At Tuesday's memorial service -- Mandela won't be buried until Sunday -- presidents of six nations will pay tribute to the anti-apartheid leader in a four-hour service that will likely bring much of South Africa to a stop.
Among the speakers will be U.S. President Barack Obama, who like Mandela was his nation's first black president. Obama has cited Mandela as his own inspiration for entering politics.
In addition to Obama, former presidents Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton will attend. More than two dozen U.S. lawmakers also plan to go.
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Other guests include the Prince of Wales, British Prime Minister David Cameron and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who will also speak, as well as celebrities such as Bono, Oprah Winfrey and Naomi Campbell.
With 91 heads of state attending, security will be tight.
South African officials won't talk about their security plans -- how many police officers, how many troops, precautions to keep the stadium weapons- and explosives-free.
"But we can assure that all necessary steps have been taken, and that is why the leadership of the world and former leaders of the world have confidence to come to our country at this time to share with us this moment," said Minister in the Presidency Collins Chabane.
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Crews worked overtime Monday to prepare FNB Stadium in Johannesburg for the service.
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The stadium, where Mandela delivered his first major speech after his release from prison, can hold some 90,000 people, but that won't be enough to hold the hundreds of thousands clamoring to celebrate Mandela's life.
The government has set up overflow locations at stadiums and other facilities throughout the country.
With private vehicles banned from the area around the stadium, the government pressed buses from around the country into service and stepped up train service to move the crowds.
In addition to Obama and Ban, the presidents of Brazil, Namibia, India, Cuba and South Africa were expected to speak at the service, as were family members, friends and others.
One potential complication: Forecasters predicted potentially heavy rainfall during the event at the open-air stadium.
Security
The event will undoubtedly rival other significant state funerals in recent decades, such as that of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1965 and the 2008 funeral of Pope John Paul, which attracted some 2 million people to Rome -- among them four kings, five queens, at least 70 presidents and prime ministers and the leaders of 14 other faiths.
At that event, metal dectectors and some 15,000 members of security forces stood watch over the event.
While authorities have provided no details about security arrangements for Tuesday's memorial, U.S. officials say they are satisfied. Obama left Washington for Johannesburg on Monday morning.
"We have not heard any concerns," Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters aboard Air Force One as the president flew to South Africa.
"The South Africans hosted the World Cup, so they have experience hosting significant crowds and managing events like this," he said, "although clearly this is really a unique event in world history, given the number of leaders coming to pay their respects, as well as the people of South Africa."
Given Mandela's ailing health, the U.S. Secret Service made some arrangements in advance, a Secret Service spokesman said. But work that would usually take months to complete has been done in less than a week, the spokesman said.
"It's a compressed timeline, but there are certain protocols we must have in place for any trip," the spokesman said.
Those protocols involve securing the president's motorcade route and hotel rooms and doing security walk-throughs.
The spokesman declined to offer specific details on security measures at the stadium.
A state funeral will be held Sunday in Mandela's ancestral hometown of Qunu in South Africa's Eastern Cape province.
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