This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/16/world/africa/nelson-mandela-funeral.html

The article has changed 11 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 7 Version 8
Thousands Gather to Bury Mandela in His Home Village Thousands Gather to Bury Mandela in His Home Village
(about 4 hours later)
QUNU, South Africa — South Africans gathered in the rolling green hills of the Eastern Cape on Sunday to conclude 10 days of national mourning for Nelson Mandela, burying a global emblem of struggle and reconciliation at a state funeral in this far-flung village where he spent part of his childhood. 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.
The ceremony began in a cavernous dome housing thousands with speeches and eulogies, choirs and television cameras, prayers and memories. “Whilst your long walk to freedom has ended in the physical sense, our own journey continues,” President Jacob G. Zuma 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.”
But then, almost six hours later, after guns boomed in salute, aircraft flew overhead in formation and a bugler sounded the last post, the farewells to South Africa’s first black president ended with a simpler moment at a family burial site. The ceremony began in a cavernous dome housing thousands with choirs and television cameras, prayers and memories.
The funeral, the final parting after a series of celebrations and memorials that have consumed the land since he 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. The funeral — the final parting after a series of celebrations and memorials that has 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.
“Whilst your long walk to freedom has ended in the physical sense,” President Jacob G. Zuma had declared in a eulogy earlier, “our own journey continues. We have to take your legacy forward.” 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 goose-stepping soldiers, 21-gun salutes and jet fighter formations, the service included Christian prayers — Mr. Mandela was a lifelong Methodist — and traditions and rituals of the AbaThembu community into which he was born.
“As you take your final steps, South Africa will continue to rise,” he added. 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.
Mr. Mandela’s coffin, which was flown on Saturday from Pretoria, the capital, to the Eastern Cape region, was borne on a gun-carriage towed by a military truck from his family home after mourners assembled with songs and dancing in what has become a familiar fusion of grief at Mr. Mandela’s death and celebration of a life that became an emblem of the battle against apartheid. His attachment to Qunu, the place where he 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.
The strains of “Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika,” or God Bless Africa — South Africa’s national anthem that was once the rallying call of the struggle — rose over the hills around Qunu. He spoke often of his idyllic boyhood, spent play-fighting with sticks, herding cows, sliding over and over again down a huge, flat rock on a hillside with his friends “until our backsides were so sore we could hardly sit down,” as he said in his autobiography.
The ceremonies blended the public — with television coverage around the world — and the private. While many of the rites and pageantry were aired by the state broadcaster, family members had requested that the final moment of burial proceed with no cameras on hand. Mr. Mandela wrote of how he learned to lead by watching the king of the AbaThembu.
The observance also brought together the traditional rites of his AbaThembu clan with Christian hymns, the pageantry of full military honors and the closely watched politics of his African National Congress, the former liberation movement that has governed South Africa since Mr. Mandela became the country’s first black president for a single term starting in 1994. “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 others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.”
Some 12,000 military personnel have been deployed in ceremonial and security roles for the funeral. 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 victory in 1994.
Before the ceremonies began, a band clad in red marched around the Mandela farm in Qunu early Sunday morning, belting out songs as helicopters whooped overhead. The sun shined, which is considered a blessing in Xhosa tradition. In the days after someone dies, it is supposed to rain as a blessing that indicates that God has welcomed the person. And there was indeed heavy rain for most of the week leading up to the funeral. Three of his children are buried here: A daughter, Makaziwe, who died at 9 months; his eldest son, Thembi, who died in a car crash in 1969, while Mr. Mandela was on Robben Island; and his son Makgatho, who died of complicatons from AIDS in 2005.
But under the same tradition, the skies are supposed to clear up on the day of the burial. And although rain was in the forecast for later in the afternoon and evening, the skies over Qunu were clearer on Sunday morning than they had been all week. 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 political leader.
Honor guards of various stripes lined the roads of Qunu as Mr. Mandela’s casket passed along a dirt road in the early morning from the family homestead. 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.
People gathered on the side of the road overlooking the procession, taking pictures and video. Even police officers were capturing images with their smartphones. It was also important that the body spend time in the house, she added, “to connect with the spirits in the house.”
