Nelson Mandela, the courageous and soft-spoken global statesman, died on Thursday surrounded by his loved ones. The man who delivered South Africa from apartheid and inspired the world was 95 years old.
Mandela was home when he passed after suffering from a series of lung infections the past two years. He has been described as on his “deathbed” in recent days. He was attended to in his final hours by his wife Grace Machel, and some of his 3 children, 17 grandchildren, and 13 great-grandchildren.
Considered by many to be the man who fought the last bastion of political racism, he will be missed.
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His final wishes will be followed, and after lying in state for up to a week at the administrative capital Pretoria, the body of South Africa’s first democratic, black president will be transported 550 miles south to his home village of Qunu in the rural eastern cape.
He will be buried with a traditional ceremony on his family’s estate, where he played when he was a boy.
The Nobel Peace laureate has accomplished much in his life since he once tended livestock on the very land where he will be laid to rest.
May he rest in peace.
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