Mandela celebrates 90th birthday in ancestral village
But as he celebrated his 90th birthday Friday, Nelson Mandela was anything but invisible, a figure of reverence whose nine decades have been marked and observed at a huge rock concert in Hyde Park in London, a gala dinner for his children's charity in the august, chandeliered Long Room at Lord's cricket ground, and a host of tributes.
His birthday celebration was supposed to be a quiet affair in his ancestral village, Qunu, in the southeast of his country - with a mere 500 of his closest friends in attendance, as well as a touch of wry self-deprecation: