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South Africa prepared Monday for a massive memorial in a soccer stadium honoring Nelson Mandela, where an eclectic mix of world leaders will eulogize the anti-apartheid icon before a crowd of nearly 100,000 mourners. 
 As a prelude to the stadium event, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu spoke at an event at the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory Monday night. 
 "What a fantastic gift God gave to us in this Mandela, who quickly became an icon, a global icon of forgiveness, of generosity of spirit," Tutu said. 
 "He really was like a magician with a magic wand, turning us into this glorious, multi-colored, rainbow people," said Tutu. 
 At the Soweto stadium where Mandela made his last public appearance at the 2010 World Cup, workers busily constructed a stage protected by bulletproof glass for Tuesday's memorial. 
 Police promised "thousands" of officers would secure the stadium, though security appeared lax Monday and a security company owner used his small car as a mobile office to hire guards just at the stadium. 
 Nearly 100 heads of state are expected at the 95,000-capacity FNB Stadium, where some mourners are already camped out to be the first ones inside. Authorities expect overflow crowds to watch the event at nearby stadiums as well, saying they'd shut off access if the crowds grow too large. 
 Officers will direct traffic, protect mourners and help the bodyguards of visiting dignitaries, Lt. Gen. Solomon Makgale, a spokesman for the South African Police Service, said Monday. 
 "We will be on hand to make sure people are able to grieve in a safe environment," Makgale told The Associated Press. 
 Makgale said a joint taskforce of police, diplomats and intelligence service personnel already have been making plans and talking to the foreign delegations who plan to attend the ceremony. 
 Makgale said police were prepared for Tuesday's event, which also will include speeches from Mandela's family and friends. 
 "Whether we have 10 heads of state coming or 70 or 100, we do have the capacity and plans in place to facilitate their movement," Makgale said. 
 United States President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle left Washington for Johannesburg aboard Air Force One on Monday. In a rare get-together, they were joined by former President George W. Bush, his wife Laura and former first lady Hillary Clinton. Former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter are traveling separately to South Africa. 
 A program released by the South African government showed Obama would speak, as would United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Chinese Vice President Li Yuanchao. Others speakers include Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, Namibian President Hifikepunye Pohamba, Indian President Pranab Mukherjee and Cuban President Raul Castro. South African President Jacob Zuma will give the keynote address. 
 Though security remains a concern, an AP reporter walked unsearched into the stadium Monday by showing only a national press card issued in Europe. It took about three minutes before a security officer asked journalists to leave the stadium's field. However, reporters freely roamed throughout the stadium and walked the aisles to see the ongoing stage construction. 
 Officials from the U.S. Consulate in Johannesburg also toured the venue Monday, but declined to speak to journalists. 
 Meanwhile, a private security firm called Sidas Security was still hiring guards for Tuesday's event on Monday, using a compact car as an office. Sidas manager George Mathabe said the company will have 1,500 guards on duty Tuesday. 
 "I'm doing this from the bottom of my heart, just to thank Tata," Mathabe said, using the Xhosa word for father as an endearment name for Mandela. "My son is coming tomorrow as a visitor too. He's going to live in a free country. He's going to be able to do whatever he likes thanks to Tata." 
 Roads several square kilometers (miles) around the stadium will be closed Tuesday, and people will have to walk or take public transport to the stadium. 
 Mandela died Thursday at age 95. After the stadium memorial on Tuesday, Mandela's body will lie in state at the Union Buildings, the seat of government in South Africa's capital, Pretoria, from Wednesday to Friday. He will be buried Sunday in Qunu, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate's rural hometown in Eastern Cape Province. 
 South Africa's parliament held a special session Monday in honor of Mandela. Kgalema Motlanthe, the country's deputy president and a member of Mandela's African National Congress political party, opened the proceedings with a speech describing how the icon's death caused a "sweeping feeling of sorrow" around the world. 
 "He belongs to all humanity," Motlanthe said. He added: "Mandela's ideals saturate the face of the Earth." 
 Helen Zille, the leader of the opposition Democratic Alliance political party, said South Africa inherited "an enormous responsibility" from Mandela to ensure everyone had "freedom you can use." 
 "He has handed the baton to us and we dare not drop it," Zille said.

World leaders to speak at massive Mandela memorial

obama cropped

Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio celebrated Nelson Mandela's life with song, dance and prayer Sunday at Brooklyn's Christian Cultural Center and afterward said he would apply the South African leader's values to his governance of New York City.
"I think it's about reconciliation and I think it is about mutual respect. It is definitionally what Mandela was about," de Blasio told reporters after speaking to about 3,000 at the church service. "And I think in terms of this city, it means bringing people together. Working tirelessly to heal divisions, to increase communications."
Mandela's refusal to "accept unacceptable conditions," de Blasio said, inspires him to raise and address issues of inequality.
De Blasio was among political leaders who attended a tribute to the former South African president, who was remembered in a video montage with clips of his speeches as well as with African-style dancing, drumming and songs with such lyrics as "Let peace and freedom ring."
Mandela, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 with F.W. de Klerk, the last South African president under apartheid, died Thursday in Johannesburg at age 95. The two worked together to bring the nation peacefully from under systemic racial segregation.
De Blasio was an aide in former Mayor David Dinkins' administration when Mandela visited New York City in 1990 and spoke to a packed Yankee Stadium. De Blasio's wife, Chirlane McCray, who is African-American, performed spoken-word poetry for the group Art Against Apartheid in the 1980s. McCray on Sunday said the group's work was "beyond the politics of black and white." Mandela's death was personal to the couple, de Blasio said.
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said during Sunday's service that Mandela didn't lead by force or even by oratory. But "he led by moral majesty and when you lead by moral majesty, the walls come tumbling down," he said.
The city's Public Advocate-elect Letitia James, Brooklyn's District Attorney-elect Ken Thompson and the Rev. Al Sharpton also attended the service.
The church's pastor, the Rev. A.R. Bernard, a member of de Blasio's transition committee, said he believed the mayor would encourage an atmosphere of "peaceful collaboration" in the city.
De Blasio after the service said his family still has not decided whether they will move from their Park Slope row house to Gracie Mansion, the mayoral residence on the Upper East Side, when he takes office Jan. 1. They were weighing the "pull of Brooklyn" with logistical and security considerations, he said.
He said this week would bring important announcements about his administration, though the appointment of a schools chancellor -- one of the most anticipated -- would not necessarily be one of them. 
Picking a chancellor is something he is doing methodically, De Blasio said. He added that some being considered belong to a "substantial personal network that we're tapping into." He did not disclose his candidates.
The mayor-elect last week announced government veteran Anthony Shorris as first deputy mayor and a return of Bill Bratton to the post of NYPD commissioner.

