“Nelson Mandela, the anti-apartheid icon who became the first president of a democratic South Africa, passed away Thursday at his home in Johannesburg after a prolonged lung infection. He was 95.  South African President Jacob Zuma announced that Mandela, ‘the founding president of our democratic nation, has departed,’ adding that he ‘passed on peacefully'”, the CBC News posted online late yesterday afternoon. “‘Our nation has lost its greatest son. Our people have lost a father,’ Zuma said.  ‘Our thoughts are with the millions of people who embraced Mandela as their own and who saw his cause as their cause.… This is the moment of our deepest sorrow.’  Mandela will be accorded a state funeral, Zuma said, and national flags will be lowered to half-mast.  ‘We saw in him what we seek in ourselves.  And in him we saw so much of ourselves,’ he said. ‘Nelson Mandela brought us together and it is together that we will bid him farewell.’ Read the full article here. |Raymond Matt CFP, CLU, TEP, CHS