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MANDELA FLIES HOME IN A BLAZE OF GLORY

– As 5,000 mourners attend private burial ceremony

 

ANTI-apartheid legend, global icon and former South African president, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was buried on Sunday, December 15, 2013, after ten days of unprecedented burial rites witnessed by over 100 world leaders!

Interred in his ancestral village, Qunu in Eastern Cape, South Africa, thousands lined the streets to bid final farewell to a man who spent 27 years in prison to free his people.

Madiba was carried on a gun carriage to the private burial on his family’s estate.

As his body was placed on the grave, the South African flag on the coffin was removed and handed to Mandela’s widow, Graca Machel, who was comforted by his ex-wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.  With a lone trumpeter playing the last post and accompanied by 21-gun salute, Madiba’s body was lowered into the ground at his ancestral home, Qunu, Eastern Cape.

There was also a guard of honour comprising members of South Africa’s four most senior infantry regiments, the Airforce, Navy and the South African Military Health Service.  The artillery fired a regular gun salute, culminating in 21 gun salute when Mandela was finally laid to rest.

As he was buried, a military chaplain said: “Yours was truly a long walk to freedom, and now you have achieved the ultimate freedom in the bosom of your maker.”

His funeral was also traditional as his Xhosa tribe elders reportedly slaughtered an ox to accompany his spirit after burial, while guests drank the blood from a communal bowl.

Dignitaries would have, however, eaten the animal’s meat after it was cooked on a open fire.  Mandela’s immediate family members also performed their burial rites for the repose of the soul of their patriarch and Africa’s most illustrious son.

African National Congress (ANC) Deputy President, Cyril Ramaphosa, the burial programme director, had earlier welcomed guests from abroad and around the country: “Each one of us and millions of people around the world had had their own Madiba moment.  Today, we come to lay him to rest…South Africa’s greatest son,” he told mourners.

He further explained that they lit 95 candles representing the years the first South African black President spent on earth.  The ANC leader also underscored the importance burying the legend in time in accordance with his tribe’s tradition.

The state funeral lasted for about two hours in time for the traditional Aba Thembu burial service that ended at about mid-day.

While the state funeral was reportedly attended by about 5,000 guests, only 450 guests, including Prince Charles were selected to attend the final burial of Mandela’s remains.  “In terms of the tradition of this part of the country, the person is meant to be laid to rest when the sun is at its highest.”

South Africans and dignitaries across the globe, including Archbishop Emeritus, Desmond Tutu had gathered from early that Sunday at a specially constructed dome. Also in attendance were the British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II represented by heir apparent, Prince Charles,  Oprah Winfrey, former President, Thabo Mbeki, Reserve Bank Governor, Gill Marcus, Zimbabwe’s Movement for Democratic Change leader, Morgan Ysvangirai, US Civil Rights Activist, Jesse Jackson and US Ambassador to South Africa, Patrick Gaspard.

Interestingly, Archbishop Desmond Tutu wouldn’t have attended his bosom friend’s burial if he didn’t get South Africa Government’s official invitation.  Desmond Tutu had claimed the government had not made him feel welcome and he did not want to ‘gate crash’ the funeral of his long time ally and friend.

“Much as I would have loved to attend the service to say a final farewell to someone I loved and treasured, it would have been disrespectful to Tata (Mandela) to gatecrash what was billed as a private family funeral,” he said in a statement.

The fiery cleric who played pivotal role in the struggle to liberate South Africa from racial discrimination finally made it to Madiba’s Sunday, December 15 burial.

Nelson Mandela passed on to eternity on Thursday, December 5, 2013.  Aged 95, a memorial service organized in his honour on Tuesday, December 10, 2013, at FNB Stadium, Johannesburg, South Africa was the most significant of all the ceremonies lined up to celebrate the iconic political figure.  Graced by over 90 world leaders and royalties, hundreds of thousands of his people and the world at large also paid tributes to Madiba as series of obsequies in, around and outside South Africa rolled on.

At the memorial service touted as the largest gathering of global leaders in recent time, US President Barack Obama hailed Mandela as giant of history.  British Prime Minister, David Cameron also acknowledged the fact that Madiba was the greatest of the greatest, while the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon eulogized him as an icon.

From Europe to America, Asia and Africa, every living American President except the elderly George Bush were in Johannesburg to honour Mandela.

Comparable only to the burial of former British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill in 1965 and the 2008 funeral of Pope John Paul II, which attracted some two million people to Rome among them four kings, five queens, at least 70 presidents and prime ministers and leaders of 14 other faiths, the memorial was the centerpiece of a week of mourning for Mandala.

He was finally buried on Sunday, December 13, 2013 amidst pomp and ceremony.

–               UCHE OLEHI

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Written by Encomium

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