NYDEBL09

Bill De Blasio, NY politicians pay tribute to Nelson Mandela

nyMAYOR

I was in fourth grade when apartheid was the class lesson. That's when a classmate pushed a black-and-white film strip about South Africa through a projector and had his guest speaker -- time has erased both names, alas -- explain the racial classification system and how it worked. 
 We'd each been assigned an African country for geography and tasked with learning everything we could and, over a series of weeks, delivering it back in a report to the class. 
 Some schoolmates returned with colorfully garbed visitors from embassies, one of the many perks of growing up in Washington, D.C. 
 Others came back with travel brochures, crafts, musical instruments and exotic foods, including one classmate who offered up what he swore were chocolate-covered insects. 
 But it's that long-ago report on South Africa that comes flooding back in the wake of Nelson Mandela's death -- a lesson that ended with a visitor, after cursory inspection of our skin colors, hair textures and even the curl of some of our noses, matter-of-factly telling some of us exactly how we would be classified if we lived in South Africa. 
 I believe that was in 1964. Mandela would have been imprisoned two years by then. 
 As we students grew older, we were assigned to read "Cry the Beloved Country," the 1948 novel on apartheid by Alan Paton. By high school, "Free Mandela" graffiti seemed to begin sprouting everywhere. 
 In college, my part-time job included writing lead-ins for a news radio network about ongoing violence in South Africa. One big story was the 1977 murder of student leader Steve Biko. 
 Mandela would have been imprisoned 15 years by then. 
 By the 1980s, many of us were, in quick succession, reading James A. Michener's history of South Africa, "The Covenant"; listening to Peter Gabriel's haunting "Biko" and Steven Van Zandt's protest song "Sun City" and watching Denzel Washington portray Biko in Richard Attenborough's "Cry Freedom." 
 Mandela would have been imprisoned 25 years when the film was released -- all of that time, and he still would be years away from freedom. 
 Much has been made over the past few days of Mandela's strength, resolve and extraordinary capacity for forgiveness and reconciliation. But from one who never met him, saw him or reached for his hand, a different view comes to mind. 
 Years after Mandela's release in 1990, decades after he, as promised, served just one term as his nation's first post-apartheid president, Mandela thought back on the day he was sentenced to prison: 
 "I realized the role I could play in court and the possibilities before me as a defendant. I was the symbol of justice in the court of the oppressor, the representative of the great ideals of freedom, fairness and democracy in a society that dishonored those virtues. I realized then and there that I could carry on the fight even in the fortress of the enemy." 
 Mandela, at 44, was a middle-aged man when he went to prison, well past the hopeful spring of youthful rebellion. 
 Even from captivity, Mandela, a lawyer and former boxer, expertly and intelligently pushed and probed toward his goal, testing every possible path, from advocating violence to ultimately modeling reconciliation in a slow-motion quest to kill one system while seeding another. 
 He seemed as grounded and pragmatic, as stubborn and skilled as any general, masterfully amassing needed resources to unite South Africa. Mandela was a brilliant strategist who even after leaving public office stood firm, and spoke his mind, no matter what others, including the United States, thought. 
 Mandela's middle name, Rolihlahla, is Xhosa for "troublemaker." 
 The world sorely needs more.

Long Island

Columnists

Joye Brown

LIJOY08

Mandela formed impressions from an early age

Mandela 68-cropped

Nelson Mandela, who died yesterday at the age of 95, seemed like an indelible and welcome presence on our TV screens over the last two decades -- not quite omnipresent, but hardly invisible either. In fact...that's all a bit of an illusion: He didn't do all that many major TV interviews. I suppose this all comes under the heading of "He Had More Important Things To Do..." &nbsp;But more important than TV! In fact, there are some politicians who don't make a beeline for the camera, and he was apparently one of them.&nbsp; 
 &nbsp; I've collected a few notable interviews here,however, from Oprah to Charlie Rose, and a couple in between. Of course, this is hardly conclusive -- far from it -- but this small tour does reveal a gracious screen presence who seemed to intuitively understand the two rules of interviews: 1.) Don't evade; 2.) say what's in your heart &nbsp;(as long as what's in &nbsp;your heart isn't loathsome, I suppose &nbsp;--&nbsp; then please hide it.)&nbsp; 
 I've posted Charlie's full interview below -- please don't blame me, Charlie, but it's good; the world needs to see! Meanwhile, if you're a Newsday app-ster, please head on over to Newsday.com/tvzone. .<iframe allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/cMl1lBPHp0o" width="420"></iframe><iframe allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/7iGJ4PovQL4" width="420"></iframe><iframe allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/n_Z5ciE82w8" width="485"></iframe><iframe allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/siM8EgrKKYg" width="420"></iframe>

Entertainment

Nelson Mandela on TV, through the years

mandela key to nyc - 6/20/1990

Be in no doubt that Nelson Mandela, the world's most famous political prisoner, campaigner against racist rule and magnanimous leader, was a great man. 
 When spending time with him, one felt awed, weak at the knees. Madiba, the tribal name by which he was fondly known by many, had charm and warmth. He was also responsible, more than any other individual, for the remarkably peaceful transition in South Africa. 
 Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Madiba's close friend and fellow leader of the anti-apartheid campaign, once told me how he felt an immense "generosity of spirit" from Mandela. The archbishop naturally saw Christian elements in Madiba's readiness to forgive his white racist abusers, and his compassion for the weak. "You can even think of Jesus - it's quite in order to say that there are Christ-like aspects of him." 
 But you shouldn't remember him as a saint. Bishop Tutu didn't think of him this way - guffawing at the idea that Mandela was anything so dry, hollow and uninteresting. He may be compared to the likes of Mahatma Gandhi or Mother Teresa, as a great moral figure of our times. But the myth should not overpower the reality of a humane, richly complicated, and passionate individual. 
 In comparison with other politicians, in Africa and beyond, he stands out for his self-restraint. 
 As free South Africa's first president, he volunteered for only a single term in office. Look just next door, to Zimbabwe, for a striking contrast: Its near-despotic leader, Robert Mugabe, is now in his fourth, disastrous, decade as ruler. 
 Yet Madiba is far more interesting than either the villain next door or the simple saintly figure. His achievements are the greater because he himself admitted to errors, at times bungling policy. Those failings matter. He was more likely to learn from mistakes than the haughty sort of leader who refuses to accept he made any. Others should pay as much attention to his slip-ups as to his achievements. 
 Take the great post-apartheid misery that South Africa suffered in the first two decades of democracy: the AIDS epidemic. Mandela failed as president to tackle the spread of HIV, even as terrifyingly large numbers of South Africans became infected. 
 As early as 1991 he had grasped (judging from one of his private notebooks from that year) that the disease threatened a "crisis for the country." Yet in office he did almost nothing to stop its spread. 
 He recalled later at an event I attended in Cape Town that after spending so many years in prison, he was shy when it came to talking about a sexually transmitted virus. South Africa, too, faced a host of other challenges on his watch - political violence, economic upheaval, ongoing racial tension. But his inaction on AIDS then gave way to the outright denial of the epidemic, and harassment of those who tried to tackle the spread of HIV, by his successor as president, Thabo Mbeki. The result was a pandemic that claimed millions of South African lives, many unnecessarily, as drugs to treat victims were long withheld. 
 To his immense credit, however, Mandela conceded his early error. After leaving the presidency, he became a significant part of a campaign for a new AIDS policy. In retirement, he would speak up for effective education and treatment, especially when his own son succumbed to the disease in 2005. To Mbeki's fury, too, Madiba pushed within the ruling African National Congress for South Africa to tackle AIDS seriously. With the denialist Mbeki gone from office, thankfully the country has now come to grips with the pandemic. 
 Or take economic policy. After years in prison, Mandela emerged to lead South Africa still believing, in effect, in Soviet-style economics. It took advice from China's leaders (among others) to change his mind. But he was willing to switch, to get South Africa's Afrikaner state-run economy to open up and flourish. 
 For that, South Africa should be grateful. The past two decades of relative stability and steady economic growth went far better than many predicted would follow the end of apartheid rule. Yet many young, jobless, and angry South Africans are, understandably, still angry. Some attack Mandela as a stooge and a fool for abandoning nationalist, populist or far-left policies of old. 
 I recall attending a funeral for a much-loved African nationalist leader in Soweto in 2003, at which both Madiba and Mugabe were present. The crowd of mostly young African men roared in far louder appreciation for the Zimbabwean strongman than for Mandela or any other leader present. 
 The reason: Many were furious that whites still control a huge proportion of capital in South Africa. Even now some young South Africans accuse Mandela of being a sellout to privileged minority interests. The deal he struck at the end of apartheid, they feel, saw a shift in political power but too little economic change. 
 I recall one bitter letter to a newspaper a decade ago in which Madiba was called "an albatross round our necks." Poorer South Africans are the least likely to venerate him. For all the political change that came in 1994, South Africa's economy is still remarkably dominated by whites. 
 But Mandela made the best of a very difficult economic job, stabilizing South Africa's vulnerable post-apartheid economy, encouraging growth, and handing out welfare, even if rapid redistribution of assets between whites and blacks proved impossible to achieve quickly. 
 His great achievement in policy was, of course, to oversee a profoundly liberal constitution for South Africa that enshrines racial, sexual, gender and other rights. But also he could compromise, and admit the need to shift policy. 
 In his personal life, similarly, Mandela had his failings. Take his wife's word for that. At an event marking Mandela's 90th birthday, Graca Machel told me of her husband, "He is definitely not a saint!" With great warmth she related, too, how it "definitely wasn't love at first sight" when the two met in 1990. Their great fondness for each other grew only later. 
 Even in old age Madiba had an eager eye for beautiful women. One female Irish journalist recalls how he offered to marry her, at a press conference. A close friend of mine, an Indian-South African, thought that Mandela had, in effect, offered to marry her, too (rather more seriously), right before Machel came along. As a young man, a handsome boxer, lawyer of near-regal descent, he was widely described as a heartbreaker. 
 He could be petty, too. At a small lunch I attended with him in 2005, old friends teased him about his being persnickety and pedantic, after he had demanded a particular brand of sparkling water and rejected another. He insisted that his newspapers and hearing aid be arranged just so. To be fair, he took the gentle mocking in good humor. 
 His children were known to resent him at times as a distant father. He could be aloof, stiff and calculating. Machel told me that "Papa" (as she sometimes called her husband) could be stubborn, quick to anger and intolerant when his grandchildren performed badly at school. 
 And particularly difficult questions should one day be answered about what he knew of the activities of Winnie Mandela, his second wife and the great love of his life. She, though acquitted in 1991 in one murder case (but convicted of kidnapping), remains under a cloud because of other unexplained deaths in Soweto in the 1980s. There is much yet to be revealed about the disappearances and deaths of political figures in the anti-apartheid movement. 
 In all this - and in his achievements as a rich, humane but at times flawed figure - Mandela has much to offer other leaders. He liked to joke about his eventual death, chuckling that the first thing he would do in heaven - he had no doubt that he was headed there - would be to sign up for membership at the local branch of the African National Congress. It was his way of saying that he was a political and pragmatic man: not a saint. 
 Remember him as a warm, powerful and humane figure. Not an unearthly one. 
 Read this article on Slate: http://slate.me/194QBNt 
 Roberts was the Economist's correspondent in South Africa from 2001 to 2005, and is now the magazine's South Asia bureau chief, based in Delhi, India.

