QUNU, South Africa — They gathered in the rolling green hills of the Eastern Cape on Sunday to return a son to his native soil: princes and presidents, chiefs and priests, celebrities and grandmothers, comrades and cellmates, here to bury Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela.
“Whilst your long walk to freedom has ended in the physical sense, our own journey continues,”
President Jacob G. Zuma of South Africa declared in a eulogy for Mr. Mandela, a global emblem of struggle and reconciliation, at a state funeral in this far-flung village. “As you take your final steps, South Africa will continue to rise.”
The ceremony began in a cavernous dome, containing thousands, with choirs and television cameras, prayers and memories.
The funeral — the final parting after a series of celebrations and memorials that had consumed the land since Mr. Mandela died on Dec. 5 after months of illness and decline — left his country poised on the cusp of a post-Mandela era that seems certain to test the durability of his legacy.
Mr. Mandela’s state funeral burial knitted together the many strands of his life. In addition to the full pomp of state ceremonies, complete with soldiers in lock step, a 21-gun salute and jet fighters in formation, the service included Christian prayers — Mr. Mandela was a lifelong Methodist — and traditions and rituals of the AbaThembu community into which he was born.
Indeed, long before he became a freedom fighter, a fugitive, the world’s most famous political prisoner and then the embodiment of forgiveness and reconciliation, Nelson Mandela was a boy of the Thembu royal family.
His attachment to Qunu, where he had spent most of his childhood, was so deep that he used to tell his daughter Makaziwe, the eldest of his surviving children, that “if I am not buried there, my bones will shake,” she said in an interview this year.
He spoke often of his idyllic boyhood, spent play-fighting with sticks, herding cows and sliding over and over again down huge smooth rocks on a hillside with his friends “until our backsides were so sore we could hardly sit down,” as he said in his autobiography.
Mr. Mandela wrote of how he had learned to lead by watching the king of the AbaThembu.
“I always remember the regent’s axiom,” he wrote. “A leader, he said, is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.”
Other values he learned here shaped him. The notion of ubuntu, which has many meanings but usually signifies the idea that many together are stronger than one alone, became an essential axiom of the African National Congress, the party he led to electoral victory in 1994.
Three of his children are buried here: A daughter, also named Makaziwe, who died at 9 months; his eldest son, Thembi, who died in a car crash in 1969, while Mr. Mandela was imprisoned on Robben Island; and his son Makgatho, who died of complications from AIDS in 2005.
Though less visible than the military honors and Christian hymns that accompanied the funeral, Thembu rituals were a vital part of the proceedings. When Mr. Mandela’s body arrived at his home, the chief and the king of the AbaThembu kingdom, a Methodist priest and his family were there to welcome him with prayer and song. On Saturday night, Mr. Mandela’s body lay in his bedroom, said Bantu Holomisa, a family friend and a political leader.
Bringing a body home before burial is an important part of the tradition here. The family and elders need “to talk to the body, to say: ‘You’re not going to be with us anymore. We’re going to take you to your last resting place,’ ” said an elder member of the Mandela family who asked that her name be withheld because she did not want to be seen as going against the family’s wishes.
Indeed, long before he became a freedom fighter, a fugitive, the world’s most famous political prisoner and then the embodiment of forgiveness and reconciliation, Nelson Mandela was a boy of the Thembu royal family.
His attachment to Qunu, where he had spent most of his childhood, was so deep that he used to tell his daughter Makaziwe, the eldest of his surviving children, that “if I am not buried there, my bones will shake,” she said in an interview this year.
He spoke often of his idyllic boyhood, spent play-fighting with sticks, herding cows and sliding over and over again down huge smooth rocks on a hillside with his friends “until our backsides were so sore we could hardly sit down,” as he said in his autobiography.
Mr. Mandela wrote of how he had learned to lead by watching the king of the AbaThembu.
“I always remember the regent’s axiom,” he wrote. “A leader, he said, is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.”
Other values he learned here shaped him. The notion of ubuntu, which has many meanings but usually signifies the idea that many together are stronger than one alone, became an essential axiom of the African National Congress, the party he led to electoral victory in 1994.
