South Africans, Some Fearful, Wake To Life Without Mandela

[Ron Burgundy]

By Peroshni Govender and Pascal Fletcher JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africans woke on Friday to a future without Nelson Mandela, and some said they feared the anti-apartheid hero's death could leave their country vulnerable again to racial and social tensions that he did so much to pacify. As dawn broke and commuters headed to work in the capital, Pretoria, the commercial hub, Johannesburg, and Cape Town in the south, many were still in shock at the passing of a man who was a global symbol of reconciliation and peaceful co-existence. South Africans heard President Jacob Zuma tell them late on Thursday that the former president and Nobel Peace Prize laureate passed away peacefully at his Johannesburg home in the company of his family after a long illness. Despite reassurances from leaders and public figures that Mandela's passing, while sorrowful, would not halt South Africa's advance away from its bitter apartheid past, some still expressed a sense of unease about the physical absence of a man famed as a peacemaker.

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