Nelson Mandela dies at age 95

Nelson Mandela receives the Amnesty International Ambassador of Conscience Award in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2006.

Nelson Mandela, one of the world’s most visionary leaders in the fight to protect and promote human rights, died Thursday at the age of 95.

South African president Jacob Zuma announced in a nationally televised address that “Our nation has lost its greatest son. Our people have lost a father. Although we knew that this day would come, nothing can diminish our sense of a profound and enduring loss.”

Mandela spent 27 years as a prisoner in a South African prison for opposing apartheid. He later became South Africa’s first black president and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. He became a worldwide symbol in the fight to expand and protect human rights.

Reaction in the U.S. was swift.

President Obama said of Nelson Mandela: “A man who took history in his hands and bent the arc of the moral universe toward justice. We will not see the likes of Nelson Mandela again. It falls to us to carry forward the example that he set. A free South Africa at peace with itself an example to the world – that is Madiba’s legacy to the nation he loved.”

“I will never forget my friend Madiba,” former President Bill Clinton said.

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said that Nelson Mandela “will live in history as an inspiration for defenders of liberty around the globe. He stood firm for decades on the principle that until all South Africans enjoyed equal liberties he would not leave prison himself, declaring in his autobiography, ‘Freedom is indivisible; the chains on any one of my people were the chains on all of them, the chains on all of my people were the chains on me.’ Because of his epic fight against injustice, an entire nation is now free.”