Nelson Mandela
This picture taken on August 26, 2005 shows Nelson Mandela at the Mandela Foundation in Johannesburg. (Gianluigi Guercia, AFP)

Nelson Mandela, the former political prisoner who became the first president of a post-apartheid South Africa and whose heroic life and towering moral stature made him one of history's most influential statesmen, died Thursday, the government announced. He was 95.

The death was announced in a televised address by President Jacob Zuma, who added, "We've lost our greatest son."

At the White House, President Barack Obama praised Mandela as an inspiration and a paragon of forgiveness and virtue "that all of humanity should aspire to."

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Mandela was "a giant for justice" who inspired people to fight for a better world.

Nelson Mandela led the emancipation of South Africa from apartheid and served as its first black president.
Nelson Mandela led the emancipation of South Africa from apartheid and served as its first black president. (Bilt file)

To a country torn apart by racial divisions, Mandela became its most potent symbol of national unity, using the power of forgiveness and reconciliation to heal deep-rooted wounds and usher in a new era of peace after decades of conflict between blacks and whites.

To a continent rife with leaders who cling to power for life, Mandela became a role model for democracy, stepping down from the presidency after one term and holding out the promise of a new Africa.

And to a world roiled by war, poverty and oppression, Mandela became its conscience, fighting to overcome some of its most vexing problems. He was a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who spent 27 years in prison as part of his lifelong struggle against racial oppression.

Throughout this moral and political fight, Mandela evoked a steely resolve, discipline and quiet dignity, coupled with a big, charismatic smile. He ultimately carried them into office as South Africa's first democratically elected and black president.

His victory capped decades of epic struggle by the African National Congress and other liberation groups against South Africa's brutal white rulers, first under British colonialism and then under a white-run system called apartheid, or racial separation.

Nelson Mandela
In this July 24, 2007 file photo, former South African President Nelson Mandela, center, shares a lighter moment ending his 89th birthday celebrations with children at the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund in Johannesburg. (Denis Farrell, Associated Press file)

On the historic day of his inauguration — May 10, 1994 — Mandela stood at the podium near South Africa's last apartheid-era president, F.W. de Klerk. A year earlier, they had shared the Nobel Prize for what the Nobel committee called "their work for the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime and for laying the foundations for a new, democratic South Africa."

"We have, at last, achieved our political emancipation," Mandela, then 75, declared as president. "Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another. ... The sun shall never set on so glorious a human achievement."

Nelson Mandela salutes a crowd before a &quot;People&#8217;s Forum&quot; in 1994 during his run for South Africa&#8217;s presidency. He was inaugurated as
Nelson Mandela salutes a crowd before a "People's Forum" in 1994 during his run for South Africa's presidency. He was inaugurated as president on May 10, 1994, a year after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and served for one term. (Associated Press file)

Only a few years before, the 20th century's most celebrated political prisoner had been dubbed a "terrorist" by the conservative governments in the United States and Britain under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, respectively.

In the decades following Mandela's release from prison in 1990, many South Africans of all races referred to him reverentially as Madiba, his Xhosa clan name. Countless others called him Tata, which means father in the Xhosa language.

For all his achievements, Mandela will also be remembered as slow to react to the HIV/AIDS epidemic that began sweeping South Africa on his watch. It was not until 1998, four years into his presidency, that he directly addressed the South African public about the disease. Later, he would acknowledge that he did not recognize the severity of the epidemic.

After he left office in 1999, Mandela devoted energy and resources, both personally and through his Nelson Mandela Foundation, to raising awareness of the epidemic. In 2002, he criticized his successor, Thabo Mbeki, for delays in implementing a plan to fight HIV/AIDS.

In 2005, the epidemic hit home. Mandela announced the death of his son, Makatho Mandela, 54, who had AIDS.

Mandela's years as president also were characterized by the public and political drama of his estrangement from his wife, Winnie Mandela. Separated in 1992, the pair divorced in 1996 after court proceedings in which the usually private Mandela described himself in open court as "the loneliest man."

At the same time, he had to address the insecurities and animosities of the white minority that had lost political power but still controlled South Africa's economy, military and bureaucracy.

The Afrikaners, descendants of 17th-century Dutch and French settlers, were especially traumatized by the transition to black rule, and their control of the military posed a potential threat to the young democracy in the early years of Mandela's presidency.

Though institutional policies were put in place to deal with white fears — such as a sunset clause allowing white civil servants and soldiers to stay in their jobs as long as they wanted — Mandela also used his powers of persuasion to disarm opponents, defuse threats and charm detractors.

Under Mandela's leadership, South Africa slowly began eradicating racism from its legal canon, governmental institutions and school textbooks. A new Constitutional Court was inaugurated in 1995 as the highest court in the land. Among its early rulings was the abolition of the death penalty.

In 1996, parliament approved a new national constitution, including a bill of rights guaranteeing protections most South Africans had never imagined.

That same year, Mandela launched the country's Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, led by Anglican Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu. Rather than Nuremburg-style trials, Mandela's government fostered truth-telling and amnesty. On one hand, that meant killers who confessed would not be prosecuted. On the other hand, it helped ensure that the seeds of more racial hatred would not be planted.

Mandela sought to bridge the lingering divides between blacks and whites in other ways. When South Africa hosted the 1995 Rugby World Cup, he encouraged blacks to support the much-hated Springboks, the national rugby team that was widely seen by blacks as a totem of white rule.

For all his strengths and bottomless energy, Mandela faced a seemingly impossible task as president: In a nation where millions of people still lived in shacks, where non-whites had been purposefully impoverished and undereducated, he had to meet the expectations and hopes of the teeming masses who had propelled him to high office.

Today, millions of South Africans still live in deep poverty. Blacks speak about the "economic apartheid" in the country.

Mandela understood that he would perhaps never see the South Africa he had envisioned the day he stepped out of prison, but he sought until his last days to achieve that vision.

"When I walked out of prison, that was my mission, to liberate the oppressed and oppressor both," Mandela wrote on the last page of his memoir, "A Long Walk to Freedom." "The truth is that we are not yet free. ... We have not taken the final step of our journey, but the first step on a longer and even more difficult road. For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others."