People place candles near a photo as they pay tribute to former South African President Nelson Mandela at the Trocadero square, in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris yesterday. Photo: Reuters

Nelson Mandela guided South Africa from the shackles of apartheid to multi-racial democracy and came to embody the struggle for justice around the world.

Imprisoned for decades for his fight against white minority rule, Mandela emerged determined to use his prestige and charisma to bring down apartheid while avoiding a civil war.

“The time for the healing of the wounds has come. The moment to bridge the chasms that divide us has come,” Mandela said in his acceptance speech on becoming South Africa’s first black president in 1994.

In 1993, Mandela was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, an honour he shared with F.W. de Klerk, the white Afrikaner leader who freed him from prison three years earlier and negotiated the end of apartheid.

He formally left public life in June 2004 before his 86th birthday, telling his countrymen: “Don’t call me. I’ll call you”. But he remained one of the world’s most revered public figures, combining celebrity sparkle with an unwavering message of freedom, respect and human rights.

Whether defending himself at his own treason trial in 1963 or addressing world leaders years later as a greying elder statesman, he radiated an image of moral rectitude expressed in measured tones, often leavened by a mischievous humour.

He was among the first to advocate armed resistance to apartheid

Mandela’s years behind bars made him the world’s most celebrated political prisoner and a leader of mythic stature for millions of black South Africans and other oppressed people far beyond his country’s borders.

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born on July 18, 1918, destined to lead as the son of the chief councillor to the paramount chief of the Thembu people in Transkei. He chose to devote his life to the fight against white domination.

Mandela was among the first to advocate armed resistance to apartheid, going underground in 1961 to form the ANC’s armed wing, Umkhonto weSizwe, or ‘Spear of the Nation’ in Zulu.

“I leave it to the public to decide how they should remember me,” he said before his retirement. “I should like to be re­membered as an ordinary South Afr­ican who together with others has made his humble contribution.”