[Request] Would it be possible to estimate within reasonable certainty how many people are in this picture ?

Here's my best effort.

I was there. We sat at 2m2 per person in my estimation.

I was at the second speaker from the back. I walked 2.2km from the car to get to that spot. Based on that I can assume that the distance to the stage was approximately 1.5km. Let's say 2.

Assuming the width of the crowd to be 500m in front. I think that's more than fair. Assuming the width at the rear to be 2km as well.

Using the area of a trapezoid we find the area to be approximately 2.5mil m2. This is over exaggerated a lot.

Taking the fact that maybe 40% of the ground is unoccupied. That's 1.5mil m2. At an average density of 1 person per 2m2 that's about 750,000 people. The 2m2 assumption is based on the fact that some people were spread out at the back but others were packed up tight in front.

That said, I think it's more important that people were praying. And it wasn't isolated to this location. Prayers happened all over South Africa. Can confirm that in Stanford area a crowd of 500people gathered. Multiply that by the number of cities in South Africa and I'm sure you'd have a lot more people.

There are too many variables with that photo. Angle of inclination, distance from people, size of person, etc.

TL:DR; rough estimate from someone who was there 600,000 - 800,000. More important is that a ton of South Africans prayed for the country.

Google Maps Distance

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