Mandela statue for Hammersmith Town Hall

Mandela statue for King Street.

By the time of his death, Mandela had come to be widely considered "the father of the nation" within South Africa, and "the founding father of democracy", being seen as "the national liberator, the saviour, its Washington and Lincoln rolled into one".

Mandela's biographer Anthony Sampson commented that even during his life, a myth had developed around him that turned him into "a secular saint" and which was "so powerful that it blurs the realities."