Surging crowd halts Mandela Christmas party

JOHANNESBURG - A children's Christmas party thrown by anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela was scrapped on Sunday for fear of a stampede after some 75,000 poor South Africans surged to claim free gifts, organisers said.

Police said no one was killed in the crush at the party at the former president's house in the village of Qunu, but television footage showed children and their parents toppling a barbed-wire fence and police fighting them back with sticks.

Organisers said they feared a full-blown stampede and postponed the party to a later date.

"We had prepared for 20,000 and it turned out 75,000 turned up," one of the organisers told national radio. "That meant the children would have been at risk from a stampede so we had to postpone it."

TV footage showed long queues for free food and Christmas presents at the party venue in the Eastern Cape, one of South Africa's poorest provinces.

Police said crowds several people collapsed due to hunger and heat and small children -- including a 4-month-old baby -- were abandoned.

Mandela, who in previous years spent the day chatting and hugging scores of awe-struck children, skipped the party this year to stay with his only surviving son, who is critically ill in a Johannesburg hospital.

The event was marred two years ago by similar chaotic scenes, when 20,000 people turned up and children were hurt in a stampede that forced security guards to cut down fences.

- REUTERS