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South Africans celebrate Madiba's life
South Africans celebrate the life of the country's first black president, Nelson Mandela, known affectionately as Madiba.
Thousands upon thousands of South Africans have spent a second night on the streets to pay tribute to former leader Nelson Mandela, who died on Thursday aged 95.
People have been remembering his legacy, dancing and singing in front of Mandela's former home in Soweto.
The anti-apartheid leader will be buried on Sunday, December 15, at his rural home in Qunu, and a memorial service in a Johannesburg stadium will be held on Tuesday, December 10, President Jacob Zuma announced.
Mandela's body will lie in state at government buildings in Pretoria from Wednesday until the burial, and this coming Sunday will be a national day of prayer and reflection.
Flags were lowered to half-mast across South Africa as people in black townships, in upscale mostly white suburbs and in the vast rural grasslands united in mourning Nelson Mandela, celebrating a remarkable life with dance and song, and pledging to adhere to the values of unity that he embodied.
Late on Friday, the day after the news of Nelson Mandela's death was announced, the gray skies held back their rain, and the people who loved him descended upon the township at the heart of the liberation movement, to the brick house on Vilakazi Street where Mandela had lived as a young lawyer and firebrand activist.
Hours after Mandela's death on Thursday night, a black four-wheel-drive vehicle containing his coffin, draped in South Africa's flag, pulled away from his home after midnight, escorted by motorcycle outriders, to take the body to a military morgue in Pretoria, the capital.
Many South Africans heard the news, which was announced on state TV by Zuma wearing mourning black just before midnight, upon waking on Friday, and they flocked to his home in Johannesburg's leafy Houghton neighbourhood. One woman hugged her two sons over a floral tribute.
A dozen doves were released into the skies.
A man walked around with a tall-stemmed sunflower. People sang tribal songs, the national anthem, God Bless Africa - the anthem of the anti-apartheid struggle - and Christian hymns.
Many wore traditional garb of Zulu, Xhosa and South Africa's other ethnic groups. One carried a sign saying: "He will rule the universe with God."
Expecting an influx of mourners, a man sold flags and paraphernalia of Mandela's political party, the African National Congress, or ANC. Portable toilets were brought in.
For South Africa, the death of its most loved leader comes at a time when the nation, which basked in global goodwill after apartheid ended, has been experiencing labour unrest, growing protests against poor services, poverty, crime and unemployment and corruption scandals tainting Zuma's rule.
Many see today's South Africa - the continent's biggest economy but also one of the world's most unequal - as still distant from the Rainbow Nation ideal of social peace and shared prosperity that Mandela had proclaimed on his triumphant release from prison in 1990.
In a church service in Cape Town, retired archbishop Desmond Tutu and fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate said Mandela would want South Africans themselves to be his "memorial'' by adhering to the values of unity and democracy that he embodied.
"All of us here in many ways amazed the world, a world that was expecting us to be devastated by a racial conflagration,'' Tutu said, recalling how Mandela helped unite South Africa as it dismantled apartheid, the cruel system of white minority rule, and prepared for all-race elections in 1994.
In those elections, Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison, became South Africa's first black president.
"God, thank you for the gift of Madiba,'' said Tutu in his closing his prayer, using Mandela's clan name.
In Mandela's hometown of Qunu in the wide-open spaces of the Eastern Cape province, relatives consoled each other as they mourned the death of South Africa's most famous citizen.
Mandela was a "very human person" with a sense of humour who took interest in people around him, said FW de Klerk, South Africa's last apartheid-era president.
The two men negotiated the end of apartheid, finding common cause in often tense circumstances, and shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.
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One of the very few politicians who's actions put his country first. A complete opposite to our lot who put themselves first.
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Mandela was a great person: he practiced what he preached and sacrificed his life to make South Africa a land for opportunity for all its inhabitants. South Africans don't have to migrate to other countries,to live a decent life,although, I v'e found the opulence of the whites and the shacks of the blacks living across the roads from each other disturbing to say the least.
If all African leaders were like Mandela, the great saga of migration would not exist cause their would have been less corruption less nepotism and less exploitation by large corporations who extract large mineral wealth and oil from Africa.
Let us all hope that what Mandela has built would not end in ruins after he has died. Africa for Africans should be NGOs motto, so that with its great resources and wealth, Africans would finally start building their own countries where they can make a decent living living without having to go through the terrible and dangerous journeys to Europe.
