News
South Africa: Week of mourning declared over the passing of Nelson Mandela
Former South African President Nelson Mandela. PHOTO/Walter Dhladhla/AFP/Getty Images
South African President Jacob Zuma has declared a week of mourning across South Africa for Nelson Mandela that will include several services, ending with burial in the anti-apartheid icon’s ancestral home of the small rural village of Qunu in the Eastern Cape on December 15.
A memorial service at FNB Stadium in Johannesburg will be held Tuesday.
Zuma said Mandela’s body will lie in state at government buildings in Pretoria, starting Wednesday, until the burial. This Sunday will be a national day of prayer and reflection.
Mandela, South Africa’s founding president, was an “international icon who was a symbol of reconciliation … love, human rights and justice in our country and to the world,” Zuma said.
As flags were lowered to half-staff Friday, a day after Mandela’s death, people across the country commemorated him with song, tears and prayers as the government announced funeral ceremonies that will draw leaders and other dignitaries from around the globe.
A black hearse containing Mandela’s coffin, draped in South Africa’s flag, pulled away from Mandela’s home after midnight, escorted by military motorcycle outriders, to take the body to a military morgue in the capital of Pretoria.
Many South Africans heard the news of his death, which was announced on TV by Zuma just before midnight, upon waking Friday, and they flocked to his home in Johannesburg’s leafy Houghton neighborhood. One woman hugged her two sons over a floral tribute.
In a church service in Cape Town, retired archbishop Desmond Tutu said the anti-apartheid leader who became South Africa’s first black president would want South Africans themselves to be his “memorial” by adhering to the values of unity and democracy that he embodied.
