Mandela's body arrives at Union Buildings, Pretoria

The coffin of Nelson Mandela has arrived at Pretoria’s Union Buildings to allow members of the public to pay their last respects.

Mandela’s body will lie in state for three days where he was inaugurated as president in 1994 after the first all-race elections that ended decades of white-minority apartheid rule. Mandela’s body will then be taken to Pretoria’s Eastern Cape on Saturday.... where South Africa’s ruling African National Congress will bid farewell to him ... and then finally on Sunday, a funeral service and interment ceremony will take place at Mandela’s final resting place, his home village of Qunu in the Eastern Cape.


World leaders and tens of thousands of South Africans gathered in the rain in Johannesburg to honor the late president on Tuesday. Chinese Vice President Li Yuanchao, US President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron, and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, as well as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon were among the more than 90 leaders and senior officials who came to pay tribute. 

 

The coffin of Nelson Mandela has arrived at Pretoria’s Union Buildings to allow members of
the public to pay their last respects.