The 4,500 mourners in the marquee included about 25 foreign dignitaries including Britain’s Prince Charles along with the presidents of Tanzania and Malawi. Military pallbearers placed the coffin, draped in the South African national flag, below a podium lit with 95 candles — one for each of Mr. Mandela’s 95 years — below a large portrait of him. The casket rested on a bed of black and white cow hides. Golden arches soared above it. Sitting close by, Mr. Mandela’s widow, Graça Machel, and his former wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, flanked Mr. Zuma, who praised both women in his eulogy. 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.
Cyril Ramaphosa, a wealthy entrepreneur and former labor union leader who is now the deputy president of the A.N.C., said Mr. Mandela would be buried at noon under traditions requiring a man of his stature to be interred when the sun is at its highest and shadows are at their shortest. But that schedule seemed to slip as the speeches and eulogies overran their alloted time. The Mandela she remembered was a man who had a bright smile on his face while doing traditional dances, she said. Ms. Geledwana belongs to a group in the community that engages in traditional activities, and she said Mr. Mandela used to give members money to buy the attire, beads and other things they needed.
Mr. Mandela, Mr. Ramaphosa said, was “South Africa’s greatest son.” “He used to love traditional music and culture,” she said. “He was saying it reminds him of his grandma.”
Ahmed Kathrada, a fellow inmate with Mr. Mandela at the Robben Island prison off Cape Town, said Mr. Mandela “united the people of South Africa and the entire world on a scale never before witnessed in history.” In an emotional eulogy that stirred many among the mourners, Mr. Kathrada recalled the death 10 years ago of Walter Sisulu, another top leader of the A.N.C. “When Walter died, I lost a father. And now, I have lost a brother. My life is in a void and I don’t know who to turn to,” Mr. Kathrada said. 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 in the marquee where Mr. Mandela’s state funeral was held.
Using Mr. Mandela’s clan name, a granddaughter, Nandi Mandela, concluded her eulogy by declaring in the Xhosa language: “Go well Madiba. Go well to the land of our ancestors. You have run your race.” 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.
Some speakers recalled Mr. Mandela’s days before his arrest and imprisonment traveling clandestinely in Africa using pseudonyms and false identity papers as he sought to marshal support for the A.N.C.'s guerrilla army, Umkhonto we Sizwe, or Spear of the 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.
When it came his turn to speak, Mr. Zuma, preceded by a praise-singer with a leopard-skin shawl, broke into song, leading the mourners in a lament from the era of the anti-apartheid struggle about land expropriated in the centuries of white domination. Joyce Banda, the president of neighboring Malawi, gave a plain-spoken and heartfelt tribute to Mr. Mandela as an exemplar for African leaders.
“Today marks the end of an extraordinary journey that began 95 years ago,” said Mr. Zuma, whose government faces wide criticism over issues ranging from the absence of basic services for the poor to corruption among the rich in a society that ranks among the world’s most unequal. “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.”
Mr. Zuma used his eulogy to commit his government, which is seeking re-election next year, “to improve the quality of life for all,” specifically with improved schools, hospitals and public services. He also paid tribute to Mr. Mandela’s friends. “We feel their pain,” he said. About 5,000 people attended the state funeral, but millions more watched it on television.
Addressing Mr. Mandela’s coffin, Mr. Zuma said South Africa’s leaders owed it to the many who died in the struggle against apartheid “to take your vision of a better life forward.” In Mabeleni, a village just up the road from Qunu, Nokwanele Sapepa and four generations of her family gathered to say their final farewell to Mr. Mandela.
Before the service, a dispute broke out over the attendance of the archbishop Desmond M. Tutu, a veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle who has been critical of the A.N.C. and who said he had not been invited, while the authorities said he had. The argument seemed to have been resolved by Sunday, when the Anglican archbishop sat with senior clerics of other denominations at the ceremony. “Madiba is gone,” Ms. Sapepa said. “We will never see another one like him.”
Around 450 of the people in the marquee went on to the nearby family burial site, where a towering viewing stand had been erected. Those making the uphill trek to the site included Oprah Winfrey and the Rev. Jesse Jackson along with hundreds of South African notables before Mr. Mandela’s coffin was transported again on a gun-carriage. Like many South Africans, she said that the changes Mr. Mandela had led transformed her life.

John Eligon and Lydia Polgreen reported from Qunu, South Africa, and Alan Cowell from London.

“Before, we could not go anywhere we liked; we needed a pass,” said Ms. Sapepa, a 56-year-old widow. “Now, we are free.”
But other things had not changed as much as she might have liked, she said. A.N.C. 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 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.
Jet planes 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.

Lydia Polgreen and John Eligon reported from Qunu, South Africa, and Alan Cowell from London.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: December 15, 2013Correction: December 15, 2013

An earlier version of a slide show caption with this article misspelled the surname of Nelson Mandela’s widow. She is Graça Machel, not Michael.

An earlier version of a slide show caption with this article misspelled the surname of Nelson Mandela’s widow. She is Graça Machel, not Michael.