A mother and her children light candles during a church service in honor of Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg, South Africa, Sunday, Dec. 8, 2013. People in South Africa are taking part in a day of “prayer and reflection” for late President Nelson Mandela.CAPE TOWN, South Africa – In death, Nelson Mandela unified South Africans of all races and backgrounds Sunday on a day of prayer for the global statesman – from a vaulted cathedral with hymns and incense to a rural, hilltop church with goat-skin drums and barefoot dancing.
Mandela was remembered in old bedrocks of resistance to white domination as well as former bastions of loyalty to apartheid.
“May his long walk to freedom be enjoyed and realized in our time by all of us,” worshippers said in a prayer at the majestic St. George’s Cathedral in Cape Town, where the first white settlers arrived centuries ago aboard European ships.
South Africa’s reflection on Mandela’s astonishing life was a prelude to a massive memorial in a Johannesburg stadium Tuesday that will draw world leaders and luminaries. They will gather to mourn, but also to salute the achievements of the prisoner who became president and an emblem of humanity’s best instincts.
The extended farewell — a bittersweet mix of grief and celebration — ends Dec. 15, when Mandela is to be buried in his rural hometown of Qunu in Eastern Cape province.