By Li Hongmei 

China expresses condolences on Mandela's death

Chinese President Xi Jinping has expressed deep condolence on the death of Nelson Mandela both on behalf of the Chinese government and in his own name, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said Friday.

Hong said at a daily press briefing that Xi Jinping, China's President and General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, has sent condolence message to South Africa's President Jacob Zuma.

In the condolence letter, Xi expressed his deep-felt mourning for Mandela's death and extended his sincere condolence to Mandela's family.

Xi said Nelson Mandela is one of the founders for China-South Africa relationship. He paid two visits to China during his lifetime, actively promoting China-South Africa friendly cooperation in various fields, Xi said.

Mandela's great contributions to China-South Africa relations and the cause of human progress will be always remembered by the Chinese people, Xi said in the letter.

Nelson Mandela, South Africa's anti-apartheid icon and the global statesman, has died aged 95.

The news of his passing was made in a statement made by South African President Jacob Zuma which was broadcast on national TV.

"Our nation has lost its greatest son," said Mr Zuma, who praised the Mandela family for sacrificing so much "so that our people could be free".

"Our thoughts are with the South African people who today mourn the loss of the one person who more than any other came to embody their sense of a common nation," he said from Pretoria.

File photo of Nelson Mandela

"Our thoughts are with the millions of people across the world who embraced Madiba as their own and who saw his cause as their cause.

"This is the moment of our deepest sorrow. Our nation has lost his greatest son. Yet what made Nelson Mandela great was precisely what made him human - we saw in him what we seek in ourselves and in him we saw so much of ourselves."

Mr Zuma said that Mr Mandela will be given a state funeral and ordered all national flags to be lowered to half mast from tomorrow until after the service.

"Nelson Mandela bought us together and it is together that we will bid him farewell," he said.

Minutes after the news broke, the Chinese mainstream media begun to pay their respects, mourning the great man who ushered his nation into a new era and is a powerful symbol of hope and progress for the entire world.

Also, the British prime minister, who just returned from his China trip, published a statement on Twitter "A great light has gone out in the world."

Mr Mandela's wife Graca Machel, and some of his three children, 17 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren were with him in his final days, with other family and friends in attendance.

File photo of Nelson Mandela

The former president's body will most likely to taken to the Waterkloof Military Base in Pretoria, where it will be embalmed and prepared for public display.

A memorial service at Soweto's FNB stadium, where Mr Mandela made his last public appearance at the closing ceremony of the football World Cup in July 2010, is expected to be attended by tens of thousands of people including foreign heads of state.

Many more will travel to the administrative capital Pretoria where Mr Mandela's body will lie in state for up to a week at the Union Buildings, where he was inaugurated as South Africa's first black, democratic president in 1994.

In accordance with his final wishes, and those of his family, he will then be flown the 550 miles south to his home village of Qunu, in the rural Eastern Cape. There, following a traditional ceremony, he will be buried on a hillside which forms part of his estate, overlooking the verdant valley where he once tended his family's livestock and played with other boys.

Despite his advanced years and his almost complete disappearance from the public stage, the news of Mr Mandela's passing will be met with overwhelming sadness around the country.

Each time he has been admitted to hospital in recent years, first with respiratory problems, then with a hernia and lately, a series of lung infections, South Africans have held their breath and whispered prayers for his recovery.

When Mr Mandela last appeared in public aged 91, any suggestion that he might one day die was met with accusations of insensitivity and ignorance about African traditions.

But as the Nobel Peace laureate has grown weaker and his health problems have mounted up, the prayers for his recovery have been replaced with prayers for his comfort, and the strength of his family.

During his latest admission, South Africans began to ask themselves what life would be like without him.

Today, they will descend into a long period of mourning side by side with Mr Mandela's large family.

File photo of Nelson Mandela

Nelson Rolihlahla (meaning "troublemaker") Mandela started out as a fiery young lawyer who battled South Africa's dehumanizing color bar first by organizing mass acts of defiance and later through armed resistance.

When he was jailed in 1962, following a tip-off by the US Central Intelligence Agency, he was seen as a terrorist in South Africa and abroad.

But by the time he was released 27 years later, his name had become synonymous around the world with the struggle for justice against tyranny and oppression.

He too had changed, into a more measured, thoughtful and dignified figure, ready and eager to shoulder the huge burden of transforming his country.

Nelson Mandela's inauguration in 1994 as South Africa's first black president was attended by an estimated 100,000 people of all races who formed a sea of supporters extending outwards from the emerald lawns of the Union Buildings into Pretoria's jacaranda-lined streets.

Condolence books will be opened in all of South Africa's diplomatic missions abroad.

In a column during Mr Mandela's hospital stay in January 2011, Nic Dawes, editor of the South African weekly Mail and Guardian, sought to explain why the great statesman would be so missed when he finally slipped away.

"What South Africans feel for Madiba is not simply affection or respect. Even love may not be a strong enough word," he wrote.

"His presence is part of the structure of our national being. We worry that we may not be quite ourselves without him."

Profile: South Africa's ex-president, anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela  Read More

Dubbed as "tata" or "father" in his country, Mandela, who had spent 27 years in prison, was widely regarded as an anti-apartheid activist and South Africa's first black president after more than three centuries of white rule.

Born on July 18, 1918 in a small village in South Africa, Mandela was one of the 13 children of a Tembu Tribe chief, who gave him his tribal name Rolihlahla, meaning "troublemaker" in the Xhosa language. Having finished his education at University College of Fort Hare and the University of Witwatersrand with a B. A. degree in law, Mandela joined the African National Congress (ANC) in 1943 and later formed the Youth League of the ANC.