Opinion

Commentary

OPADAMS06

Roberts: Nelson Mandela was a great man, but not a saint

Nelson Mandela Memorial Cropped

This was in 1992, on the morning of the opening ceremonies of the Barcelona Olympics. Apartheid officially had ended in South Africa, allowing that nation's athletes to be welcomed back into the Olympic family after 32 years of isolation, so a colleague and I took the crosstown subway ride to the seaside Olympic Village to seek South African athletes' thoughts on the tangle of sports and politics.
As we were leaving, Nelson Mandela suddenly appeared, trailed by no more than a half-dozen reporters and a TV camera. We had stumbled into an ad hoc news briefing and, given the accidental opportunity, tossed a couple of questions Mandela's way.
It is not every day that one blunders into meeting and addressing a person who truly was changing the world. Mandela -- who passed away Thursday at age 95 -- then was two years past his 27 years of imprisonment for having agitated for blacks' rights, still two years from being voted in as South Africa's first democratically elected president.
A month earlier, with riots in the black townships threatening to slow the process of integration, he had suggested that South African athletes stay away from the Barcelona Games. There were only eight blacks in South Africa's 95-person Olympic delegation. But as he would do in embracing the mostly white national rugby team during the 1995 World Cup, as a unifying force in South Africa's transition away from racist minority rule, Mandela reversed field, choosing a "one-team, one-nation" strategy, another of his many signals for harmony.
"Let's let bygones be bygones," he said that morning in 1992. "Let's concern ourselves with our presence here. I urge you to come along with me, to forget the past and get on with the future."
He posed for cameras in the village with a handful of green-and-yellow-clad athletes -- black and white -- and expressed the often-empty Olympic hope that united sport somehow can lead a splintered world in the right direction. 
"It's important for our young people to participate," said Mandela, who lit up to recall his youthful days as a boxer and track athlete when asked about his own sporting inclinations. 
"There is no doubt in my mind," he said, "that this is the correct decision, and I am quite satisfied in the racial breakdown of the team. I would have liked it to be a reflection of our population" -- at that point, 26 million of the 32 million South Africans were black -- "but there has to be a starting point."
In South Africa, newspaper editorials had been encouraging Olympic participation as a spur in negotiations between Mandela's black African National Congress and white South African president F.W. de Klerk, and as an emotional way to appeal to the most radical constituents on both sides.
A white South African equestrian in the Mandela group that day, Peter Gotz, reported that "Olympic fever has been raging in South Africa . . . . It's been a very nice gesture to have Mr. Mandela here. He told us, as a team, that he was proud of us, and that the whole country is proud of us. I guess I don't feel so much a part of history as I feel a part of the present and the future."
That dumb-luck crossing of paths more than 20 years ago with such a historic figure was exhilarating, and a comfort to be reminded that a long career of covering sports events doesn't limit one to meaningless frivolity. Among Mandela's beliefs of reconciliation and hope was the acceptance of how sports could grab headlines and wield surprising power, could even be used to narrow a brutal black-white divide in his country.
A person really can bump into heroes in this business.

SPMANDELA08

My chance meeting with Nelson Mandela

mandela cropped

With an ironclad commitment to human equality and a magnetic talent for leadership, Nelson Mandela helped crush South Africa’s apartheid laws and lead his country through a stunning transition. 
 An irrepressible force for justice, he died Thursday in South Africa at the age of 95. The former South African president was admitted to a Pretoria hospital on June 8 for treatment of a recurring lung infection.&nbsp;He was taken home to Johannesburg in critical condition on Sept. 1. 
 Mandela was long regarded as one of the world’s most admired figures. His legacy is as improbable as it is profound. For much of his life, there were few signs that pointed to success. 
 While South Africa’s racial conflict is often likened to the postwar struggle for equality in the southern United States, the comparison is misleading. America’s struggle was focused on issues such as segregated schools and lunch counters. 
 The conflict in South Africa was far more fundamental. 
 It was ultimately over whose country South Africa was, said writer Alister Sparks, and its tensions were more like those between Palestinians and Israelis or Greeks and Turks. 
 Tried for treason beginning in 1956, Mandela and 155 others were adjudicated not guilty in proceedings that lasted for six years. Two years later, in 1964, he was convicted of sabotage and treason for trying to overthrow apartheid. 
 He spent almost 27 years in prison, much of that time on infamous Robben Island off Cape Town. 
 Yet in 1990, when a weary and beleaguered South African government finally decided to free Mandela in the twilight of apartheid, he emerged stronger than ever. 
 “The apartheid destruction on our subcontinent is incalculable,” he said at Cape Town City Hall on the day he walked out of prison. “The fabric of family life of millions of my people has been shattered. Millions are homeless and unemployed. Our economy lies in ruins and our people are embroiled in political strife.” 
 Mandela said he had fought an armed struggle against apartheid because he cherished the idea of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. 
 “It’s an ideal I hope to live for and achieve,” he said. 
 He did both. 
 The United States had its Abraham Lincoln. India had its Mohandas Gandhi. And South Africa — along with the world — had Nelson Mandela. 
 His peaceful revolution in the country of his birth is one of the great achievements of the late 20th century. 
 His steadfast dedication to the values of democracy and human dignity will forever stand as an inspiration. &nbsp;

