Madiba comes home NELSON Mandelas long walk nears its journeys end today. Madibas funeral is underway at his family homestead at Qunu, a hamlet of a few hundred houses 700 km south of Johannesburg. The send-off in the rolling hills of the Eastern Cape has drawn 4 500 guests, from relatives and South African leaders to Britains Prince Charles, American civil rights activist Reverend Jesse Jackson and talk show host Oprah Winfrey. Fellow anti-apartheid veteran Archbishop Desmond Tutu was also among those arriving shortly after dawn at a vast, domed tent erected in a field near Mandelas home, having resolved a last-minute mix-up over his invitation. At the end of last week, as many as 100 000 people paid their respects in person to Madiba lying in state at the Union Buildings in Pretoria, where he was inaugurated as president in 1994, an event that brought the curtain down on more than three centuries of white domination. When his body arrived on Saturday at his ancestral home in Qunu, it was greeted by ululating locals overjoyed that Madiba, the clan name by which he was affectionately known, had come home. After his long life and illness he can now rest, said grandmother Victoria Ntsingo, as military helicopters escorting the funeral cortege clattered overhead. His work is done. – From Nampa-Reuters and Nampa-AFP
Posted on: Sun, 15 Dec 2013 06:25:17 +0000
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