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South Africa: Nelson Mandela laid to rest
In keeping with Xhosa traditions, Mandela’s casket was brought to Qunu Saturday draped in a lion skin, an honor 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.
South African television showed Mandela’s casket at the family gravesite, but the broadcast was stopped just before the coffin was lowered into the ground at the request of the Mandela family, which often talked of how it had to share its patriarch with the nation and the world.
His body was buried around noon, ‘‘when the sun is at its highest and the shadow at its shortest,’’ said Cyril Ramaphosa, deputy leader of the country’s ruling party, the African National Congress.
Mandela spent 27 years as a prisoner of apartheid, then emerged to lead a delicate transition to democracy when many South Africans feared the country would sink into all-out racial conflict. He became president in the first all-race elections in 1994 and served one five-year term.
At the funeral ceremony, Mandela’s portrait looked over the assembly from behind a bank of 95 candles representing each year of his life. His casket, transported to the tent on a gun carriage and draped in the national flag, rested on a carpet of cow skins.
Mandela’s widow, Graca Machel, and his ex-wife, Winnie Madikizela Mandela, were dressed in black Xhosa head wraps and dresses. Guests included veterans of the military wing of the ANC, as well as U.S. Ambassador Patrick Gaspard and other foreign envoys.
At one spot overlooking Mandela’s compound, several hundred people gathered to watch the televised ceremony. A group of Zulu traditional dancers with spears and shields gathered nearby to pay their last respects to Mandela.
