Obama rose to the occasion. But I can't help feeling this was a shambles - not the DIGNIFIED TRIBUTE Mandela deserved .

These are not the words I came here to write, and doubtless I shall be castigated in some quarters for writing them.

Painful as it is to report, it’s my view that yesterday’s memorial ceremony for Nelson Mandela not only failed to reflect the towering achievements of the man – at times, it was a shambolic disgrace to his name.

I had anticipated a service to compare with those of Winston Churchill and Pope John Paul II, with the air of dignified solemnity at those epoch-making occasions replaced with an uplifting African ambience. 

Poor turnout: The 80,000-seat FNB Stadium in Johannesburg was only two-thirds full for Mandela's memorial

Failure: Not only did the memorial not reflect the towering achievements of Mandela - at times, it was a shambolic disgrace to his name

Shambolic: There were not the great outpourings of emotion anticipated at the four-hour ceremony

I had envisaged an amalgam of carnival and requiem: vivid seas of people expressing their gratitude 
and grief in dance and song, stirring gospel choirs and soaring rhetoric – great outpourings of 
emotion.

Unpopular: South African President Jacob Zuma was booed whenever his face was shown on the giant screen

Those who came did their best to make up for the lack of numbers, swaying like veldt-grass in the breeze as they filled gaps in the proceedings with old songs from the apartheid struggle. And these interludes, at least, stirred the senses. 




However, such is the burning sense of anger at the social injustices millions still suffer here – two 

decades after apartheid ended – that at times they turned the memorial into a political protest, jeering and whistling their detested president, Jacob Zuma.

Accompanied by a sort of mass arm-rolling gesture, which evidently signifies the urgent need for a change of leadership, the cacophony echoed around the stands whenever Zuma’s lantern face was beamed on to the giant screen behind the podium.

For the host of probably the biggest gathering of statesmen and women ever witnessed – an event which somehow brought Barack Obama and David Cameron into the same stadium as Fidel Castro’s brother, Raul, and the cadaverous figure of Robert Mugabe – this must have been excruciating. 

Indeed, the sight of Obama shaking hands warmly with Castro (albeit not Fidel) was surely the most significant political moment of the day, given the long-standing animosity between Cuba and America.