Folks, whether the American people believe what I said or not may be the whole election, I just want you to know that I believe it,” Clinton said, his voice faltering slightly. “With all my heart I believe it.” After holding 15,000 of the Democratic faithful in Charlotte, North Carolina enthralled for over 45 minutes, Clinton was joined on stage by a smiling and energised Obama, leading to frenzied applause.

The Democratic standard bearers – estranged during Obama’s long 2008 primary battle with Hillary Clinton – then embraced on stage, symbolising a renewed determination to defeat their Republican rivals in November.

Obama also addressed the convention late yesterday night at the same venue. The campaign had cancelled plans for the president to give his nomination speech in a vast outdoor American football stadium, in which they had hoped to recreate the celebratory atmosphere of his 2008 convention address. Officials said they could not risk thunder and lightning disrupting the event, Obama’s best unfiltered chance to take his case to voters before the November 6 election, and moved the big set piece inside.

Setting the context for that address, Clinton, who was president between 1993 and 2001, offered a point-by-point rebuttal of the policies of Obama’s rival, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. “The most important question is, what kind of country do you want to live in?” he asked. “If you want a you’re-on-your-own, winner-take-all society, you should support the Republican ticket,” he said, referring to Romney’s vows to cut spending, ease regulations and reduce the size of government. Clinton also tried to give some empirical weight to the great ideological rift over economic policy that has come to define this election cycle.

“Since 1961, for 52 years now, the Republicans have held the White House 28 years, the Democrats, 24. In those 52 years, our private economy has produced 66 million private sector jobs. “So what’s the job score? Republicans, 24 million; Democrats, 42,” he said to cheers. Meanwhile, Clinton is as popular now as when he was inaugurated in 1993, with a 66 percent approval rating, according to a recent CNN poll. Even Romney campaign spokesman, Ryan Williams, praised the former president, saying that unlike Obama, he had “worked with Republicans, balanced the budget, and after four years, he could say you were better off.”
“President Clinton’s speech brought the disappointment and failure of President Obama’s time in office clearly into focus,” he said in a statement.

National polls put the rivals neck-and-neck, but Romney lags in key swing states and seems not to have received the bounce he was hoping for from last week’s Republican convention. “I want a man who believes with no doubt that we can build a new American Dream economy,” Clinton said. “After last night, I want a man who had the good sense to marry Michelle Obama,” Clinton quipped, drawing cheers and smiles from the First Lady the night after her own rousing convention speech.

In a roll call Democrats from all 50 states one-by-one announced their support for Obama, officially handing him the party nomination.

Source: Guardian

Obama nominated after Clinton's rousing speech

 

In an impassioned speech that rocked the Democratic National Convention, former President Bill Clinton proclaimed Wednesday night, "I know we're coming back" from the worst economic mess in generations and appealed to hard-pressed Americans to stick with Barack Obama for a second term in the White House.

Obama strode onstage as Clinton concluded his speech. The 42nd president bowed, and was pulled into an embrace by the 44th as thousands of delegates jammed into the convention hall roared their approval.

Not long afterward, the delegates formally awarded Obama their nomination to a second term in a post-midnight roll call of the states, The Associated Press reports.

Clinton, conceding that many struggling in a slow-recovery economy don't yet feel improvement, said circumstances are indeed getting better, "and if you'll renew the president's contract you will feel it."

To more cheers, he said of Obama, "I want to nominate a man who is cool on the outside but who burns for America on the inside."

Clinton spoke as Obama's high command worked to control the political fallout from an embarrassing retreat on the party platform, just two months from Election Day in the tight race with Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

Under criticism from Romney, the Obama camp abruptly rewrote the day-old document to insert a reference to God and to declare that Jerusalem "is and will remain the capital of Israel." Some delegates objected loudly, but Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, presiding in the largely-empty hall, ruled them outvoted. White House aides said Obama had personally ordered the changes, but they did not disclose whether he had approved the earlier version.

The convention concludes Thursday with Obama's acceptance speech before a prime- time national TV audience. Aides announced he would speak in the convention hall rather than a nearby 74,000-seat football stadium as originally planned. They cited weather concerns as the reason for the switch in a city that has been hit by heavy rains in recent days.

Obama's campaign hoped Clinton's speech would prove especially persuasive in an era of sluggish economic growth and 8.3 percent unemployment. Clinton is exceptionally popular 12 years after he left office, particularly among white men, a group among whom Obama polls poorly.

The speech was deemed so important to Obama's election prospects that convention planners delayed his formal nomination to a second term until Clinton had finished speaking. The familiar roll call of the states began well after television prime time in the eastern part of the country, and was on pace to last until well past midnight.

The speech was vintage Clinton, overlong for sure, insults delivered with a folksy grin, references to his own time in office and his wife Hillary, all designed to improve Obama's shaky re-election prospects.

The convention hall rocked with delegates' applause and cheers the former president strode onstage to sounds of "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow," his 1992 campaign theme song.

He sought to rebut every major criticism Republicans leveled against the president at their own convention last week in Tampa, and said that in fact, since 1961, far more jobs have been created under Democratic presidents than when Republicans sat in the White House â€" by a margin of 42 million to 24 million.

Clinton accused Republicans of proposing "the same old policies that got us into trouble in the first place" and led to a near financial meltdown. Those, he said, include efforts to provide "tax cuts for higher-income Americans, more money for defense than the Pentagon wants and ... deep cuts on programs that help the middle class and poor children."

"As another president once said, 'There they go again,'" he said, quoting Ronald Reagan, who often uttered the remark as a rebuke to Democrats. There was another reference to Reagan, whom Democrats routinely accused of advocating "trickle down economics" that favored the rich.

" We simply cannot afford to turn the reins of government over to someone who will double down on trickle-down," Clinton said.

Obama flew into his convention city earlier in the day and arrived in the hall in time for Clinton's speech.

On an unsettled convention day, aides scrapped plans for Obama to speak to a huge crowd in a 74,000 seat football stadium, citing the threat of bad weather in a city that has been pelted by heavy downpours in recent days.

Source: The Nation