PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) — Black and white, old and young, South Africans by the thousands paid final tribute Wednesday to their beloved Nelson Mandela. In silence or murmuring, they filed past the coffin. Some glanced back, as if clinging to the sight, a moment in history.
One man raised his fist, the potent gesture of the struggle against white rule that Mandela led from prison. A woman fainted on the steps, and was helped into a wheelchair.
They had only a few seconds to look at the man many called “tata” — father in his native Xhosa — his face and upper body visible through a clear bubble atop the casket, dressed in a black-and-yellow shirt of the kind he favored as a statesman
“I wish I can say to him, ‘Wake up and don’t leave us,'” said Mary Kgobe, a 52-year-old teacher, after viewing the casket at the century-old Union Buildings, a sandstone government complex overlooking the capital, Pretoria, that was once the seat of white power.
Wearing the black, green and gold of the African National Congress, the ruling party Mandela once led, she was among the multitude who endured hours in the sun to say goodbye to the man they call their father, liberator and peacemaker.
Kgobe said losing Mandela, who died Dec. 5 at 95, was like losing a part of herself.
“This moment is really electrifying, knowing well what he did for us. I wish we could follow in his steps and be humble like he was,” said Kgobe, whose grandfather, an ANC activist, was arrested several times.
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