QUNU, South Africa – His flag-draped casket resting on a carpet of animal skins, Nelson Mandela was laid to rest yesterday in the green, rolling hills of the eastern hamlet where he began his extraordinary journey – one that led him from prison to the presidency, a global symbol of endurance and reconciliation in the fight against South Africa’s racist rule.
Artillery boomed and military aircraft roared through a cloud-studded sky, as the simple and the celebrated gathered to pay their final respects in Mandela’s native village of Qunu at a state funeral that blended ancient tribal rituals with a display of the might of the new, integrated South Africa.
“Yours was truly a long walk to freedom and now you have achieved the ultimate freedom in the bosom of your maker,” Brigadier General Monwabisi Jamangile, chaplain-general of the South African military, said as Mandela’s casket was lowered into the ground at the family gravesite. “Rest in peace.”
“I realized that the old man is no more, no more with us,” said Bayanda Nyengule, head of a local museum about Mandela, his voice cracking as he described the burial attended by several hundred mourners after a larger funeral ceremony during which some 4 500 people, including heads of state, royalty and celebrities, paid their last respects.
The burial ended a ten-day mourning period that began with Mandela’s death on December 5 at 95, and featured a Johannesburg memorial attended by nearly 100 world leaders and three days during which tens of thousands of South Africans of all races and backgrounds filed past Mandela’s casket in the capital, Pretoria.
For South Africans, it was also a time for reflection about the racial integration they achieved when Mandela presided over the end of apartheid, and the economic inequality and other challenges that have yet to be overcome and seem certain to test his legacy’s endurance.
The burial site marked a return to Mandela’s humble roots, but the funeral trappings were elaborate. South African honour guards from the army, navy and air force, including both black and white officers, marched in formation along a winding dirt road.
In contrast to the military pomp, some speakers evoked the traditions of the Xhosa tribe, to which Mandela’s Thembu clan belongs.
“A great tree has fallen, he is now going home to rest with his forefathers,” said Chief Ngangomhlaba Matanzima, a representative of Mandela’s family who wore an animal skin. “We thank them for lending us such an icon.”
Another speaker, Zolani Mkiva, served for many years as Mandela’s praise singer, a traditional role in which he shouted out the leader’s attributes to audiences, prefacing Mandela’s many stations in life with the words “very important” person, prince, patriot, politician, prisoner, philosopher, president, pensioner, patient, papa.
“The bones of our ancestors are vibrating. The waves of African oceans are reverberating,” Mkiva said.
In keeping with Xhosa traditions, Mandela’s casket was brought to Qunu Saturday draped in a lion skin, an honour bestowed on those of a high rank like Mandela, who is the son of a traditional clan chief. His body lay for the night in his family home before burial, a time when tradition dictates that family elders “talk” to the body to explain to his spirit what is happening. (AP)
