December 10, 2013.

Mourners Gather to Say Farewell to Mandela

"They don't even like having married women there," she added. "Girls are always supposed to be so pure. Here's one who isn't, anyway."

JOHANNESBURG----U.S. President Barack Obama and dozens of other heads of state, as well as thousands of rain-soaked South Africans, gathered in a soccer stadium Tuesday to commemorate the life of former President Nelson Mandela.

She had had her first love-affair when she was sixteen, with a Party member of sixty who later committed suicide to avoid arrest. "And a good job too," said Julia, "otherwise they'd have had my name out of him when he confessed." Since then there had been various others. Life as she saw it was quite simple. You wanted a good time; "they, " meaning the Party, wanted to stop you having it; you broke the rules as best you could. She seemed to think it just as natural that "they" should want to rob you of your pleasures as that you should want to avoid being caught. She hated the Party, and said so in the crudest words, but she made no general criticism of it. Except where it touched upon her own life she had no interest in Party doctrine. He noticed that she never used Newspeak words except the ones that had passed into everyday use. She had never heard of the Brotherhood, and refused to believe in its existence. Any kind of organized revolt against the Party, which was bound to be a failure, struck her as stupid. The clever thing was to break the rules and stay alive all the same. He wondered vaguely how many others like her there might be in the younger generation people who had grown up in the world of the Revolution, knowing nothing else, accepting the Party as something unalterable, like the sky, not rebelling against its authority but simply evading it, as a rabbit dodges a dog.

Describing Mr. Mandela as "a giant of history," and "the last great liberator of the 20th century," Mr. Obama called on other world leaders to do more than give tacit support for his ideals.

They did not discuss the possibility of getting married. It was too remote to be worth thinking about. No imaginable committee would ever sanction such a marriage even if Katharine, Winston's wife, could somehow have been got rid of. It was hopeless even as a daydream.

"There are too many leaders who claim solidarity with Madiba's struggle for freedom, but do not tolerate dissent from their own people," said Mr. Obama, referring to Mr. Mandela by his clan name. "Nelson Mandela reminds us that it always seems impossible until it is done."