World tributes pour in for Nelson Mandela

South Africans gather near the homes where Mandela lived as the nation prepares to host world leaders for the funeral honouring him.

White South African women pulled up in SUVs, bringing their children and their maids, clad in neat uniforms, aprons and kerchiefs. Well-heeled members of the nation’s growing black middle class posed for iPhone photos in front of mountains of flowers, pictures and letters left outside the home of Nelson Mandela. For black small-businessman Guntu Shabalala (43) Mandela’s death lats Thursday was just beginning to sink in.

“I started to realise when I went out in the morning that we were waking up to a different day. The traffic was different, the world was different. Life had changed, for everyone,” he said.

In his 95-year life, Mandela was able to distill moments of togetherness and national pride – and last Friday proved he could do the same in death, as the multi-racial nation, two decades removed from the shackles of apartheid, shared its grief and celebration for the man they called simply “Tata”, or father.

Tributes grand and small commemorated the greatness of the civil rights icon and former president, from the lighting of Paris’ Eiffel Tower in the colours of the South African flag to the children’s drawings of Mandela’s face pinned to a steel fence outside his home in suburban Johannesburg.

South African President Jacob Zuma declared 10 days of mourning, as the nation prepared for the logistical and security challenges of hosting hundreds of dignitaries from around the world planning to attend Mandela’s state funeral on December 15.

“We’ll spend the week mourning his passing. We’ll also spend it celebrating a life well lived, a life we must all emulate for the betterment of our country and Africa,” Zuma said last Friday.

US President Barack Obama announced that he and wife Michelle would travel to South Africa next week to pay tribute to Mandela.

Comfort to South Africans

After the state funeral, Mandela’s body will be flown by military aircraft to the Eastern Cape, where he will be buried in the tiny village of Qunu, where he grew up.Desmond Tutu, former Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town and Mandela’s friend and fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate, offered comfort to South Africans, brushing aside assertions that without Mandela’s presence, the country would swiftly go downhill.

“What’s going to happen to us now that our father has died? Does it spell doomsday disaster for us? Some have suggested that after he’s gone, our country is going to go up in flames,” Tutu said.But Mandela’s legacy of peace and goodwill is stronger than that, he said.

“The sun will rise tomorrow and the next day and the next. It may not appear as bright as yesterday, but life will carry on,” Tutu said. Zuma designated Sunday a day of prayer and contemplation in Mandela’s memory. His words, concluding a news briefing on funeral arrangements, summed up the mood that Mandela’s influence would live on.

“Long live Madiba,” he said, using Mandela’s clan name. The main memorial service will be held on Tuesday at the 90,000-seat stadium in Soweto where Mandela made his last public appearance, in 2010, at the final game of soccer’s World Cup championships.

After the service, Mandela’s body will lie in state for three days at the Union Buildings, from December 11-13, with long lines expected, like those snaking at the polls in black townships during the country’s first democratic vote, in 1994.

Mandela’s funeral is expected to draw almost all of Africa’s leaders, the living US Presidents and heads of state and royals from around the world.

Although South African authorities have kept plans for the funeral and memorials under tight wraps, intense preparations for the event are believed to have been going on for months, since Mandela’s June hospitalisation with a lung infection. He went home in September, but never recovered.

After his death, Mandela’s body travelled early on Friday in a slow, sombre convoy, led by a phalanx of motorcycles, ushered by a helicopter, along the highway to the mortuary at the main military hospital in Pretoria. He was transported in a black van with side windows, in a coffin draped with the national flag.

Zuma on Friday urged South Africans to work hard to create a memorial worthy of Mandela.

“We should all work together to organise the most befitting funeral for this outstanding son of our country and father of our young nation,” he said.

“We call upon all people to gather in halls, churches, mosques, temples, synagogues and in their homes to pray and hold prayer services and meditation reflecting on the life of Madiba and his contribution to our country and the globe.

“We’ll always love Madiba for teaching us that it is possible to overcome hatred and anger in order to build a new nation and a new society,” he said.

The mood of unity that swept South Africa on Friday marked a moment when Mandela’s dream seemed to have come true - of a country where people, regardless of race or class, could embrace one another. Like many in Soweto, Annelice Govender (30) an unemployed mother of two, gathered outside Mandela’s one-time home on Vilakazi Street. When she last saw him there as a girl in 1995, a year after he became president, she said, she was struck by “the calmness in his eye. He had such honest eyes.”

Natalie Richards (41) an accountant and white South African mother, brought her children, ages three, five and eight, to see the wall of tributes spontaneously springing up outside Mandela’s house in Houghton, a Johannesburg suburb.

“I wanted to give my kids a little bit of history so one day when they look back, they will know they were here and they celebrated his life.

“I explained to them a bit of the history of South Africa, about black and white people being apart and how basically he brought everybody together and how he saved our beautiful country,” she said, her voice cracking with sadness. On Vilakazi Street, Evangelical Bishop Madela Mashinini (47) watched the crowds dancing, singing and ululating. He said Mandela “was not a saint in the sense that he was sinless. But Mandela showed us humans have a divine side in all of us. He was able to inspire us to be the best we can, in terms of embodying the values of love, forgiveness, transformation and humanity.”

- Los Angeles Times