Editorial: Nelson Mandela, historic icon of peaceful equality

APTOPIX Obit Nelson Mandela Cropped

His smile was like sunshine, but Nelson Mandela was made of steel. It was his strength of character, repeatedly tested throughout his long and impossibly full life, that made him one of the towering political figures of our time. 
 "Our nation has lost its greatest son," South African President Jacob Zuma said Thursday as he announced Mandela's death at age 95. Zuma was being modest. Mandela belonged to the world. 
 As the encomiums flood in from around the globe, it is important to remember that Mandela was not always held in such universal esteem. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, to name two one-time detractors, considered the organization he headed, the African National Congress, a terrorist group that was trying to overthrow South Africa's legitimate government. 
 By the 1980s, though, it was becoming clear to most of the world that the white-run apartheid government in Pretoria had no legitimacy. Mandela had been in prison for more than two decades, but moral authority in the nation was shifting his way. That political authority would follow seemed inevitable; the manner in which it would arrive, however, was very much in doubt. 
 Mandela was released in 1990 after 27 years of incarceration, much of it on Robben Island, a prison where the white government tried to isolate its most threatening political enemies -- and ended up providing Mandela with a headquarters in which to teach, organize and ultimately practice the art of revolution. 
 After his release, he visited world capitals, including Washington. That was the one time I met the man: He came to The Washington Post for lunch, and I, like everyone else, was star-struck by his charisma. I recall being struck, too, by his vigor and energy. Most men would have been broken by what Mandela had endured. He seemed to be just getting started. 
 Thus began the most remarkable period of Mandela's life -- the years that made him such a historic figure. 
 South Africa's apartheid government had been brutally repressive for nearly five decades, and the country's black majority was justifiably full of anger. Mandela led his people in channeling that anger -- not suppressing it but using it in constructive ways. He negotiated a transition that acknowledged the right of white South Africans to be citizens but no longer lords and masters. He did not forgive the torturers and the murderers -- the worst crimes would be brought to light -- but he refused to seek revenge. 
 When Mandela took office as president in 1994, he governed with the same generosity. Few could have imagined that South Africa could move peacefully to black majority rule. Without Mandela's leadership -- without his example, stature and wisdom -- the story might have been radically different. 
 The world remembers the great leader who acted without bitterness. But Mandela could play that role only because of his decades of implacable opposition to a system that he knew was evil. 
 So we should remember not only the man who embraced his former enemies but also the man who refused to be bowed by them, who remained militant despite 27 years of imprisonment, who walked out of jail and into freedom with his head held high and his eyes toward the future. 
 At the end of his presidency, Mandela gave the world another example: He showed how a great leader, raised to power by the will of his people, could step down as the constitution envisioned. George Washington taught Americans this same lesson. Because of Mandela's willingness to walk away, peaceful democratic transition is the norm in South Africa. 
 Madiba, as he was familiarly known to South Africans, personified his country in a way that few individuals have. It is no exaggeration to say that he served as the conscience of his nation. Many people thought of him as the conscience of the world. 
 After his tenure as president, Mandela acted as a global elder statesman, an adviser, mediator and honest broker in times of crisis. In his later years, he suffered from dementia. As long as he drew breath, however, he was a living symbol of hope and triumph. He will be desperately missed. 
 "He belongs to the ages," President Obama said. But it is hard to let him go. 
 Eugene Robinson is a columnist for The Washington Post.

Robinson: Nelson Mandela, the conscience of the world

Nelson Mandela -- cropped

Nelson Mandela was, to many Long Islanders, a near-mythical figure who served as a beacon of hope and is destined to remain a towering figure in world history.
"He certainly has been an inspiration to me," said Lucius Ware, president of the South-ampton branch of the NAACP. "He's such an historic figure and he will continue to be that. 
"It's just great to have that type of person, who's in many respects unmatched by anybody for what he had to go through for 27 years," in prison, he said, "and yet to come out of it and become the great leader and bring people of widely different approaches to governing South Africa together and not to be vengeful."
The death Thursday of the 95-year-old leader of a formerly outlawed political organization, the African National Congress, saddened millions of people the world over as much as it affected Long Islanders, who rejoiced when Mandela visited New York as a free man in 1990.
As many as 1,200 people from Nassau and Suffolk crammed into buses to travel to his appearance at Yankee Stadium that June, while others participated in rallies on Long Island streets, and dances or prayer services in area houses of worship.
"He was a modern-day Moses," said Rabbi Jay Rosenbaum of Temple Israel in Lawrence, who met Mandela during his 1990 visit. "He was an inspiration to all who believe in the equality of people, the resilience of the human spirit and that one person can make a difference."
Rosenbaum said that Mandela made a lasting impression when the two met.
"Just being in his presence, one could feel not only the power of his message but his love of humankind," he said.
New York, and especially its college campuses, was a hotbed of activism during the decades when Mandela was imprisoned and the ANC took up arms against the apartheid political system of white-minority rule in South Africa. 
The system crumbled and Mandela, once the country's most prominent, if feared, prisoner, became its president.
"Today, we lost one of the most transformative and influential figures in modern history," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. 
"Nelson Mandela was a global icon who broke the back of apartheid in South Africa and inspired generations of people around the world with his spirit of resolve and reconciliation," he said.
The city held a ticker-tape parade for Mandela in 1990, Bloomberg said, calling it a "great moment for our city."
New York State and New York City will fly their flags at half-staff to commemorate Mandela's death Friday.
"Nelson Mandela refused to accept injustice, fought relentlessly for what was right, and showed that a dedicated person of courage actually can change the course of history," Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said. 
Members of New York's delegation to Congress reacted with sadness. 
"Nelson Mandela led and changed the world, not with guns nor even with words, but with moral majesty," Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y) tweeted.
"His lifelong fight and dedication in the quest for civil &amp; human rights inspires us all," Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y) said on Twitter. 
Rep. Tim Bishop (D-Southampton) said: "Nelson Mandela's courage and conviction led a nation to freedom and carved a path toward greater tolerance for the world to follow."

