Prime Minister Joseph Muscat is in South Africa to join scores of heads of state and other foreign dignitaries in the memorial service for Nelson Mandela, the country’s first black and democratically-elected president.

More than 80,000 are expected to attend the gathering for the anti-apartheid hero at a stadium in the Soweto township where he made his last public appearance at the closing ceremony of the 2010 soccer World Cup.

Mandela died last Thursday aged 95.

After the stadium memorial tomorrow, his body will lie in state at the Union Buildings, the seat of government in South Africa's capital, Pretoria, from Wednesday to Friday. He will be buried Sunday in Qunu, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate's rural hometown in Eastern Cape Province.

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