World leaders prepare to pay final respects to Nelson Mandela

JOHANNESBURG - South Africa expects overwhelming crowds and a host of world leaders to attend services honoring late President Nelson Mandela, though with the ceremonies only days away officials acknowledged Saturday they couldn't offer any specifics yet.

Across the country, South Africans already have begun honoring Mandela, who died Thursday at age 95, and officials expect tens of thousands to participate in next week's official services.

In their first statement since Mandela's death, his family said they had "lost a great man," just as they had when South Africa's apartheid government imprisoned him for decades.

"The pillar of our family is gone, just as he was away during that 27 painful years of imprisonment, but in our hearts and souls he will always be with us," said the statement, read by family spokesman Lt. Gen. Themba Templeton Matanzima.

"His spirit endures. As a family we commit ourselves to uphold and be guided by the values he lived for and was prepared to die for," he said.

At Mandela's house in the Johannesburg neighborhood of Houghton, more than 100 people, black and white, gathered in the morning where they sang liberation songs and homages to Mandela. Children danced to the singing from the swaying crowd as hawkers nearby sold  Mandela regalia.

President Barack Obama said the former South African president "no longer belongs to us - he belongs to the ages."

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who spent time with Mandela over the years, told "CBS This Morning" Friday that the former South African president taught him many life lessons.

"Humility. Have a purpose. Have a vision. Be prepared to sacrifice. Be prepared to listen to the other side." And, said Powell, "always be ready to change your mind, but never abandon your principals."

"(Mandela was) a great, great boss to have," Bono said. "If you're going to be told what to do, let it be Nelson Mandela."

In a church service Friday in Cape Town, retired archbishop Desmond Tutu and fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate said Mandela would want South Africans themselves to be his "memorial" by adhering to the values of unity and democracy that he embodied.

"All of us here in many ways amazed the world, a world that was expecting us to be devastated by a racial conflagration," Tutu said, recalling how Mandela helped unite South Africa as it dismantled apartheid, the cruel system of white minority rule, and prepared for all-race elections in 1994. In those elections, the anti-apartheid leader who spent 27 years in prison, became South Africa's first black president.

Among those who have already indicated that they will be travelling to South Africa to honor Mandela, who died at his Johannesburg home at the age of 95 on Thursday night, are Obama and his two predecessors, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.  Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff will also be among the guests.

Official services honoring Mandela begin Tuesday with a major memorial planned at FNB Stadium on the edge of Johannesburg's Soweto township. Government Minister Collins Chabane told journalists Saturday he expects massive crowds far beyond what the stadium's normal 95,000-person capacity could hold. He said there would be "overflow" areas set up.

"We can't tell people not to come," he said.

He couldn't offer specifics about how crowds would arrive there with all roads to the venue closed by police or who would serve as a master of ceremonies.

Those planning Mandela's funeral include the former president's family, the federal government, the military and the African National Congress political party. Despite some prior planning by authorities as Mandela grew frail and suffered bouts of hospitalization in recent years, many of the details remain up in the air.