LIREAX06

Mandela an inspirational, transformative figure to LIers

nymand - 12/4/1991 - cropped

A generous and principled giant has died. 
 Nelson Mandela stood for half a century as a unique example of a selfless leader capable of driving through tough but fair and pragmatic change. 
 He oppressed no one, forgave much and reached out to all. He helped to bring peace where most had been convinced there would be only conflict. He made possible cooperation and tolerance in a tortured land that had known too much hate and bloodshed. 
 I was lucky enough to have known and worked with Mandela. 
 I met him in the early 1990s when he had been released from prison and I was running the Rockefeller Foundation. We worked together on a proposal for a national development bank for South Africa that would have harnessed some of the immense wealth of that country to the task of nation-building and personal opportunity for the majority of South Africans who, for 300 years, had access to neither. 
 It almost came to pass. 
 Under the plan, the four giant companies whose combined wealth at that time constituted 80 percent of the value of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange would each "voluntarily" transfer 10 percent of their stock to the new bank, in return for a government commitment of no forced nationalization. 
 The bank would use the assets to match the savings of any South Africans earning less than a designated amount, allowing them to borrow against those savings for a home mortgage, for the capital to start a new business, or to finance higher education for themselves or their children. 
 Mandela, I learned, focused on you as an individual. It was as if he put his arm around your shoulder and said: "I am walking toward those mountains over there on the horizon." Even when he was looking you right in the eyes, part of his soul seemed focused on the horizon. Somehow, 27 years of imprisonment had driven out of him all petty emotions. There was no envy, selfishness, annoyance or self-reference. Among the qualities remaining were humility and tenacity. 
 "If you would like to walk with me, you are welcome to do so for as long or as short a period as you like. I will welcome your company, and we will talk and travel together." 
 Mandela accepted you without judgment, as he accepted and befriended his jailers on Robben Island. "But you must know that when you leave me I shall go on. I shall continue on my path toward those far mountains, one step at a time -- for as many steps and as long a time as may be required." 
 We lost the proposal for the National Development Bank in the end because of a very human incident. 
 Mandela was to meet with the first President George Bush in Washington. We had done the preparatory work to ensure the Bush team was aware of the proposal and saw it as a useful way the international community could contribute to broad and fair investment in the new, multi-racial South Africa. The plan was for Mandela to ask Bush to lead the G7 in helping to capitalize the bank. 
 Bush and Mandela had not met before, so their meeting began with chit-chat about their backgrounds. At some point -- I never learned exactly what it was -- Bush said something that set Mandela off on a long discourse about racism and the problems of South Africa. It was so long, in fact, that it took up the entire meeting. The White House staffer who was present called me afterward and said, "Peter, we were ready to catch the ball, but your man never threw it." 
 By such unplanned turns in the chemistry of two individuals is history sometimes formed. 
 Mandela's generosity of spirit and his capacity to transcend rancor and racism were the powerful and virtually miraculous tools that helped South Africa stagger onto the road of cooperation and co-existence between people who had hated, demonized and fought each other. That, and the remarkable partner he had in Frederik De Klerk, the Afrikaans prime minister who freed Mandela and met him halfway in their bold experiment in reconciliation. 
 Mandela did not "have greatness thrust upon him," as is said so often of other leaders who emerge at key turning points in history. He could well have come away from Robben Island a broken, insignificant man whom history had passed by. Consider the resilience, the persistence, and the openness of spirit it required for him to grow stronger and wiser and more effective over those 27 years. 
 Mandela found greatness within himself and was able to nurture it, to temper it, to humanize it so that when he was invited at last to walk out of prison onto the wide, noisy stage of history he could stand as one of the most remarkable leaders of his period -- indeed, of any period in human history. 
 Now he goes to his grave in peace, with dignity, with the affection of all his countrymen and the respect of the entire world. 
 And the rest of us lose one of the great figures of our age and one of the most powerfully inspiring examples of what principle and leadership can mean. 
 Peter Goldmark, a former budget director of New York State and former publisher of the International Herald Tribune, headed the climate program at the Environmental Defense Fund.

OPGOLDMARKMANDELA

Goldmark: Nelson Mandela focused on the horizon

Counting himself among the millions influenced by Nelson 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. 
 "I am one of the countless millions who drew inspiration from Nelson Mandela's life," he continued. "And like so many around the globe, I cannot fully imagine my own life without the example that Nelson Mandela set." 
 Mandela died earlier Thursday at 95. He had spent much of the year in and out of the hospital, and his illness prevented a meeting with Obama when the U.S. president visited South Africa this summer. 
 Still, the former South African president's legacy influenced nearly every aspect of Obama's trip. Obama, along with wife Michelle and daughters Malia and Sasha, made an emotional visit to Robben Island, standing quietly together in the tiny cell where Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in prison. Obama also met privately with members of Mandela's family. 
 The president is likely to travel to South Africa for Mandela's funeral, though a trip has not yet been announced. Other former U.S. presidents and dignitaries are also likely to attend. 
 Obama's political rise has drawn inevitable comparisons to the South African leader. Both are Nobel Peace Prize winners and the first black men elected to lead their countries. 
 However, the two men met in person only once, a hastily arranged meeting in a Washington hotel room in 2005 when Obama was a U.S. senator. A photo of the meeting hangs in Obama's personal office at the White House, showing a smiling Mandela sitting on a chair, his legs outstretched, as the young senator reaches down to shake his hand. A copy of the photo also hung in Mandela's office in Johannesburg. 
 The two presidents did speak occasionally on the phone, including after the 2008 election, when Mandela called Obama to congratulate him on his victory. The U.S. president called Mandela in 2010 after the South African leader's young granddaughter was killed in a car accident. Obama also wrote the introduction to Mandela's memoir, "Conversations With Myself." 
 Mandela had already shaped Obama's political beliefs well before their first encounter. As a student at Occidental College in Los Angeles, Obama joined protests against the school's investments during South Africa's apartheid era. In 1981, Obama focused his first public political speech on the topic. 
 "It's happening an ocean away," Obama said, according to a retelling of the story in his memoir "Dreams From My Father." ''But it's a struggle that touches each and every one of us. Whether we know it or not. Whether we want it or not."

Nation/World

usobam1206

Obama: Nelson Mandela now 'belongs to the ages'

