Mandela funeral to bring together world's most powerful people

Mandela funeral to bring together world's most powerful people

Political and cultural elite set to attend funeral where Mandela's spirit of reconciliation may offer backdrop to unusual meetings

Julian Borger, diplomatic editor, and Daniel Howden in Johannesburg

The Guardian, Friday 6 December 2013 18.46 GMT

US president, Barack Obama, in South Africa

US president, Barack Obama, in South Africa earlier this year.

Mandela's funeral could provide the backdrop to his first meeting with Iran's leader, Hassan Rouhani. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

World leaders are preparing to converge in unprecedented numbers on South Africa for Nelson Mandela's funeral, likely to be one of the biggest global gatherings of powerful people in modern history.

As South Africa embarked on nine days of mourning, comparisons were being drawn with earlier mammoth funeral ceremonies, of Pope John Paul II, Princess Diana, President John F Kennedy and Winston Churchill. But Mandela's appeal was even broader, cutting across religious divides and the usual geopolitical barriers between north and south, east and west.

Barack Obama will fly in, with his wife Michelle, as well as former US presidents. Britain is expected to send senior royals, presumably Prince Charles, and possibly Prince William as well as the prime minister, David Cameron.

They are likely to mix in the funeral cortege with leaders from across the globe, including from China, Iran, Cuba, Israel and the Palestinian territories. It is not clear how Syria will be represented, or whether Sudan's president Omar al-Bashir, charged with genocide by the international criminal court, will attend.

As well as creating a minefield of chance encounters to avoid, the convergence of such an array of presidents and prime ministers should also offer unusual diplomatic opportunities. The spirit of reconciliation Mandela embodied could provide, for example, the backdrop for a first meeting between Obama and Iranian leader, Hassan Rouhani.

Mandela's farewell will also draw the world's cultural elite as well as its political leadership. Mandela had a soft spot for celebrity and stars of film and music, such as Oprah Winfrey, who made the pilgrimage to his home when he was alive, are also expected to pay their respects at his passing.

According to an earlier provisional plan seen by the Guardian, the formal state funeral was intended to take place at the Union Buildings at Pretoria, the country's seat of government since the colonial era, where Mandela was inaugurated as president in 1994 – however there were reports on Friday that it would take place in Qunu, Mandela's childhood home.

What is clear is that at least the burial itself will be in the tiny Eastern Cape village where Mandela was born into Thembu tribal royalty and where he will be interred alongside three of his children and other close relatives on a hillside in a windswept region known under apartheid as the Transkei.

The logistics will be daunting for the Eastern Cape, South Africa's poorest province. The national airports authority said a "special air transport service" would be put in place, mostly likely through the nearest provincial airfield at Mtata, but there is no provision for large-scale overnight accommodation. Mourners would have to fly in and out on the same day.

For ordinary South Africans, the biggest send-off will come earlier, in the form of a huge memorial service on Tuesday at Johannesburg's 95,000-seat Soccer City stadium on the edge of Soweto, Mandela's former home. The arena, known as the "calabash" for its bowl-like shape, has provided the venue for some of the climactic moments of the young democracy's life, from Mandela's first major speech on his release from prison in 1990 to the opening match of the football World Cup hosted by South Africa in 2010.

Sunday will be given over to a day of mourning and national prayer, with South Africa's president Jacob Zuma careful to strike an inclusive note, calling for religious services of remembrance at "halls, churches, mosques, temples, synagogues".

Mandela has been transported to Pretoria to be embalmed in preparation for three days of lying in state in the Union Buildings. Huge queues are expected to gather in the city, an hour north of the commercial hub, Johannesburg, for a final glimpse of the beloved former leader in a glass-topped coffin, and arrangements are being made to keep the doors of the monument open to accommodate the flood of mourners. Simultaneous memorial services are to be held around the country.

"We should all work together to organise the most befitting funeral for this outstanding son of our country and the father of our young nation," Zuma said in a statement on the funeral arrangements.

"The outpouring of love that we experienced locally and abroad was unprecedented," Zuma added. "It demonstrates the calibre of leader that was Madiba."