Mandela laid to rest at state funeral

A 21-gun salute and full honour guard escorted the coffin of Nelson Mandela as his state funeral got underway Sunday in the rolling hills of his rural boyhood home.

A Xhosa hymn, "Fulfill Your Promise", sounded the start of the ceremony, organised to reflect the traditions of his tribe and the pride of the country he transformed as dissident and president.

The specially constructed marquee venue held 4,500 people, with pride of place going to Mandela's family, including his widow Graca Machel and ex-wife Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

Top government officials and foreign dignitaries and celebrities, ranging from Britain's Prince Charles to US talk show queen Oprah Winfrey, were also in attendance.

Mandela's flag-draped casket was brought to the ceremony on a gun carriage as the 21-gun salute rang out over the surrounding hills of Eastern Cape province.

The funeral closes the final chapter on a towering public figure whose courage and moral fortitude turned him into a global symbol of freedom and hope.

And it ends 10 days of national mourning during which hundreds of thousands of South Africans turned out in torrential rain and searing sunshine to grieve, remember and celebrate the life of their first elected black leader.

The formal section of the state funeral was to last two hours and was broadcast around the world.

The public was shut out of the interment itself, which the family has insisted will be a private affair with close friends.

The graveyard sits on the sprawling family estate Mandela built in Qunu after his release from prison in 1990.

"It was in that village that I spent some of the happiest years of my boyhood and whence I trace my earliest memories," he wrote in his autobiography.

Overseen by male members of his clan, the burial will include the slaughter of an ox -- a ritual performed through various milestones of a person's life under the clan's traditions.

During the ceremony, Mandela will be referred to as Dalibhunga -- the name given to him at the age of 16 after undergoing the initiation to adulthood.

Mourners will wear traditional Xhosa regalia, with blue and white beaded headgear and necklaces.

Xhosa speakers are divided into several groups, including the Thembu people, of which Mandela is a member.

Although Mandela never publicly declared his religious denomination, his family comes from a Methodist background.

Tutu attends burial

Funeral plans were briefly overshadowed by an outcry after Mandela's old friend and fellow Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu said he had not been invited.

In the end Tutu did attend, and the government tried to brush off the confusion as a misunderstanding.

Tutu -- who baptised South Africa the "Rainbow Nation" -- has been a persistent critic of the government of President Jacob Zuma and has also spoken out against infighting in Mandela's family.

Over the years, the archbishop emeritus has presided over the funerals of some of the anti-apartheid movement's leading lights, including Steve Biko, Chris Hani and Walter Sisulu.

While Mandela had been critically ill for months, the announcement of his death on December 5 was still sent a spasm through a country struggling to carry forward his vision of a harmonious multi-racial democracy of shared prosperity.

For the rest of the world, it marked the loss of that rarest of world leaders who are viewed with near universal respect and admiration.
Gushing tributes poured in from every corner of the globe, although Mandela himself had always stressed he was part of a communal leadership and resisted any move towards his public canonisation -- posthumous or otherwise.

"He is finally coming home to rest, I can't even begin to describe the feeling I have inside," said 31-year-old Bongani Zibi, a mourner in Qunu, as the funeral cortege carrying Mandela's casket arrived on Saturday.

"Part of me is sad but I'm also happy that he has found peace."
 

EARLIER STORY:

South Africa buries Nelson Mandela on Sunday, closing one momentous chapter in its tortured history and opening another in which the multi-racial democracy he founded will have to discover if it can thrive without its central pillar.

The Nobel peace laureate, who suffered 27 years in apartheid prisons before emerging to preach forgiveness and reconciliation, will be laid to rest after a state funeral mixing military pomp with the traditional rites of his Xhosa abaThembu clan.

The ceremony in the rolling hills of the Eastern Cape has drawn 4,500 guests, from relatives and South African leaders to foreign guests including Britain's Prince Charles and American civil rights activist Reverend Jesse Jackson.

The anti-apartheid leader died in Johannesburg on Dec. 5 aged 95, plunging his 53 million countrymen and millions more around the world into grief, and triggering more than a week of official memorials to the nation's first black president.

As many as 100,000 people paid their respects in person to his lying in state at the Union Buildings in Pretoria, where he was inaugurated as president in 1994, an event that brought the curtain down on more than three centuries of white domination.

When his body arrived on Saturday at his ancestral home in Qunu, 700 km south of Johannesburg, it was greeted by ululating locals overjoyed that Madiba, the clan name by which he was affectionately known, had "come home".

"After his long life and illness he can now rest," said     grandmother Victoria Ntsingo, as military helicopters escorting the funeral cortege clattered overhead.

“His work is done."

"Don't call me"

Mandela served just one term as leader of Africa's biggest and most sophisticated economy, and formally withdrew from public life in 2004, famously telling reporters at the end of a farewell news conference: "Don't call me, I'll call you."

His last appearance in public was at the 2010 World Cup final in Johannesburg's Soccer City stadium, waving to fans from the back of a golf cart.

Yet such was his influence as the architect two decades ago of the historic reconciliation between blacks and whites that his passing has left a gaping hole in the heart of South Africa.

With an eye on elections in five months, the ruling African National Congress (ANC), the 101-year-old former liberation movement Mandela once led, has seized on his death as a chance to shore up popularity that is ebbing even in its black support base.

The strategy has not been without its risks, not least because it has highlighted the gulf in stature between South Africa's first black president and its fourth, the scandal-plagued Jacob Zuma.

It backfired spectacularly at a mass Mandela memorial at Soccer City on Tuesday when Zuma, under fire for a $21 million security upgrade to his private home, was booed and jeered in front of world leaders including US President Barack Obama.

Barring an upset next year, Zuma looks set for another five years in office, during which he will have to address an economy struggling to shake off a 2009 recession and the fragmentation of a vital ANC alliance forged with the unions in the common struggle against apartheid.

With unemployment at 25 percent and racial inequality still painfully evident - the average white household earns six times more than the average black one - pressure for radical economic transformation is only likely to increase.

Against that backdrop, the party is desperate for strong and decisive leaders to guide South Africa through the next 20 years, navigating the myriad complexities of the 21st century global economy and allowing it to claim what it believes is its rightful place at the world's top table.

Both inside and outside the party, there are doubts whether Zuma, a polygamous Zulu traditionalist with no formal education, is the right man for the job.

"We need to raise the level of leadership," former president Thabo Mbeki, who was unceremoniously ousted by Zuma as ANC leader six years ago, said in eulogies to Mandela last week.

"The transformation of South Africa is a very difficult task, I think in many respects more difficult than the struggle to end the system of apartheid."  

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