Obama Mandela cropped

JOHANNESBURG -- He emerged into bright winter sunshine, stepped onto the lush field and pulled on a cap. His long-sleeve green rugby jersey was untucked and buttoned right up to the top, a style all his own. On the back, a gold No. 6, big and bold. 
 Within seconds, the chants went up from the fans packed into Ellis Park stadium in the heart of Johannesburg: "Nelson! Nelson! Nelson!" 
 Nelson Mandela, South Africa's first black president, was wearing the colors of the Springboks and 65,000 white rugby supporters were joyously shouting his name. 
 It was 1995. The Rugby World Cup final, rugby's biggest game. And yet it was much more. It was nation-defining for South Africa, a transcendent moment in the transformation from apartheid to multi-racial democracy. 
 The day spawned books and a blockbuster Clint Eastwood movie. It still speaks -- nearly 20 years later -- to what sport is capable of achieving. With his cap and a team jersey, Mandela showed an incisive understanding of the role sport plays in millions of lives. 
 Mandela died Thursday at the age of 95. 
 "Sport has the power to change the world," Mandela said in a speech five years after that match. "It has the power to inspire, it has the power to unite people in a way that little else does." 
 A statesman, Mandela didn't just have brushes with sports, occasional appearances timed only for political gain. He embraced them wholeheartedly -- rugby, soccer, cricket, boxing, track and field, among others. And, by many accounts, he truly loved athletic contests, with their celebration of humanity and how they unite teammates, fans and countries in triumph and, sometimes, in despair. At one time in his youth, Mandela cut an impressive figure as an amateur boxer. 
 On June 24, 1995, Mandela and South Africa were triumphant. And he may just have saved a country by pulling on that green and gold jersey with a prancing antelope on the left breast. The Springboks were dear to the hearts of South Africa's white Afrikaners and loathed by the nation's black majority. By donning their emblem, Mandela reconciled a nation fractured and badly damaged by racism and hatred. 
 "Not in my wildest dreams did I think that Nelson Mandela would pitch up at the final wearing a Springbok on his heart," South Africa's captain on that day, Francois Pienaar, said in a television interview some time later. "When he walked into our changing room to say good luck to us, he turned around and my number was on his back. 
 "It was just an amazing feeling." 
 Mandela also could leave millionaire sportsmen like David Beckham and Tiger Woods star-struck. 
 "Allow me to introduce myself to you," Mandela joked to then-England soccer captain Beckham when they met in 2003. 
 Only there was no doubting who wanted to meet whom. 
 A young Woods came out of his audience with Mandela proudly clutching a copy of the president's autobiography. 
 Beckham, sitting -- almost shyly -- on the arm of Mandela's chair, said his meeting was "an amazing honor," even if Mandela wasn't sure what to make of the superstar's hairstyle of the moment -- dreadlocks. 
 "I'm too old to express an opinion on the latest developments for young people," Mandela said with a laugh. 
 In fact, Mandela, who came out of prison at 71 after decades of isolation, never lost touch. It was part of what made him an inspiration for sport and sportsmen and women. While he was incarcerated, South Africa was thrown out of the Olympics for over 30 years and only allowed back in after he was released. 
 Now, Mandela, known affectionately to South Africans by his clan name Madiba, was wearing the No. 6 jersey of Pienaar -- the Afrikaans rugby player with whom he had struck up a close friendship. The relationship was portrayed by Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon in the film "Invictus" and took rugby and the story of the '95 World Cup to millions unfamiliar with South Africa's game. 
 The underdog South Africans won that day, beating New Zealand -- the top team in the world -- in extra time of a nerve-racking final. 
 "We underestimated how proud it would make South Africa," Pienaar said, recalling the tournament and telling of how Mandela would phone him up regularly to check on the team. "It would be Madiba, wanting to chat to me, to find out what's happening. Is the team focused? Are they OK? Are the guys cool?" 
 The phone calls told of Mandela's desire for the Springboks to win for all South Africans, but also his affinity with sport. 
 He repeated his success in 1996, this time wearing a South Africa national football team shirt as Bafana Bafana claimed the African Cup of Nations title, again on home soil. With Mandela, it appeared you couldn't lose. 
 He also was pivotal in helping South Africa eventually win the right to host the 2010 soccer World Cup, the first in Africa and perhaps the biggest test of South Africa's progress, of its coming of age, just 16 years into its young democracy. South Africa came through it with high praise, sweeping aside the doubters -- as Mandela said his country would. 
 Mandela's last public appearance for South Africa was at that soccer World Cup final in Soweto, the township closely connected to the struggle against apartheid and the center of the world again for a few weeks -- this time in celebration. By then, 
 Mandela was old and, unable to walk for too long and bundled up against the cold in a thick coat and hat, he circled the stadium on a golf cart. 
 South Africa, and the world, couldn't celebrate the country's biggest sporting moment without him. Yet, painfully maybe, it reminded them of a former Mandela. One 15 years earlier. 
 As he strode out onto the Ellis Park field in June 1995, Mandela stretched out his hand as he approached a line of muscular, young, mostly white South African players. 
 He was crossing a chasm, both in sport and in politics. And yet, he made the journey smoothly and with a smile. 
 After South Africa had won the final 15-12, a fairytale ending to its first major event as a democracy, Mandela -- still in his jersey -- handed the glistening gold World Cup trophy to the blonde-haired Pienaar, an ideal picture of a new South Africa. 
 Mandela reached out his left hand and laid it on Pienaar's right shoulder, patting it gently. 
 "He said to me 'Thank you for what you have done for South Africa,"' Pienaar recalled. "I said to him, 'No, Madiba, you've got it wrong. Thank you for what you've done for South Africa.' And I felt like hugging him. I really felt like giving him a big hug, but it wasn't protocol ... and that just gave me shivers down my spine." 
 And then Mandela raised both his arms in celebration, smiling gleefully with obvious and undisguised delight as Pienaar lifted the cup. 
 "Sport can create hope, where once there was only despair. It is more powerful than governments in breaking down racial barriers. It laughs in the face of all types of discrimination," Mandela said. 
 And he proved it.

Sports

SPRUGBY06

How Nelson Mandela changed everything with a rugby jersey

mandela rugby cropped

Nelson Mandela, in the twilight of life, doesn't talk much anymore, his eldest daughter says. But the former South African president, who wrote of his regret at being unable to devote himself to his family during the fight against apartheid and afterward, reaches out in another way. 
 "It's the hand that he stretches out. It is the touching of the hand that speaks volumes for me. And for me, if you ask me what I would treasure, it is this moment that I treasure with my father," said Makaziwe Mandela, the oldest of Mandela's three surviving children, all daughters. "It means, 'My child, I'm here.' It means to me that, 'I'm here. I love you. I care.'" 
 It could be the story of any family, this intimate encounter between an elderly parent beset by illness and a child with whom relations have, over many decades, been challenging or negligible. That the couple's communication has become so elemental also sheds light on the fragile state of a larger-than-life figure, revered for his sacrifice during 27 years as a prisoner of apartheid and his peacemaking role in South <a href="/topics//Africa">Africa</a>'s shift to a democracy inclusive of all races. 
 "My Dad has not been in good, perfect health over the past month. And he has good days and he has bad days," Makaziwe Mandela said Friday in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press in her home, where a bust of her father, made from bronze and the wood of a railway tie, sits on a piano in the foyer. 
 One of those bad days was April 29, when state television broadcast footage of a visit by President <a href="/topics//Jacob_Zuma">Jacob Zuma</a> and other leaders of the ruling <a href="/topics//African_National_Congress">African National Congress</a> to Mandela, who had helmed the ANC, at his <a href="/topics//Johannesburg">Johannesburg</a> home. Zuma said Mandela was in good shape, but the footage — the first public images of Mandela in nearly a year — showed him silent and unresponsive, even when Zuma tried to hold his hand. 
 Makaziwe Mandela said her family is grateful that the "movement," as she refers to the ANC leadership, still visits her father. The broadcasting of the video, however, was unfortunate, she said. Critics allege the ANC was trying to score political points by its association with Mandela. The party fiercely denies it. 
 "In previous visits, there was no need to take a picture. What happened this time, I don't know," said Makaziwe, a 59-year-old founder of a South African winemaking company that highlights two centuries of the family's distinguished lineage in its branding. She is one of four children from her father's first marriage to Evelyn Mase, which ended in divorce. The other three died — one in infancy, one in a car crash and one from an AIDS-related illness. 
 Makaziwe said the "dignity and privacy" of her father, also a father to the nation, is sometimes under threat, complaining that 20 journalists one day in May converged on her father's home, where he receives medical treatment, after an ambulance left to fetch medicine from a hospital. 
 "This is really utter madness," she said. "This thing that everybody has got to be the first one to hear when Nelson Mandela goes, it's not right. All of you will have your opportunity. You will get the news from the presidency at the right time." 
 During Mandela's recent hospitalization for pneumonia, which ended April 6, Zuma's office issued brief, regular updates on his health. On some past occasions, conflicting reports from the government contributed to mistrust between authorities and the media. 
 Fascination with Mandela stems from the sense that he is on a par with others whose human shortcomings were overshadowed by their contributions to humanity, including Indian independence hero Mohandas Gandhi and American civil rights leader Martin Luther King. 
 South <a href="/topics//Africa">Africa</a> has held peaceful elections and is a major economic force in Africa, but struggles with high <a href="/topics//Unemployment">unemployment</a>, crime and corruption. Nelson Mandela embodies a morality and unity of purpose that makes South Africans nostalgic for an earlier era of promise. 
 "He has something that people gravitate to, that they can hold to, that gives them hope," said Makaziwe Mandela, comparing him to <a href="/topics//Mother_Teresa">Mother Teresa</a>. "That's what Nelson Mandela has done, is to give people a better hope that, 'I can be somebody. <a href="/topics//Life_(show)">Life</a> today can be better than yesterday.'" 
 Makaziwe's home is in a comfortable suburb of <a href="/topics//Johannesburg">Johannesburg</a> that, as she pointed out, was barred to blacks in the apartheid era. Sculptures — a gift from Gabon, presents brought by a son returning from Sweden — lined a mantelpiece in the carpeted living room where she sat for the interview. Her daughter, Tukwini, worked in a nearby room on the "House of Mandela" wine business, which launched this year in the United States. 
 The Mandela name has lost some shine because of a legal dispute over control of two companies that pits Makaziwe and Zenani Dlamini, a daughter from Mandela's second marriage to <a href="/topics//Winnie_Madikizela-Mandela">Winnie Mandela</a>, against old associates of the <a href="/topics//Nobel_Peace_Prize">Nobel Peace prize</a> laureate, who has withdrawn from public life. The firms, directed by associates who say they were appointed at Mandela's request, hold funds from the sale of handprint artwork by Mandela that is earmarked for eventual distribution to his family. 
 In the AP interview, Makaziwe Mandela would not discuss the court case. 
 She talked about the strain and stress of losing her siblings and having a charismatic father whose devotion to justice and equality came at the expense of his children. 
 "I'm sure now, in his twilight years, that he looks back and says, 'You know, I could have done that differently,'" Makaziwe said. "He has regrets in life, mostly about his family. He was not there as a father. He tried the best way that he could when he came out of jail. But you understand that my father came out of jail and was swallowed up even before he became president. He never really had the time to truly be a father." 
 In his autobiography "Long Walk to Freedom," Nelson Mandela wrote wistfully of his inability to fulfill his role as a husband to <a href="/topics//Winnie_Madikizela-Mandela">Winnie Mandela</a> during his incarceration, which ended in 1990. The couple divorced in 1996. He is now married to <a href="/topics//Graca_Machel">Graca Machel</a>, the former first lady of Mozambique. 
 "When your life is the struggle, as mine was, there is little room left for family. That has always been my greatest regret, and the most painful aspect of the choice I made," Mandela wrote. 
 Makaziwe Mandela said she relates to actress <a href="/topics//Jane_Fonda">Jane Fonda</a>, who wrote in a memoir about her troubled relationship with her father, actor <a href="/topics//Henry_Fonda">Henry Fonda</a>. "On Golden Pond," the 1981 movie that starred both Fondas, also offered a bittersweet lesson in how a child can reach out to an elderly parent, even one who didn't, or couldn't, do enough. 
 "It is me who has to make an effort, to bridge the gap," Makaziwe said. "To be there."

