Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s Liberator as Prisoner and President, Dies at 95

The New York Times’ Bill Keller writes on the passing of Nelson Mandela on Thursday at the age of 95. “Mr. Mandela’s quest for freedom took him from the court of tribal royalty to the liberation underground to a prison rock quarry to the presidential suite of Africa’s richest country,” Keller writes. “And then, when his first term of office was up, unlike so many of the successful revolutionaries he regarded as kindred spirits, he declined a second term and cheerfully handed over power to an elected successor, the country still gnawed by crime, poverty, corruption and disease but a democracy, respected in the world and remarkably at peace.”

Read at The New York Times

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