Thousands bid farewell to Mandela

Associated Press

PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA

Black and white, old and young, South Africans by the thousands paid final tribute Wednesday to their beloved Nelson Mandela. In silence or murmuring, they filed past the coffin. Some glanced back, as if clinging to the sight, a moment in history.

One man raised his fist, the potent gesture of the struggle against white rule that Mandela led from prison. A woman fainted on the steps and was helped into a wheelchair.

They had only a few seconds to look at the man many called “tata” — father in his native Xhosa — his face and upper body visible through a clear bubble atop the coffin, dressed in a black-and-yellow shirt of the kind he favored as a statesman.

Long lines of mourners snaked through the capital for a glimpse of Mandela’s body as it lay in state for three days — an image reminiscent of the miles-long queues of voters who waited patiently to cast their ballots during South Africa’s first all-race elections in 1994 that saw Mandela become the country’s first black president.

Mandela was lying in state in the same hilltop building where he made a stirring inaugural address that marked the birth of South Africa’s democracy — an irony that was not lost on the throngs.

“It’s amazing to think that 19 years ago he was inaugurated there, and now he’s lying there,” said another viewer, Paul Letageng. “If he was not here, we would not have had peace in South Africa.”

The mourners were joined by world leaders and Mandela family members, who walked silently past the coffin at a special morning viewing, Mandela’s widow, Graca Machel, and his former wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, among them.

By the afternoon, long lines had formed, but the government said the cutoff point had been reached, urging people to arrive early on the following two days to get their chance.

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, South African President Jacob Zuma and other leaders passed by the casket in two lines as four junior naval officers in white uniforms stood guard.

U2 frontman Bono also paid his respects, as did F.W. de Klerk, the last president of white rule who shared a Nobel Peace Prize with Mandela for ending apartheid.

Mandela’s body is to be flown Saturday to Qunu, his rural childhood village in Eastern Cape Province, where he will be buried Sunday.