Three of his children are buried here: A daughter, also named Makaziwe, who died at 9 months; his eldest son, Thembi, who died in a car crash in 1969, while Mr. Mandela was imprisoned on Robben Island; and his son Makgatho, who died of complications from AIDS in 2005.
Though less visible than the military honors and Christian hymns that accompanied the funeral, Thembu rituals were a vital part of the proceedings. When Mr. Mandela’s body arrived at his home, the chief and the king of the AbaThembu kingdom, a Methodist priest and his family were there to welcome him with prayer and song. On Saturday night, Mr. Mandela’s body lay in his bedroom, said Bantu Holomisa, a family friend and a political leader.
Bringing a body home before burial is an important part of the tradition here. The family and elders need “to talk to the body, to say: ‘You’re not going to be with us anymore. We’re going to take you to your last resting place,’ ” said an elder member of the Mandela family who asked that her name be withheld because she did not want to be seen as going against the family’s wishes.
Nobongile Geledwana, a Qunu native, scrubbed clothes with a green bar of soap in a tub in her yard during Mr. Mandela’s funeral. Like many villagers, she was among those who did not receive a credential to attend the funeral. Yet she could not help but think how much Mr. Mandela would have appreciated the attention to tradition that was being paid in his death.
The Nelson Mandela she remembered was a man who had a bright smile while doing traditional dances, she said. Ms. Geledwana belongs to a group in the community that engages in traditional activities, and Mr. Mandela used to give members money to buy the attire, beads and other things they needed, she said.
“He used to love traditional music and culture,”Ms. Geledwana said.
“He was saying it reminds him of his grandma.”
Funerals here are not simply a time to celebrate a person’s life; they are a forum for recounting one’s story, whatever path he or she may have followed. Speakers are called from all parts of the person’s life. That tradition was on vivid display at Mr. Mandela’s state funeral.
Ahmed Kathrada, a fellow defendant in the treason trial that sent Mr. Mandela to prison for 27 years, said in an emotional address that Mr. Mandela had united a divided nation.
“Today, mingled with the grief is the enormous pride that one of our own has during your life, and now in your death, united the people of South Africa and the entire world on a scale never experienced before in history,” Mr. Kathrada said.
Joyce Banda, the president of Malawi, gave a plain-spoken and heartfelt tribute to Mr. Mandela as an exemplar for African leaders.
“I learned leadership is about loving the people you serve and the people you serve falling in love with you,” Ms. Banda said, recalling what she had gleaned from meeting Mr. Mandela. “It is about serving the people with selflessness, with sacrifice and with the need to put the common good ahead of personal interests.”
About 5,000 people attended the state funeral, and millions more watched it on television.
“Madiba is gone,” Ms. Sapepa said, using Mr. Mandela’s clan name. “We will never see another one like him.”
Like many South Africans, she said the changes that Mr. Mandela had led transformed her life.
“Before, we could not go anywhere we liked; we needed a pass,” said Ms. Sapepa, 56. “Now, we are free.”
But other things have not changed as much as she might have liked, she said. African National Congress politicians had promised the people in her community new houses, electricity and running water in 1995, not long after their first election victory. Electricity came a few years later, but she is still waiting for the rest.
“Two years ago I gave up and started building my own house,” she said. “Otherwise, I will die before I get a government house.”
Most of her children, like so many young black South Africans, are jobless, and none of them finished high school. Ms. Sapepa, a widow, survives on government grants she receives for caring for her four grandchildren.
“It isn’t easy to survive,” she said as the children ate lunch, four slices of plain brown bread with cups of black tea.
At the graveside, Monwabisi Jamangile, the chaplain general of the South African military, gave the final public word.
“Now you have achieved ultimate freedom in the bosom of your maker,” General Jamangile declared over the coffin as it sat atop the grave.
A 21-gun salute rang out.
Jets roared overhead in formation.
The Last Post bugle call echoed across the rolling green hills.
And Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela’s body was returned to the earth.
Scenes From Mandele's Funeral Service Click Here.
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