South Africans united in mourning for Nelson Mandela yesterday, but while some celebrated his remarkable life with dance and song, others fretted that the anti-apartheid hero’s death would make the nation vulnerable again to racial and social tensions.
President Jacob Zuma said the anti-apartheid hero will be buried on December 15 at his ancestral home in the Eastern Cape.
South Africans heard from Zuma late on Thursday that the statesman and Nobel Peace Prize laureate died peacefully at his Johannesburg home in the company of his family after a long illness.
Yesterday the country’s 52 million people absorbed the news that their most revered statesman, a global symbol of reconciliation and peaceful co-existence, had departed forever.
Zuma also announced the former president would be honoured with a December 10 memorial service at Johannesburg’s Soccer City stadium — the site of the 2010 World Cup final.
“We will spend the week mourning his passing. We will also spend it celebrating a life well lived.”
Zuma said the country’s first black president would be laid to rest at his ancestral village of Qunu, 700 km (450 miles) south of Johannesburg, in a family plot where three of Mandela’s children and other close relatives are buried.
Despite reassurances from public figures that Mandela’s passing, while sorrowful, would not halt South Africa’s advance away from its apartheid past, there were those who expressed unease about the absence of a man famed as a peacemaker.
“It’s not going to be good, hey! I think it’s going to become a more racist country. People will turn on each other and chase foreigners away,” said Sharon Qubeka, 28, a secretary from Tembisa township.
“Mandela was the only one who kept things together”.
Flags flew at half mast across the country, and trade was halted for five minutes on the Johannesburg stock exchange.
But the mood was not all sombre. Hundreds filled the streets around Mandela’s home in the upmarket Johannesburg suburb of Houghton, many singing songs of tribute and dancing.
The crowd included toddlers carrying flowers, domestic workers in uniform and businessmen in suits.
Many attended church, including veteran anti-apartheid campaigner ex-Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town Desmond Tutu. He said, like all South Africans he was “devastated” by Mandela’s death.
“Let us give him the gift of a South Africa united, one,” Tutu said, holding a Mass in Cape Town’s St George’s Cathedral.
An avalanche of tributes continued to pour in for Mandela, who had been ailing for nearly a year with a recurring lung illness dating back to the 27 years he spent in apartheid jails, including the notorious Robben Island penal colony.
US President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron were among world leaders who paid tributes to him as a moral giant and exemplary beacon.
The loss was also keenly felt across the African continent.
“We are in trouble now, Africa. No one will fit Mandela’s shoes,” said Kenyan teacher Catherine Ochieng, 32.
His death comes at a time when South Africa, 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 saw today’s South Africa still distant from being the “Rainbow Nation” ideal of social peace and shared prosperity that Mandela had proclaimed on his triumphant release from prison in 1990.
“I feel like I lost my father, someone who would look out for me,” said Joseph Nkosi, 36, a security guard from Alexandra township in Johannesburg.
Using Mandela’s his clan name, he added: “Without Madiba I feel like I don’t have a chance. The rich will get richer and simply forget about us.”
World mourns Mandela Schoolchildren hold candles and portraits of former South African President Nelson Mandela during a prayer ceremony at a school in the southern Indian city of Chennai yesterday. South African anti-apartheid hero Mandela died peacefully at home at the age of 95 on Thursday after months fighting a lung infection, leaving his nation and the world in mourning for a man revered as a moral giant. Photo: Reuters/Babu