World leaders, friend and foe coming together for Nelson Mandela

Only “very few” world leaders would attend the Qunu ceremony, foreign ministry spokesman Monyela said, adding the idea was to keep the burial a family affair.

As soon as President Jacob Zuma announced Mandela’s death in a televised address to South Africa’s 52 million people, the army cordoned off large parts of Qunu, while construction workers started work on a tiered gantry beside the cemetery.

Mandela’s burial in the family cemetery will be a mixture of military formality and Xhosa tradition.

In the same plot lie the remains of 3 of his 6 children: an infant daughter who died in 1948, a son, Thembi, who died in a car crash in 1969, and Makgatho, who died in 2005.

Source: Reuters

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