nelson

Nelson Mandela's daughter, Makaziwe Mandela, talks about her father 

South Africa Mandela's Daughter

Former South African President Nelson <a href="/topics//Nelson_Mandela">Mandela</a> is recovering after doctors removed gallstones early today. 
 "He's undergone a successful procedure," <a href="/topics//Mac_Cosmetics">Mac</a> Maharaj, spokesman for President <a href="/topics//Jacob_Zuma">Jacob Zuma</a>, said by phone. 
 <a href="/topics//Nelson_Mandela">Mandela</a>, 94, was hospitalized for a series of tests on Dec. 8, which revealed that there was the reccurrence of a lung infection and that he had developed gallstones, the presidency said in a statement. Doctors performed an endoscopy to remove them, it said. 
 This is the second time <a href="/topics//Nelson_Mandela">Mandela</a> has been hospitalized this year after undergoing exploratory abdominal surgery in February. Last year, Mandela received treatment for an acute respiratory infection. 
 After spending 27 years in prison under South Africa's white-minority government, Mandela was elected the nation's first black president in 1994. He stepped down in 1999.

BLMANDELA16

Nelson Mandela recovering after gallstone surgery

Nelson <a href="/topics//Nelson_Mandela">Mandela</a>, the former South African president, remained in a hospital in <a href="/topics//Pretoria">Pretoria</a> after being admitted Saturday for undisclosed "medical attention," the presidency said. 
 President <a href="/topics//Jacob_Zuma">Jacob Zuma</a> visited <a href="/topics//Nelson_Mandela">Mandela</a> in the hospital early Sunday, said <a href="/topics//Mac_Cosmetics">Mac</a> Maharaj, spokesman for Zuma. "He found him comfortable, and in good care," Maharaj said in an emailed statement. "We continue to appeal to the media and the public to respect the privacy of Madiba and his family." Madiba is <a href="/topics//Nelson_Mandela">Mandela</a>'s clan name. 
 <a href="/topics//Nelson_Mandela">Mandela</a>, who turned 94 in July, was undergoing tests for an undisclosed condition "consistent with his age" and was doing well, Zuma's office said in a statement yesterday. The <a href="/topics//Nobel_Peace_Prize">Nobel Peace Prize</a> laureate underwent exploratory surgery for an abdominal complaint in February and was hospitalized a year before that for an acute respiratory infection. 
 <a href="/topics//Nelson_Mandela">Mandela</a> spent 27 years in prison on an island near <a href="/topics//Cape_Town">Cape Town</a> over his fight for black rights and became the country's first black president after apartheid, the official racial segregation policy, ended in 1994. He negotiated a peaceful end to the old regime with leaders of South Africa's white minority government and was awarded the <a href="/topics//Nobel_Peace_Prize">Nobel Peace Prize</a> in 1993. He stepped down as president voluntarily in 1999.

