After more than a week of pomp and ceremony, Mandela was remembered in a final service filled with deeply personal tributes
In the end, one of the most enduring images was one of the last. Against the backdrop of the hills of his childhood and draped in the multi-coloured flag of the new South Africa that he helped to create, Nelson Mandela‘s coffin was borne to its final resting place.
After all the pomp and ceremony of the last week, it was perhaps the words of his granddaughter Nandi during the final memorial that summed up the mood: “You have run your race. Go well to the land of our ancestors.”
South Africa said its final goodbye to Nelson Mandela as “a celebration of humanity at its finest” ushered its most famous son to rest in his ancestral village.
The outpouring of grief since Mandela’s death at the age of 95 last week culminated in a funeral that drew together many of the godfathers of Africa’s liberation struggles, and blended Xhosa traditions with deeply personal memories from some of those who knew the anti-apartheid icon best.
Tens of thousands of wellwishers descended on the windswept village of Qunu for a four-hour service during which Mandela’s coffin rested on a lion skin, a symbol reserved for kings of his native Xhosa people. Yards away from the family dressed in black, ninety five candles had been lit.
As guests including Oprah Winfrey, Bono, Gerry Adams, Richard Branson and the actor Idris Elba joined the Mandela clan, overflow tents in Qunu were packed beyond capacity and families in the village and muted cities across South Africa huddled around television screens.
“My whole family are here, and I just can’t stop crying. I feel like I have lost my own father,” said Anita Amanda from Cape Town, where shops and many restaurants remained closed.
In a week when many official tributes have lacked a personal touch, Mandela was remembered in a final service filled with deeply personal tributes and, at times, veiled jibes at how far the party he led as the country’s first black president has strayed from its ideals.
Clearly learning from last week’s official memorial in Johannesburg, when angry crowds repeatedly booed him during a lacklustre speech, a sombre Jacob Zuma opened his delivery with a mournful rendition ofThina Sizwe, or We the Nation). Hundreds of voices joined in the revolutionary song, swelling in harmony.
“As you journey ends today, we must continue ours in earnest. South Africa will continue to rise because we dare not fail,” the president said, prompting applause from the crowd.
At the end of his speech, they again spontaneously rose to lift their voices in song, including Mandela’s widow Graça Machel and his former wife Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. Dressed in black, the two women looked frail and at times wiped away tears.
Among the most moving homages was delivered by Ahmed Kathrada, who spent more than two decades in the cell alongside Mandela at Robben Island. At times pausing to compose himself, he described the last time he saw Mandela alive as “profoundly heartbreaking”.
“He tightly held my hand. What I saw was … a man reduced to a shadow of himself,” said the anti-apartheid veteran, describing how Mandela would exercise every day in his the cell, which he could cross in three paces.
“He has left us to join the A-team of the ANC,” Kathrada said, invoking other towering figures of the anti-apartheid struggle. “Today mingled with our grief is the enormous pride that one of our own has united the people of South Africa and the entire world on a scale never before witnessed in history.”
Addressing Mandela directly, he finished: “I have lost a brother. My life is in a void, and I don’t know who to turn to.”
There were also moments of lightness. Nandi Mandela, one of his 18 grandchildren, drew laughter from the crowd as she recounted how Mandela had once mischeviously played matchmaker between a waitress and his grandson.
The leaders of Malawi and Tanzania also took to the podium, while Ethiopia’s prime minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, described the proceedings simply as “a celebration of humanity at its finest”.
Urged to wrap up his own speech as the proceedings ran over time, Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia’s first post-independence president, quipped: “This young man is controlling me. He doesn’t know I fought the Boer.”
At the end of a rambunctious speech, fittingly reminiscent of Mandela’s own playful humour, the 85-year-old closed to applause: “Whether you are black, white, brown or yellow, you are all God’s children. Come together,” he said.
Then, the moment came at last.
To the strain of a simple, mournful song, family and friends accompanied the coffin as it was borne slowly up a hill to the family graveside. Behind followed a procession of ministers, celebrities and a military guard of honour.
Three helicopters bearing the South African flag circled the green valleys. A cannon salute was fired, and Nelson Mandela’s coffin was lowered into the ground.
Source: The Guardian
