Memorial Service for Nelson Mandela - "Healer" of Humanity and the Age

(Baonghean) - Prayers continue to resound across South Africa as thousands of people flock to the former home of former President Nelson Mandela to commemorate the hero of the struggle to end apartheid.

Nelson Mandela was born in 1918 in the Eastern Cape. He joined the African National Congress (ANC) in 1943, the beginning of the struggle for racial equality that he would spend his life pursuing. Convicted of sedition, illegal immigration and sabotage, Mandela was sentenced to life in prison until his release in 1990. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 and ran for president in 1994. His life and ideals became a symbol of the anti-apartheid movement and an inspiration to many generations. After retiring from politics, he pursued humanitarian work, especially his charity for people with HIV/AIDS - the disease that claimed his son at the age of 55.

After being discharged from hospital in September 2013, Mr Mandela began treatment at home for chronic lung disease. As soon as news of his death broke at 9pm on Thursday, December 5, people began to gather on Vilakazi Street, Soweto - where he lived in the 1940s and 1950s. Outside his home in the Johannesburg suburb of Houghton north, where he spent the last months of his life, hundreds gathered to pay their respects to the leader who established racial equality in South Africa. Flowers and candles began to form a wall, while mourners listened attentively to monks chanting and singing anti-apartheid songs.

President Jacob Zuma has announced a week of national mourning for former President Mandela, starting from Sunday 8 December until Sunday 15 December. Sunday 8 December is an official day of prayer and religious ceremonies. On Tuesday 12 December, the state funeral will take place at a 9,500-seat stadium on the outskirts of Johannesburg. From Wednesday to Friday, he will be flown to the capital Pretoria. The burial will take place on Sunday 15 December in the village of Qunu in the Eastern Cape where he grew up. African Airways has announced additional flights to accommodate those returning to pay their respects. The Johannesburg Stock Exchange will suspend all operations for five minutes on Friday 6 December as a mark of respect.

People light candles in memory of Mr. Mandela in the capital Pretoria, South Africa

"We sincerely thank all South Africans for their respect and admiration for this great loss," Mr Zuma said. Mr Mandela's long-time ally, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, described him as an "unbelievable gift" to South Africa. "He taught us incredible lessons of forgiveness, tolerance and reconciliation." Perhaps that was also his "weakness", the archbishop said of his "absolute loyalty to the establishment and even to some comrades who abandoned him."

Friends and international leaders also expressed their condolences at the passing of an icon of our time. The White House announced a trip to South Africa next week by President Obama and the First Lady to attend Mandela's memorial service. The opening of the African leaders' conference on security in Paris also included several minutes of silence and prayer for the late president. In London, a long line of people waited outside the gates of the South African Supreme Council to write farewell messages. Pope Francis praised the South Africa that Mandela built as "a completely new South Africa, based on the solid foundations of non-violence, reconciliation and truth."

Queen Elizabeth II shared South Africa's "deep sadness" as she recalled her meeting with Mr Mandela as "warm and friendly". The BBC commented that his state funeral will be an unprecedented event in South Africa, with the presence of senior leaders at home and abroad as well as admirers of the late president.

The flower "wall" outside Nelson Mandela's home in Houghton.

What makes him a great icon of the era is probably what he left behind. Rarely appearing in public since the 2010 World Cup held in South Africa, Mandela's influence on the black community in particular and those who nurture an ideal, an ambition in general has never diminished. He is "a unifier", "a reconciler", "a person who never knew bitterness and hatred" as the last white president of South Africa, FW de Klerk (who asked for Mandela's release and received the Nobel Peace Prize with him).

As for the person who made history similar to that in South Africa in the US, the first black president of the US, Barack Obama, always mentioned Mandela as a hero, someone who inspired him and encouraged him on the path of pursuing his ideals. He considered himself "one of those who responded to Mandela's call". During a visit to South Africa, he spoke of Mandela as someone who "fought for justice and dignity, beyond all limits of race, class, faith or nation". "That is what is evident in Nelson Mandela", Obama said at a meeting with young people in Soweto, "and also the best values ​​of South Africa that the whole world knows, and that is also the reason why I came back here".

More than a pioneer, a leader, Nelson Mandela was a bridge connecting the dreams of humanity from the past to the present and the future, a link between people and people, between people and the community and the land to which they belong. As a young South African who came to pay his respects expressed: "I was born after he became president and all I know is the South Africa that he inherited and gave to us. So now is the time to send him flowers to remember this man and the South Africa that he fought to build all his life."

Ganoderma