Mandela attends World Cup ceremony despite row

Dressed in a warm winter coat and fur hat, Nelson Mandela made the appearance everyone hoped for at the World Cup final in Johannesburg. Beaming and waving, he was driven out into the centre of the pitch in a golf buggy as the crowd roared their applause and, needless to say, blew their vuvuzelas.

But his decision to appear came after a day of complaints from his family and friends that Fifa, football's world governing body, was putting inappropriate pressure on him to be there. And he did not stay on to hand over the trophy to the winning Spaniards, as some had hoped.

Nearly 92 - his birthday is next Sunday - Mandela was clearly very frail, his wife Graca Machel having to help him raise his arm to wave to the crowd.

He is also still in mourning for his great-granddaughter, whose death in a car crash came on the eve of the World Cup.

The argument over whether he would appear was still continuing yesterday morning, with his grandson, Mandla Mandela, claiming the event would be too strenuous for his grandfather. He said Fifa were putting on "extreme pressure".

Peter Hain, a long-time anti-apartheid campaigner before he became a Labour Cabinet minister, warned Fifa not to treat Mandela like "a modern rock star" but to treat him "specially and gently".

In the event, a compromise was reached: Mandela appeared for the closing ceremony that preceded the final, but left the trophy presentation to the current South African president, Jacob Zuma, and Fifa chief Sepp Blatter. ·