Breaking News: Nelson Mandela is DeadFormer South African President and nationalist, Nelson Mandela has died at the age of 95 year, South African President, Jacob Zuma has confirmed. Mandela, whose stubborn defiance survived 27 years in prison led to the dismantling of the country’s racist and brutal apartheid system. Mandela had a number of issues with his health in recent years, including repeated hospitalizations with a chronic lung infection. Feb. 1990: NBC’s Robin Lloyd reports on Nelson Mandela on the eve of his release from prison in 1990. In his jailhouse memoirs, Mandela wrote that even after spending so many years in a Spartan cell on Robben Island – with one visitor a year and one letter every six months – he still had faith in human nature.