By JOHN ELIGON and NICHOLAS KULISH
The walls of the Regina Mundi Catholic Church here are riddled with bullet holes from the days when it was a center of the struggle against apartheid. But on Sunday, parishioners instead focused on the traces of Nelson Mandela.
Mr. Mandela’s image is etched in a stained-glass window at the back of the church. A page from a guest book with his signature hangs in the office. And older worshipers still recall his visits to the church, not far from his former home in the township.
“I thought of the old man, when he used to say, ‘We blacks will go and will fight for our freedom,’ ” Tom Nakene, 55, a lifelong member of the parish, said after a three-hour Mass on Sunday.
“I remembered him, and I prayed for him,” Mr. Nakene said, “wherever he is.”
South Africans across the country began a week of commemorations of Mr. Mandela’s life on Sunday with what officials called a day of prayer and reflection. People gathered in houses of worship, private homes and even open fields to pay homage to the man who embodied the struggle against apartheid.
For the country’s politicians, Sunday was a day to urge unity and continuity after the death of Mr. Mandela at 95 on Thursday, and national and provincial officials, including President Jacob Zuma, appeared at churches and other places of worship across the country.
In Bryanston, near Johannesburg, Mr. Zuma attended a Methodist service, sitting alongside members of Mr. Mandela’s family and his former wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. Mr. Mandela received his early education in Methodist schools.
“We should not forget the values that Madiba stood for and sacrificed his life for,” Mr. Zuma said, referring to Mr. Mandela by his clan name, as he urged South Africans to be guided by Mr. Mandela’s example as an opponent of oppression, a fighter for freedom and a model of forgiveness.
For others, the eulogies were freighted with concern about the future, adding a sharper edge to their prayers for peace in the post-Mandela era. In the vast squatter camp of Diepsloot, north of central Johannesburg, where thousands of South Africans and immigrants live in tin shacks with no plumbing and often no electricity, people gathered in tin-walled churches, under trees and in fields to offer prayers for Mr. Mandela.
“Thank you, Madiba,” a group of women from Zimbabwe sang plaintively in a meadow of wildflowers.
“Nelson Mandela was a leader chosen by God, and now God has called him home,” said Virginia Sibanda, a 40-year-old housekeeper from Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, who has lived in Diepsloot for nearly two decades. “He was a leader not just for South Africa but for all Africans, and the world.”
Many migrants living in Diepsloot worried that Mr. Mandela’s death would leave them more vulnerable to the xenophobic attacks they have suffered in recent years. With rising crime, joblessness and deteriorating living conditions, South Africans have frequently turned on those from other countries. Mr. Mandela and his foundation had sought to reduce such violence.
“Rumors have been passing through the town that once Mandela dies, we immigrants will be attacked,” said Nkosi Nkomo, the pastor of a small church with a largely Zimbabwean congregation. He spent the weekend outdoors with a small group of followers, praying by a campfire shaded by trees.
“Lord, bring us peace in this land,” Mr. Nkomo said. “Let Mandela’s spirit live with us.”
The unease about a future without Mr. Mandela was only an undercurrent in a broader celebration of a leader whose life has become a parable for the struggle for freedom.
In other parts of the world, people also congregated to remember Mr. Mandela, whose long incarceration and subsequent election as South Africa’s first black president inspired a following far beyond the frontiers of his land. At a service in London, the Most Rev. Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, called Mr. Mandela South Africa’s “saving grace.”
At another church, this one in New York, Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio promised to bring the spirit of Mr. Mandela to his mayoralty. At the Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn, Mr. de Blasio told about 3,000 people: “Tomorrow, we start living out the lessons of Nelson Mandela.”
On Tuesday, tens of thousands of South Africans and many foreign dignitaries are expected to gather for a national memorial in a World Cup soccer stadium just outside Soweto. Mr. Mandela’s body will then lie in state for three days in Pretoria at the Union Buildings — once the emblem of the white establishment he helped to overthrow.
Many world leaders, including President Obama, are expected to travel to South Africa this week for the formal commemorations. Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, said through a spokesman late Saturday that he would attend Tuesday’s commemoration at the soccer stadium. The South African government said Sunday that at least 53 heads of state planned to attend.
The week of memorials will end Sunday with a state funeral in Mr. Mandela’s remote childhood village of Qunu in the Eastern Cape region. The emphasis on spirituality on Sunday recalled the role that religion played on both sides of South Africa’s epic racial and political battle.
Among the dominant white Afrikaner minority of that era, the Dutch Reformed Church was often depicted as offering scriptural justification for the policies of racial separation that became the code of power after the Afrikaner-dominated National Party was elected in 1948.
Those who dissented, including Beyers Naude, a prominent Afrikaner cleric, were shunned. Mr. Naude was eventually declared a barred person.
During years of protest, South African clerics like the Anglican archbishop Desmond M. Tutu often were embroiled in the turmoil of the country’s segregated black townships. They led calls for the end of apartheid even as they sought to temper the anger of nonwhite South Africans toward compatriots they viewed as stooges of white rule.
Some churches, most notably Regina Mundi in Soweto, became crucibles of dissent. On Sunday, the pastor, the Rev. Sebastian J. Rossouw tried to temper concerns over the future by saying Mr. Mandela could inspire others with his vision for the country.
Some people have noted, Father Rossouw told hundreds of congregants, that “we will not see another person of his caliber for ages to come.”
“I beg to differ,” he said.
There can be another Madiba, he later added, saying, “One of us sitting here can be like him.”
