The national memorial service for former South African President Nelson Mandela has begun in Johannesburg.
It began about an hour late, with the singing of the national anthem.
Andrew Mlangeni, Mr Mandela's friend and fellow former Robben Island prisoner, delivered the first speech.
World leaders from US President Barack Obama to Cuba's Raul Castro joined thousands of South Africans to honor Nelson Mandela on Tuesday in a memorial celebrating his gift for uniting enemies across political and racial divides.
Obama and former president George W Bush and their wives Michelle and Laura arrived from Pretoria's Waterkloof air base as singing, dancing South Africans made their way through heavy rain to Johannesburg's Soccer City where the homage to Mandela is being be held.
Obama and Castro, whose nations have been foes for more than half a century, are among the designated speakers at the stadium where 23 years earlier Mandela, newly freed from apartheid jail, was hailed by supporters as the hope of a new South Africa.
Coinciding with UN Human Rights Day, the memorial in the 95,000-seat bowl-shaped stadium is the centerpiece of a week of mourning for the globally revered statesman, who died on Thursday aged 95.
Since Mandela's death, Johannesburg has been blanketed in unseasonal cloud and rain - a sign, according to African tradition, of an esteemed elder passing on and being welcomed into the afterlife by his ancestors.
Despite the weather, the atmosphere inside the stadium was one of joy and celebration, more akin to the opening game of the 2010 soccer World Cup that pitted jubilant hosts South Africa against Mexico.
Flag-waving whites and blacks danced, blew "vuvuzela" plastic trumpets and sang anthems from the long struggle against apartheid. The packed carriages of commuter trains heading to the ground swayed side-to-side with the rhythm.