World leaders bow, pray at Nelson Mandela's casket

Some appeared lost for a moment looking down at Mandela.

South Sudan's Salva Kiir Mayardit stood for a moment, transfixed, before removing his trademark black cowboy hat and crossing himself.

“I just hope I won't cry,” said Paul Letageng, 47, an employee there. “It's amazing to think that 19 years ago he was inaugurated there, and now he's lying there. If he was not here we would not have had peace in South Africa.”

Mandela emerged from 27 years in prison under the white racist government in 1990, appealed for forgiveness and reconciliation and became president in 1994 after the country's first all-race democratic elections.

He gave his inaugural address from the amphitheater, which Zuma named after him by decree.

Mandela said at his inauguration: “Out of the experience of an extraordinary human disaster that lasted too long, must be born a society of which all humanity will be proud.”

On Wednesday morning, motorcycle-riding police officers escorted the hearse from a military hospital outside of Pretoria to the Union Buildings.