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Last breath of Mandela was his own

South Africa unites in prayer, song

AFP, Johannesburg
The last breath Nelson Mandela drew was his own, free of any life support, in the presence of his closest family members, South African media reported yesterday.
''By the time he died on Thursday evening, he was not on a life-support machine and had been breathing on his own," the Sunday Times weekly reported.
£ South Africans yesterday • crowded into churches, £ mosques, temples and £ synagogues to remember Mandela, encouraged by their president to celebrate a life that transcended race
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FROM PAGE 16 and religion.
The nationwide day of prayer marked the formal start of a week-long state funeral for the man who forged a new multi-racial South Africa from the discredited remnants of the apartheid era he helped to dismantle.
The anti-apartheid champion, who became South Africa's first black president, had been repeatedly hospitalised with lung troubles in recent years and had often had to rely on artificial ventilation.
The Sunday Times said grandson Mandla had been urgently summoned from the village of Mvezo in the Eastern Cape province to his grandfather's bedside.
Also present were senior members of the ruling African National Congress that Mandela once led, and religious leaders who comforted family and friends.
According to the City Press weekly, close family had been allowed into his room in twos and threes for a final private moment.
"The family was very strong, but the mood was sombre. The toughest moment came when the military arrived to collect Madiba's body around midnight," The Sunday Times quoted someone who was there assaying.
"When they came down from his room upstairs with his lifeless body, followed by Mandla, it started to sink in that Madiba was gone."
Throughout Saturday night, large crowds gathered outside the house in Johannesburg where Mandela passed away aged 95.
At times they lit candles and linked arms in silent remembrance, but then, as if to lift the mood, one group or another would burst into song and the entire crowd would join in and dance in celebration of a life that
transformed their country and inspired the world.
It was a sentiment that President Jacob Zuma had encouraged ahead of yesterday's day of prayer.
"We should, while mourning, also sing at the top of our voices, dance and do whatever we want to do, to celebrate the life of this outstanding revolutionary," Zuma said.
As well as the steady pilgrimage to his Johannesburg residence, crowds gathered in Qunu in the Eastern Cape, in Soweto and outside Capetown's City Hall.
The president was to attend a Methodist Church in a predominantly white Johannesburg neighbourhood, while former president Thabo Mbeki was to join prayers at a synagogue in the city.
Inside the Regina Mundi Catholic church in the once blacks-only township of Soweto and once used as a sanctuary by anti-apartheid activists during police raids, a single candle illuminated a portrait of Mandela with a raised-fist salute as parish priest Sebastian Rossouw called Mandela "a light in the darkness" and praised his capacity for "humility and forgiveness".
The prayers were to be echoed a continent away in London, where Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, spiritual leader of the world's 80 million Anglicans, would lead a remembrance service.
The extraordinary depth and breadth of Mandela's appeal will see heads of state of every political stripe rub shoulders with leaders across the religious spectrum and marquee names from the worlds of sports, art and entertainment during the funeral events.
US President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle along with three former American
presidents, Brazilian leader Dilma Rousseff, Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas and 47 other heads of state and government have confirmed to be among 80,000 people attending a vast memorial service tomorrow in the Soweto sports stadium that hosted the 2010 World Cup final, South Africa's foreign minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane said yesterday.
The commemorations will culminate in Mandela's burial on December 15 in Qunu — the rural village where he spent his early childhood.
Among the many world leaders scheduled to attend the funeral are French President Francois Hollande, the British and Canadian prime ministers David Cameron and Stephen Harper, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.
Talk show queen Oprah Winfrey and singer-activist Bono are expected to be among the celebrity mourners.
In a statement, Mandela's family compared the loss of their adored patriarch to the trauma of separation during his long incarceration in Robben Island.
"The pillar of the family is gone, just as he was away during that 27 painful years of imprisonment," the statement said.
"As a family we commit ourselves to uphold and be guided by the values he lived for and was prepared to die for.
"Chief among these is the lesson that a life lived for others is a life well-lived," it said.
Mandela's body will lie in state for three days from Wednesday, with his coffin taken in a cortege through the streets of Pretoria each morning to allow as many people as possible to say farewell.