Nelson Mandela's Death and the Wave of Global Mourning That Followed

Nelson Mandela died at his home in the Johannesburg suburb of Houghton on the evening of December 5, 2013, at age 95, after months of declining health following a recurring lung infection. South African president Jacob Zuma announced the death on national television just before midnight, telling the country, “Our nation has lost its greatest son.” Mandela had spent 27 years imprisoned under apartheid before his 1990 release, led the African National Congress to victory in South Africa’s first fully democratic election in 1994, and served a single term as the country’s first Black president before retiring from public life. His death set off ten days of mourning that reached far beyond South Africa’s borders, culminating in a state funeral in his childhood village of Qunu on December 15, 2013.

The scale of the international response was immediate. Landmarks across Europe and beyond were lit in the green, gold, black, red, blue and white of the South African flag, most visibly the Eiffel Tower in Paris, which glowed in those colors on the night after his death while the French tricolour flew at half-mast over the Élysée Palace. Books of condolence opened in cities with no direct connection to South Africa’s history, including one at Liverpool Town Hall in England, where residents queued to leave messages for a leader many had followed since the global anti-apartheid campaigns of the 1980s. In London’s Camden district, mourners left flowers at the street named Mandela Street, a small residential lane that had carried his name since long before his death.

France held some of the most visible public tributes outside South Africa. In the Paris suburb of Cergy, a ceremony released doves as a symbol of peace to coincide with Mandela’s funeral proceedings, echoing similar releases held elsewhere as his body was laid to rest. Around the world, embassies lowered their flags to half-mast in a nearly uniform gesture of respect; even nations with only limited historical ties to South Africa, including the Netherlands’ diplomatic posts, observed the practice, reflecting how thoroughly Mandela’s moral authority had crossed borders during and after his presidency.

The formal memorial service, held on December 10, 2013, at Johannesburg’s 95,000-seat FNB Stadium, drew what South African officials described as one of the largest gatherings of foreign heads of state and government in modern history, estimated at close to 100 leaders, including four serving and former United States presidents. Rain fell through much of the ceremony, which mourners took as fitting given the Zulu and Xhosa cultural association between rain and blessing. Mandela’s coffin then lay in state at the Union Buildings in Pretoria before being flown to Qunu, in the Eastern Cape, for burial according to Xhosa custom on December 15. The scale and geographic spread of the tributes, from Eiffel Tower lighting ceremonies to condolence books in provincial English town halls, reflected the degree to which Mandela’s decades-long fight against apartheid and his subsequent embrace of reconciliation had made him a rare figure claimed as a moral touchstone well outside the country he had led.