Take your leave, old Soldier. A gratefull community pauses around the globe to marvel at your legacy.
Words fail me at the moment, so I can only fall back and present here some iconic images of the great man:
The youthful Mandela:
Mandela released from prison:
Mandela speaks before a special session of the United States Congress:
Catullus 101
Wandering through many countries and over many seas
I come, my brother, to these sorrowful obsequies,
to present you with the last guerdon of death,
and speak, though in vain, to your silent ashes,
since fortune has taken your own self away from me
alas, my brother, so cruelly torn from me!
Yet now meanwhile take these offerings, which by the custom of our fathers
have been handed down -- a sorrowful tribute -- for a funeral sacrifice;
take them, wet with many tears of a brother,
and for ever, O my brother, hail and farewell!
Umkhonto we Sizwe.
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