PRETORIA: In a tall, simple wooden marquee built for the occasion, in a casket wrapped in white silk, lies the body of Nelson Mandela. Part of the casket is transparent, showing Mandela’s upper torso − his face is gray but looks good, as though he had not been sinking toward death for many months. He is wearing one of his famous “Madiba style” print shirts, in brown and black. This moment, of standing beside this man’s body, is deeply engraved in memory.
I look at his face. Like most people passing by the casket, myriads of them, for me too this is the first and last meeting with him. His eyes are closed but his face remains as it was, expressing kindness, sensitivity and compassion. His gray hair is done. He looks as though he’s sleeping, a well-deserved rest after all the hardships he endured, the number-one fugitive whose country locked him up in prison for 27 years.
I try to extend the parting moment as much as possible, but the endless line trailing behind forces a rapid departure. A military honor guard in white uniforms stands on either side of him and a great silence hovers over it all. At the exit of this makeshift mausoleum, female soldiers hand out tissues. There’s something touching about female soldiers giving tissues to mourners. Quite a few need them. The white woman ahead of me bursts into tears, weeping inconsolably. Many others wipe a tear in silence. This is surely the high point I’ll carry with me from this visit to South Africa.
The casket is on the hilltop overlooking Pretoria in the impressive colonialist compound of the Union Buildings, the official seat of the South African government and president’s offices. The casket was placed in the amphitheater, exactly where Mandela had been sworn in on May 10, 1994 as South Africa’s first black president. The flag at the entrance is lowered to half-mast.
At the entrance to the marquee, all security checks are dispensed with, to make it easier for those entering and the atmosphere is relaxed, despite the solemn occasion.
The way to Mandela was very long on Wednesday. Tens of thousands stood in lines in the capital’s central streets and Government Avenue. The streets Stanza Bopape, Leeds and Madiba were packed with people standing in indescribable, exemplary order. To an Israeli it’s like something from another world. The thousands of police officers filling the city are also wondrously, unimaginably polite, certainly in the eyes of one accustomed to the rudeness of some of Israel’s policemen.
At midday the site opens to the public, after the family members, VIPs and ministers have passed by the casket earlier. For the next three days and nights South Africa will pass by Mandela’s body and give him last thanks for all he has done for it. On Saturday the funeral procession will begin, culminating on Sunday with the casket’s burial in the cemetery of his tiny home village Qunu, far away in the Eastern Cape. There preparations are already under way for slaughtering the calf for him, in keeping with local tradition.
Until the afternoon masses are bused to the top of the hill, but realizing that only few would reach the casket this way, the police announce by loudspeaker that the entrance was opening to pedestrians, as long as they all hold hands. Thus another magical moment occurs − tens of thousands of people in an unending line holding hands, singing and dancing. Black and white, women and men, old and young, they inadvertently painted a picture of Mandela’s legacy.
Each one has his own Mandela. Some carry his portrait, some have stuck a flag in their hair or a pin in their clothes or wear a T-shirt with one of his sayings. Others wrap themselves in the national flag.
All those I spoke to in the line feels deep gratitude to Mandela. They say he changed the course of their life. It is doubtful if there are many statesmen today whose countries’ people feel that toward them.
A young, muscular Nigerian in his 30s who introduces himself as Mr. Lambert, says “I moved from my country to a more just country − thanks to Mandela.”
Mr. Lambert has been living here for 11 years and has come to thank Mandela. “I owe him a goodbye. His spirit is in me and in all my generation and my children’s generation. His spirit will stay with us forever,” he says.
Linda Rabinovich, 44, has been standing in line for hours. A worker in a mobile coffee bar company, she is well turned out with platinum hair. She too was born into apartheid.
“As a Jew, I think there’s a similarity between the Holocaust and apartheid,” she says. “I feel that we, the Jews, could have done more … Mandela was an amazing man and I felt the need to be here today, to take part in a historic, seminal moment. I wanted to be able to tell my grandchildren one day that I was here, and show them pictures.”
Evening is about to fall on Pretoria and the lines are only getting longer in its wide streets. Occasionally a siren splits the silence, heralding the arrival of another dignitary. At times loud singing rises from the line: Goodbye Mandela, goodbye Madiba.
