Nelson Mandela, first President of a free South Africa, last of the great African liberators and an icon to all humanity, looks beautiful in death. He lies in a wooden casket with a glass cover over his face on the highest point in his nation's capital, his feet to the dawn, his head to the sunset. "It seems as if he is still alive," says Charlotte Madisha, 36. "It seems like he's just sleeping." Mandela's coffin is shielded from the sun by a giant white and wood open-sided box, hung in white, carpeted in red and lit with soft white lights. At each corner of the coffin are four stern South African sailors in navy whites. On each side is a line of slowly processing mourners. Today, the second day of Mandela's lying in state, it stretches out of South Africa's seat of government, the Union Buildings, down grand balustraded steps, out into the road below, down beyond the great iron gates that mark the entrance to the building's grounds, down a long, winding hill, and out into the middle of Pretoria, the capital. It is perhaps a mile long. Many have been here under the blazing sun since dawn. Black, brown, white, yellow, in wheelchairs, in nappies, respectably middle-aged and ostentatiously young, the queue is Mandela's ideals of a Rainbow Nation made physical and immense. "They just don't stop coming," says a policeman looking on. "It'll be 100,000 people before the end of the day." South Africa is taking its time to mourn Mandela, and for a simple reason: so integral is Mandela to how South Africans think of themselves that many find it hard to accept that he is gone. A national memorial on Tuesday has been followed by three days of lying in state that continue until Friday, and after that will come his burial at his home in Qunu in the Eastern Cape on Sunday. (WATCH: Mandela Deaf Interpreter: 'I'm a Sign-Language Champ!') Madisha, a teacher from Mamelodi, on the outskirts of Pretoria, has come to see
[view whole blog post
]
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
See More
Report Abuse