“Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first black president and an enduring icon of the struggle against racial oppression, died on Thursday, the government announced, leaving the nation without its moral center at a time of growing dissatisfaction with the country’s leaders,” as the New York Times is reporting.
‘”Our nation has lost its greatest son,’ President Jacob Zuma said in a televised address on Thursday night, adding that Mr. Mandela had died at 8:50 p.m. local time. ‘His humility, his compassion and his humanity earned him our love.’
“Mr. Zuma called Mr. Mandela’s death ‘the moment of our greatest sorrow,’ and said that South Africa’s thoughts were now with the former president’s family. ‘They have sacrificed much and endured much so that our people could be free,’ he said.”
The rest of the article is here.
Jeff Pelline's Sierra Foothills Report 
I believe I may have posted this once before, but nothing harmful about a repost at the time of death of this distinctly heroic man.
INVICTUS
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of fate
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yer the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
(I guess it is impossible for privileged, upper middle class white guy from the Midwest, whose thoughts are dominated by self-promotion, to understand what it really means to be a human that must overcome long odds to live a life of natural entitlement. Surely, Rush was as secluded and protected in his youth as he now is hiding in his Florida fortress.)