By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
@GettyImages.
Former United States President Jimmy Carter has died at the age of 100, according to a statement from the Carter Center.
The Carter Center said the 39th president died in Plains, Georgia, surrounded by his family.
The White House has been notified that Carter has died, per a Biden administration official. Preparations for the state funeral have begun, according to a law enforcement official.
Carter had been in home hospice care since February 2023 after a series of short hospital stays.
Carter, a Democrat, served a single term from 1977 to 1981, losing a reelection bid to Ronald Reagan. Despite his notable achievements as a peacemaker, Carter’s presidency is largely remembered as an unfulfilled four years shaken by blows to America’s economy and standing overseas.
His most enduring legacy, though, might be as a globetrotting elder statesman and human rights pioneer during an indefatigable 43-year “retirement.”
Carter became the oldest living former president when he surpassed the record held by the late George H.W. Bush in March 2019.
Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his efforts to promote human rights and resolve conflicts around the world, from Ethiopia and Eritrea to Bosnia and Haiti. His Carter Center in Atlanta sent international election-monitoring delegations to polls around the world.
Southern peanuts
Carter grew up on the red clay soil of rural Georgia during the Great Depression. He sold boiled peanuts on the streets of Plains, his hometown, and ploughed the land with his family. His father James “Earl” Carter, was a peanut farmer and warehouseman; his mother, Lillian, was a nurse.
He married Rosalynn Smith, a family friend, in 1946. The couple celebrated their 76th wedding anniversary in July 2022, a year before the former first lady died in November 2023.
After a seven-year US navy career, Carter returned to his home state of Georgia, where he garnered national attention as a Democrat state governor for his prudent management, winning a spot on the cover of Time magazine as a symbol of the “New South”.
Running for the presidency, Carter styled himself as an outsider to Washington politics, which were stained by the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War. His “Peanut Brigade”, a group of friends from Georgia, crisscrossed the US and trumpeted their candidate as a straight-talking man of principle.
In the White House, Carter’s trademark candour did not always translate into political victories. Many of his progressive social and economic plans hit logjams in Congress; an inability to translate ideals into legislative reality sapped his popularity.
The United States was mired in the stagflation woes of low economic growth, unemployment and high inflation, brought about by an energy crisis from the early 1970s. Carter’s solution, tackling US dependence on foreign oil via taxes and green energy, was quashed in the Senate.
Philanthropy: The Carter Center
Founded in 1982 by the former president and his wife, The Carter Center has monitored 113 elections in 39 countries and tackled diseases such as river blindness, trachoma and malaria, often by bringing medics to less populated, less frequented areas.
There were 3.5 million cases of Guinea worm disease in 21 African and Asian countries when Carter declared war on the metre-long parasites in 1986. Savelugu-Nanton district and the rest of Ghana was declared rid of the disease in 2015, and has virtually been wiped out elsewhere.
Late into life, the former president continued to volunteer for the home-building organisation Habitat for Humanity, hosting an annual event that attracted thousands of volunteers in the US and abroad.
Carter’s supporters say that history will judge his presidency more favourably than American voters did in 1980.
Outside the White House, the legacy of the father of four and grandfather of 22 is assured. In his own words: “I can’t deny I’m a better ex-president than I was a president.”