Sunday, December 8, 2013
In Soweto and Beyond, Mandela Still Serves as a Beacon of Hope
By JOHN ELIGON and NICHOLAS KULISH
The walls of the Regina Mundi Catholic Church here are riddled with bullet holes from the days when it was a center of the struggle against apartheid. But on Sunday, parishioners instead focused on the traces of Nelson Mandela.
Mr. Mandela’s image is etched in a stained-glass window at the back of the church. A page from a guest book with his signature hangs in the office. And older worshipers still recall his visits to the church, not far from his former home in the township.
“I thought of the old man, when he used to say, ‘We blacks will go and will fight for our freedom,’ ” Tom Nakene, 55, a lifelong member of the parish, said after a three-hour Mass on Sunday.
“I remembered him, and I prayed for him,” Mr. Nakene said, “wherever he is.”
South Africans across the country began a week of commemorations of Mr. Mandela’s life on Sunday with what officials called a day of prayer and reflection. People gathered in houses of worship, private homes and even open fields to pay homage to the man who embodied the struggle against apartheid.
For the country’s politicians, Sunday was a day to urge unity and continuity after the death of Mr. Mandela at 95 on Thursday, and national and provincial officials, including President Jacob Zuma, appeared at churches and other places of worship across the country.
In Bryanston, near Johannesburg, Mr. Zuma attended a Methodist service, sitting alongside members of Mr. Mandela’s family and his former wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. Mr. Mandela received his early education in Methodist schools.
“We should not forget the values that Madiba stood for and sacrificed his life for,” Mr. Zuma said, referring to Mr. Mandela by his clan name, as he urged South Africans to be guided by Mr. Mandela’s example as an opponent of oppression, a fighter for freedom and a model of forgiveness.
For others, the eulogies were freighted with concern about the future, adding a sharper edge to their prayers for peace in the post-Mandela era. In the vast squatter camp of Diepsloot, north of central Johannesburg, where thousands of South Africans and immigrants live in tin shacks with no plumbing and often no electricity, people gathered in tin-walled churches, under trees and in fields to offer prayers for Mr. Mandela.
“Thank you, Madiba,” a group of women from Zimbabwe sang plaintively in a meadow of wildflowers.
“Nelson Mandela was a leader chosen by God, and now God has called him home,” said Virginia Sibanda, a 40-year-old housekeeper from Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, who has lived in Diepsloot for nearly two decades. “He was a leader not just for South Africa but for all Africans, and the world.”
Many migrants living in Diepsloot worried that Mr. Mandela’s death would leave them more vulnerable to the xenophobic attacks they have suffered in recent years. With rising crime, joblessness and deteriorating living conditions, South Africans have frequently turned on those from other countries. Mr. Mandela and his foundation had sought to reduce such violence.
“Rumors have been passing through the town that once Mandela dies, we immigrants will be attacked,” said Nkosi Nkomo, the pastor of a small church with a largely Zimbabwean congregation. He spent the weekend outdoors with a small group of followers, praying by a campfire shaded by trees.
“Lord, bring us peace in this land,” Mr. Nkomo said. “Let Mandela’s spirit live with us.”
The unease about a future without Mr. Mandela was only an undercurrent in a broader celebration of a leader whose life has become a parable for the struggle for freedom.
In other parts of the world, people also congregated to remember Mr. Mandela, whose long incarceration and subsequent election as South Africa’s first black president inspired a following far beyond the frontiers of his land. At a service in London, the Most Rev. Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, called Mr. Mandela South Africa’s “saving grace.”
At another church, this one in New York, Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio promised to bring the spirit of Mr. Mandela to his mayoralty. At the Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn, Mr. de Blasio told about 3,000 people: “Tomorrow, we start living out the lessons of Nelson Mandela.”
On Tuesday, tens of thousands of South Africans and many foreign dignitaries are expected to gather for a national memorial in a World Cup soccer stadium just outside Soweto. Mr. Mandela’s body will then lie in state for three days in Pretoria at the Union Buildings — once the emblem of the white establishment he helped to overthrow.
Many world leaders, including President Obama, are expected to travel to South Africa this week for the formal commemorations. Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, said through a spokesman late Saturday that he would attend Tuesday’s commemoration at the soccer stadium. The South African government said Sunday that at least 53 heads of state planned to attend.
The week of memorials will end Sunday with a state funeral in Mr. Mandela’s remote childhood village of Qunu in the Eastern Cape region. The emphasis on spirituality on Sunday recalled the role that religion played on both sides of South Africa’s epic racial and political battle.
Among the dominant white Afrikaner minority of that era, the Dutch Reformed Church was often depicted as offering scriptural justification for the policies of racial separation that became the code of power after the Afrikaner-dominated National Party was elected in 1948.
Those who dissented, including Beyers Naude, a prominent Afrikaner cleric, were shunned. Mr. Naude was eventually declared a barred person.
During years of protest, South African clerics like the Anglican archbishop Desmond M. Tutu often were embroiled in the turmoil of the country’s segregated black townships. They led calls for the end of apartheid even as they sought to temper the anger of nonwhite South Africans toward compatriots they viewed as stooges of white rule.
Some churches, most notably Regina Mundi in Soweto, became crucibles of dissent. On Sunday, the pastor, the Rev. Sebastian J. Rossouw tried to temper concerns over the future by saying Mr. Mandela could inspire others with his vision for the country.
Some people have noted, Father Rossouw told hundreds of congregants, that “we will not see another person of his caliber for ages to come.”
“I beg to differ,” he said.
There can be another Madiba, he later added, saying, “One of us sitting here can be like him.”
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