Nelson Mandela, a worldwide symbol of resistance to racism and injustice who spent 27 years in jail for his beliefs and then, without rancor, led South Africa out of apartheid, died Thursday at the age of 95.
Mandela battled complications from a lung infection. His death was announced by South African President Jacob Zuma.
During the day, relatives and friends were seen visiting Mandela’s home, which was flanked by more than a dozen cars and military personnel.
Mandela’s daughter Makaziwe said at one point that her father was fighting from his deathbed, and was “very strong” and “very courageous.”
The Nobel Peace Prize winner had kept a low profile since his last political speech in November 2009 and his move to a village home in Qunu in May 2011.
Mandela was born on July 18, 1918, as Rolihlahla Dalibhunga, the son of the chief counselor to the Thembu chief in southeast South Africa. He was given the name Nelson by a schoolteacher and adopted Mandela from his grandfather, a descendant of the Thembu royal house.
He left elite Fort Hare University College after a student protest, then ran away from home to avoid an arranged marriage and went to Johannesburg.
In 1943 he joined the African National Congress, the leading organization that championed the rights of South Africa’s black majority, and co-founded its youth league.
The election victory of the all-white National Party in the country’s 1948 elections — in which only whites could vote — put Mandela on a collision course with the party’s notorious segregation policy known as apartheid.
In 1952, he and lifelong friend and ally Oliver Tambo opened the first black law practice in Johannesburg. They helped launch the ANC’s Defiance Campaign, which urged South Africans to resist unjust laws.
Mandela — known to supporters by his traditional clan name, Madiba — was charged with treason along with 156 other activists in 1956. The charges were dropped after a four-year trial.
However, in 1960 after the ANC was banned and the government killed 69 protesters in what became known as the Sharpeville massacre, Mandela went underground to wage economic sabotage against the regime.
He was captured in 1962 and, while serving a five-year sentence of hard labor, was put on trial for new charges of trying to overthrow the government.
In a celebrated courtroom speech he said:
“During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people,” Mandela said. “I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities.
“It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”
He was sentenced to life in prison on June 12, 1964. Over the next three decades he would become the most famous prisoner and freedom fighter in the world.
Mandela was locked in the harsh Robben Island prison near Cape Town for most of his imprisonment, before moving to jails on the mainland.
The South African press was forbidden to quote him or publish his photo.
But his story got out to the world as jailed members of his banned African National Congress were able to smuggle out messages of guidance to the anti-apartheid movement.
His friend, Tambo, helped lead the “Free Nelson Mandela” fight, and make his treatment the focus of an international campaign against apartheid.
With the help of international sanctions, opponents forced South Africa’s government to lift the ban on the ANC in 1990 and free Mandela.
The 71-year-old walked out of prison on February 11, 1990. His then-wife Winnie was by his side.His fist was held high.
In his autobiography, “Long Walk to Freedom,” he would write: “As I finally walked through those gates … I felt — even at the age of seventy-one — that my life was beginning anew,”
Mandela celebrated his release with a world tour, which included welcomes in the United States by President George H.W. Bush and Congress and in Britain by Queen Elizabeth.
As president of the ANC, he led negotiations to steer the country toward democracy and shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 with South African President F.W. de Klerk, who had begun dismantling apartheid.
In 1994, he was elected South Africa’s president in the first national elections in which all races could vote.
“Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another and suffer the indignity of being the skunk of the world,” he said after his election. “Let freedom reign.”
Mandela took several steps to symbolize reconciliation, including having tea with the widow of the architect of apartheid in 1995.
That year he also used sports to unite the nation, when he supported the South African team in the World Cup of rugby, a sport that had long been a seen as a bastion of white, Afrikaner culture.
When he congratulated the team on an underdog victory over New Zealand, the overwhelmingly white crowd of 63,000 chanted “Nelson! Nelson! Nelson!”
The moment was portrayed in the film “Invictus,” starring Matt Damon and directed by Clint Eastwood.
After one term, he stepped down as president in 1999 and left the ANC in firm control of the nation’s future while devoting himself to humanitarian projects, including fighting AIDS, and to diplomatic missions.
He was credited with helping to convince Libya to turn over two suspects in the Lockerbie airplane bombing.
Mandela was married three times, most recently in 1998 to Gracie Machel, the widow of Mozambique’s president Samora Machel, whom he wed on his 80th birthday.
In 2005 he announced that one of his six children, Makgatho, had died of AIDS.
Mandela battled ailments in later years, including prostate cancer, lung infections and gall stones.
In his last public appearance he was seen waving from the back of a golf cart before the final of the soccer World Cup in Johannesburg in July 2010.
With Post wire services