More Than 70 Leaders Expected For Mandela Memorial, Funeral

More than 70 heads of state and government are expected in South Africa this week to attend funeral events for former president Nelson Mandela, with most due to attend a huge memorial service in Johannesburg on Tuesday, officials said.
“The whole world is coming to South Africa,” foreign ministry spokesman Clayson Monyela said.
After what has been billed as one of the largest gatherings of global leaders in recent history, only a handful of dignitaries would go to Sunday’s state burial in Mandela’s ancestral home of Qunu in the Eastern Cape, he added.
“We’re trying to keep that to the family,” Monyela told Talk Radio 702.
The Nigerian President, Goodluck Jonathan, is expected to leave Abuja on Monday evening to join other world leaders in South Africa.

Meanwhile, South Africans continued to pay tribute to the great leader with hymns and eulogies, on Sunday.
South Africans of all colors and creeds remembered Nelson Mandela in a day of prayers yesterday, holding him up as a symbol of freedom, forgiveness and hope for the nation and the world.
At churches, mosques, synagogues and community halls from the Limpopo River to the Cape, millions offered praise and reflected on a man celebrated as “Father of the Nation” and as a global beacon of integrity, rectitude and reconciliation.