By Ed Cropley and Pascal Fletcher JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela died peacefully at home at the age of 95 on Thursday after months fighting a lung infection, leaving his nation and the world in mourning for a man revered as a moral giant. President Jacob Zuma's announcement late on Thursday of the death of a man who was a symbol of struggle against injustice and of racial reconciliation reverberated through South Africa and around the world. Mandela's passing, while long expected, left Africa's biggest economy still distant from being the "Rainbow Nation" ideal of social peace and shared prosperity that he had proclaimed on his triumphant release from prison in 1990. "He's in a better place, but I really hope South Africa realises what he wanted us to be ... we are not even half-way to what he wanted us to be," local resident Jack Van der Merwe said in the Johannesburg suburb of Melville.