South Africa’s parliament on Friday hosted a prayer service in a Cape Town cathedral where Mandela was hailed as “an icon of a truly free South Africa”.
“It is a reflective period for our people,” said national assembly deputy speaker NomaIndiya Mfeketo.
“The thought of Madiba in hospital indisposed due to illness is harrowing. This is not what we wish for our beloved hero.”
The ruling African National Congress (ANC) dedicated its annual Gauteng provincial general council meeting in Pretoria to Mandela.
“We want to acknowledge him as a comrade who not only stood for
the ANC as a servant of the people of South Africa; he also stood
for values of human rights and justice universally,” said ANC Gauteng deputy chairwoman Gwen Ramokgopa.
The delegates, dressed in white T-shirts bearing Mandela’s image
and the words “Long live Nelson Mandela”, sang struggle songs dedicated to the anti-apartheid icon, the South African Press Association reported.
Meanwhile leading South Africans urged Mandela’s family to end an increasingly acerbic family feud over the gravesites of three of Mandela’s children.
On Thursday Mandela’s grandson Mandla launched a tirade at close family members who took him to court to force him to reinter Mandela’s children at the revered former South African leader’s proposed burial ground in Qunu, his childhood village.
Mandla accused one of his brothers of impregnating his wife and said others were born out of wedlock.
The three bodies were reburied Thursday in Qunu, but the fall out from the dispute continued to reverberate.
South African Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu pleaded with Mandela’s family not to “besmirch” the former president’s name.
“Please, please, please may we think not only of ourselves. It’s like spitting in Madiba’s face,” said Tutu in a statement, using Mandela’s clan name.
Presidential spokesman Maharaj also urged the family to solve the increasingly bitter dispute “amicably”.
“It is regrettable that there is a dispute going on amongst family members and we’d like that dispute to be resolved as amicably and as soon as possible,” he said.
Mandela was rushed to hospital on June 8 with a recurring respiratory infection.
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