South Africans who are not attending the memorial service of former president Nelson Mandela today will be able to watch a live streaming of the event on YouTube. SABC has set up a live broadcast on the video site, which is set to start at 11am.
A memorial service will be held for Madiba at the FNB stadium, in Johannesburg, this morning. Dozens of heads of state are expected to attend, including US president Barack Obama, UK prime minister David Cameron, Prince Charles, Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, and Francois Hollande, president of France.
According to media reports, people have been streaming into the stadium since 6am. Likewise, Twitter has been abuzz since early this morning, with the hashtag #MandelaMemorial trending alongside SA, Johannesburg and ANC.
The official account of the Government Communication and Information System (GCIS) already tweeted at 6am: "The first two media buses just left from SABC TV studios, Artillery road to FNB stadium. System is running smoothly."
Department of International Relations and Cooperation spokesperson Clayson Monyela used the social media platform to announce that 70 heads of state and 10 former heads of state have confirmed attendance, and 26 countries will be represented by ministers. At around 7am, the US Embassy in SA tweeted a photo of Air Force One arriving in Johannesburg.
Well-known newscaster Leanne Manas tweeted the stadium "is reverberating with the sounds of the crowd singing struggle songs", while the Gauteng government account posted that people at the stadium are carrying posters and continue to sing and dance in the rain, accompanied by the sounds of vuvuzelas.
The memorial service is expected to last four hours. Mandela will be buried at Qunu, in the Eastern Cape, on Sunday.
Information helpline
Yesterday, GCIS announced it has established an information call centre to assist the public with any enquiries related to Madiba's memorial service and funeral proceedings.
According to Joanne Cornelissen, deputy-director of the research and information centre at GCIS, the department already has an information centre that usually operates during normal working hours. The centre deals with all government-related enquiries, and responds to enquiries sent via the GCIS Web site.
"GCIS staff who are trained in communication and information work in the call centre," says Cornelissen. "For this week we have deployed additional existing employees, who are not directly involved with the [memorial and funeral] arrangements, in the centre."
The centre will be available 24 hours a day until Mandela's funeral on Sunday, says Cornelissen. She notes the centre has gotten numerous enquiries since Mandela's passing, mostly from media. "From tomorrow we expect media enquiries to drop and public enquiries to increase," she says.
The call centre can be contacted at (012) 473 0114 or (012) 473 0389.
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