Family members and South African President Jacob Zuma were among the first to bid a final farewell to Nelson Mandela.
Graca Machel, Mandela's widow, and his ex-wife Winnie Mandela also paid their tearful respects at the State's Union Building.
South Africans have been queuing for hours for a chance to say
goodbye to the man they affectionately call Madiba before he is laid to
rest in his ancestral home of Qunu.
The funeral cortege of Nelson Mandela passed through the streets of
Pretoria on Wednesday morning, and South Africa's first black president
will now repeat the journey twice more, lying in state until Friday
before being sent to his final resting place.
The procession, which will be repeated on Thursday and Friday
mornings, passes the one-time home of Paul Kruger, who was the president
of the Transvaal and lead a resistance movement against British rule
during the first Anglo-Boer War, which began in 1880, and will pass the
central prison where Mandela was jailed in 1962 for incitement and
leaving the country illegally.
His conviction and subsequent life sentence marked the beginning of a
27-year jail stint, from which he finally emerged in 1990 as the
structure of apartheid crumbled around its white minority supporters.
The funeral procession will be repeated for three days, ending each
time at the Union Buildings - the seat of government where previous
presidents had signed aspects of the apartheid system into law.
South Africans are being encouraged to line the route of the march,
from the city's 1 Military Hospital to the Union Buildings where Mandela
was sworn in as their president nearly 20 years ago.
Members of the public will then be given a chance to say their final, personal goodbyes to Mandela while he lies in state.
It is going to be a more sombre reflection on the life of Mandela
than the celebration of the anti-apartheid freedom fighter that took
place in the national stadium in Soweto on Tuesday.
The raucous crowd greeted speakers with a chorus of cheers, and in
some in some cases boos, as they took to the stage to try to eulogise
Mandela and express what he had done for the nation.
'Giant of history'
In his speech, Raul Castro, who earlier in the day shared a handshake
with US President Barack Obama, quoted his brother Fidel Castro, former
Cuba leader, and said, "Mandela will not go down in history for the 27
years he spent behind bars ... but because he was able to free his soul
from the poison that such unjust punishment can cause."
Obama himself was greeted with cheers as he took to the stage,
saying "It is hard to eulogise any man ... how much harder to do so for a
giant of history, who moved a nation towards justice."
Current South African President Jacob Zuma, however, received boos
and jeers, a reflection of the ongoing criticism of the nation's current
leaders and their seeming inability to continue Mandela's legacy of
justice and equality.
Fuente:Aljazeera
|