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World leaders, friend and foe coming together for Nelson Mandela
Those close to Madiba, the clan name by which Mandela was known, say he would have wanted handshakes, not head-butts.
“Tomorrow, people should all be honoring their relationship with Madiba. If it means shaking hands with the enemy, yes, I would like to see that,” Zelda la Grange, his former personal assistant for more than a decade, told reporters.
“That is what Nelson Mandela was and actually is – bringing people together despite their differences.”
On the day, diplomacy is unlikely to detract from the outpouring of emotion expected at the 7-hour ceremony at Soccer City, a gigantic bowl, steeped in Mandela symbolism.
It was there that the Nobel Peace Prize laureate made his last public appearance three years ago, waving to fans from the back of a golf cart at the World Cup final.
It was also there, 20 years earlier, that he addressed tens of thousands of supporters two days after his release from prison, eliciting a deafening roar from the crowd with a clenched fist raised to the sky and a single word: ‘Amandla’, the Zulu and Xhosa word for ‘power’.
Since his death, South Africa has been gripped by mass emotions unrivalled since the day Mandela was freed after 27 years in apartheid jails, and his victory in the first all-race elections four years later, in 1994.