BLNELSON09

Nelson Mandela, ex-South African president, remains in hospital

Inside a Catholic church that once served as a major rallying point for anti-apartheid activists, the image of a gray-suited Nelson Mandela appears in stained-glass window that also features angels and the cross. 
 Worshippers here prayed Sunday for the hospitalized 94-year-old former president, who remains almost a secular saint and a father figure to many in South Africa, a nation of 50 million people that has Africa's top economy. 
 Mandela's admission to the hospital this weekend for unspecified medical tests sparked screaming newspapers headlines and ripples of fear in the public that the frail leader is fading further away. 
 And as his <a href="/topics//African_National_Congress">African National Congress</a> political party stands ready to pick its leader who likely will be the nation's next president, some believe governing party politicians have abandoned Mandela's integrity and magnanimity in a seemingly unending string of corruption scandals. That leaves many wondering who can lead the country the way the ailing Mandela once did. 
 "When you have someone that's willing to lead by example like he did, it makes things easier for people to follow," said Thabile Manana, who worshipped Sunday at <a href="/topics//Soweto">Soweto</a>'s Regina Mundi Catholic church. "Lately, the examples are not so nice. It's hard. I'm scared for the country." 
 Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison for fighting racist white rule, became South Africa's first black president in 1994 and served one five-year term. The Nobel laureate later retired from public life to live in his remote village of Qunu, in the Eastern Cape area, and last made a public appearance when his country hosted the <a href="/topics//2010_World_Cup">2010 World Cup</a> soccer tournament. 
 On Saturday, the office of President <a href="/topics//Jacob_Zuma">Jacob Zuma</a> announced Mandela had been admitted to a <a href="/topics//Pretoria">Pretoria</a> hospital for medical tests and care that was "consistent for his age." Zuma visited Mandela on Sunday morning at the hospital and found the former leader to be "comfortable and in good care," presidential spokesman <a href="/topics//Mac_Cosmetics">Mac</a> Maharaj said in a statement. Maharaj offered no other details about Mandela, nor what medical tests he had undergone since entering the hospital. 
 In February, Mandela spent a night in a hospital for a minor diagnostic surgery to determine the cause of an abdominal complaint. In January 2011, Mandela was admitted to a <a href="/topics//Johannesburg">Johannesburg</a> hospital for what officials initially described as tests but what turned out to be an acute respiratory infection. 
 Mandela has had other health problems. He contracted <a href="/topics//Tuberculosis">tuberculosis</a> during his years in prison and had surgery for an enlarged prostate gland in 1985. In 2001, Mandela underwent seven weeks of radiation therapy for prostate cancer, ultimately beating the disease. 
 While South Africa's government has offered no details about where Mandela is receiving treatment, the military has taken over his medical care since the 2011 respiratory infection. At 1 Military Hospital in <a href="/topics//Pretoria">Pretoria</a> on Sunday, the facility that previously cared for Mandela in February, soldiers set up a checkpoint to search vehicles heading into the hospital's grounds. A convoy of cars with flashing lights and sirens entered the hospital grounds Sunday afternoon. 
 Mandela's hospitalization quickly dominated news coverage in South Africa, where most have been focused on the upcoming ANC national convention later this month in Mangaung. There, the party that has governed South Africa since Mandela's election will pick either pick a new leader or re-elect Zuma to helm the organization. Becoming leader of the ANC means a nearly automatic ticket to becoming the president in post-apartheid South Africa. 
 Zuma, 70, faces increasing criticism as the nation's poor blacks, who believed the end of apartheid would bring economic prosperity, face the same poverty as before while politicians and the elite get richer. Meanwhile the economy continues to struggle amid slow growth and the aftermath of violent unrest in the country's mining industry. 
 Zuma also faces criticism over millions of dollars of government-paid improvements made at his private homestead. But that's merely the tip of the corruption allegations swirling around the party, which critics say is increasingly tarnished. Textbooks have gone undelivered to rural schools, while local ANC officials have been arrested and convicted of corruption charges. Others have been attacked or killed in politically tinged violence as the party's convention draws closer. 
 "It's becoming corrupt every day ... and it's growing worse," said Sidney Matlana, a worshipper at Regina Mundi. "Things are getting worse than it was before." 
 Yet Zuma remains a charismatic leader and still gets widespread support from Zulus, South Africa's largest ethnic group. He appears likely to hold onto power as provincial nominations ahead of the national meeting largely have supported him. 
 Despite that, those leaving worship Sunday at Regina Mundi stressed the need for South Africa's politicians to follow Mandela's example. 
 It was here that anti-apartheid crusaders gathered to plan, pray and to mourn their dead, a church Mandela himself once called a "battlefield between forces of democracy and those who did not hesitate to violate a place of religion with tear gas, dogs and guns." 
 Mandela's stained-glass image stands just right of another portraying a man carrying the corpse of 13-year-old Hector Pieterson, who was gunned down by police in <a href="/topics//Soweto">Soweto</a> in a peaceful 1976 student protest. 
 Worshippers acknowledged Sunday they didn't know which politician would be able to live up to Mandela's legacy. 
 "Every person has got his time," churchgoer Lerato Mhlala said. "Someone must come in and take his place as well."

woMAND09

South Africa's Nelson Mandela admitted to hospital 

South Africa Mandela - crop

Nelson Mandela: A South African icon

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On Monday, Hurricane Melissa intensified to Category 5 strength as it neared Jamaica, where forecasters said it would unleash catastrophic flooding, multiple landslides and extensive infrastructure damage.

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On Tuesday, an immigration enforcement sweep targeting vendors on Manhattan's Canal Street turned chaotic when angry protestors surrounded federal agents and attempted to block them from driving off.

Angry crowds confront federal agents in Canal Street immigration sweep

The FBI is offering a $100,000 reward for information that leads to an arrest in the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk on a Utah university campus. NewsdayTV's Ken Buffa reports.

$100,000 reward for information

Donald Trump said the U.S. military struck three sites in Iran, directly joining Israel's effort to decapitate the country's nuclear program in a risky gambit to weaken a long-time foe.

Trump says Iran's key nuclear sites 'completely and fully obliterated' by strikes

Tensions in Los Angeles escalated over the weekend as thousands of protesters took to the streets in response to President Donald Trump's deployment of the National Guard.

Police and protesters clash outside federal detention center in LA after ICE raids

Americans could pay more for fresh vegetables and electronics as imports from Canada and Mexico will be taxed at 25% and Chinese imports at 20%. 

Trump tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China take effect

The last 10 minutes of the nearly 45-minute meeting devolved into a tense back and forth between President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who had urged skepticism about Russia's commitment to diplomacy, citing Moscow's years of broken commitments on the global stage.

Watch: Trump, Zelenskyy and Vance in Oval Office blowup

The country will observe Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday as Donald Trump is sworn in as the nation's 47th president. NewsdayTV's Andrew Ehinger reports.

'An opportunity for the country to have a soul searching'

Donald Trump became the first president in U.S. history to be sentenced following felony convictions.

'Only lawful sentence'

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Dennis Arfa, the architect of the Piano Man's record-breaking residency at Madison Square Garden, was inducted on Saturday into the Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame in Stony Brook. NewsdayTV's Elisa DiStefano reports.

Billy Joel inducts longtime collaborator into LI Music Hall of Fame

NewsdayTV's Ken Buffa visits Yaphank Deli to try their "chip bag sandwich."

Trendy Bites: It's a bag of chips ... it's a sandwich ... it's the chip bag sandwich! 

NYU researchers are surveying the Eastern box turtle population to better understand how they are faring against habitat destruction, roadways and global warming.`

Turtle-sniffing dogs searching LI woods to help protect a species

Wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. is back for a second stint with the Giants. Head coach John Harbaugh on Wednesday said Beckham seems healthier and Beckham said he is looking forward to making the most of the opportunity.

Odell Beckham Jr. back with the Giants

Recently passed state auto insurance reforms could help lower car insurance rates as much as 10% for New York drivers, according to some estimates. NewsdayTV's Virginia Huie reports.

NYS takes crack at lowering auto insurance premiums. Here's what that means for LI.

NewsdayTV's Doug Geed visits the Long Island Game Farm for an inside look at the incredible hands-on wildlife encounters there.

Out East: What's new at the Long Island Game Farm

If approved, it would be the first new hospital on Long Island since 1980. Newsday business reporter James T. Madore has more.

NYU Langone plans new hospital in Melville 

NewsdayTV's Elisa DiStefano visited Main Event, an entertainment center that recently opened in Deer Park.

Arcade, bowling and giant claw machine at Main Event 

Newsday food writer Erica Marcus helps make a strawberry crunch ice cream at Coyle's Ice Cream in Islip.

Making ice cream at Coyle's in Islip

Rockville Centre's Lavert Henderson-Hobbs has been a Knicks' season-ticket holder since 1969.

Rockville Centre's Lavert Henderson-Hobbs a Knicks' season-ticket holder since 1969

<a href="https://www.newsday.com/video/newsdaytv-top-stories">Get more on these and other NewsdayTV stories</a>

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Suffolk County Sheriff Errol Toulon Jr. spoke with NewsdayTV's Ken Buffa about what life is like for the Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann in jail.

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