Nelson Mandela Reaches His Resting Place

Updated Dec. 15, 2013 4:09 a.m. ET

As guests made their way to their seats at Nelson Mandela’s funeral, many sang and danced to celebrate the life of South Africa’s first black president. Photo: Getty Images

QUNU, South Africa—Family and friends remembered the life of Nelson Mandela at a funeral held on Sunday in his childhood hometown, the final stop in a nation-changing journey through prison to the presidency.
“He went to school with bare feet and yet rose to the highest office in the land,” said granddaughter Nandi Mandela, who stood before 95 candles, each one symbolizing a year in Mr. Mandela’s life. “It is in each of us to achieve what we want in life.”
“His life,” she added, “is a story of resilience.”
Mr. Mandela will be buried in a stone plot surrounded by aloe plants that overlooks rolling hills and his salmon pink house. The burial ends a 10-day period of mourning following his death on Dec. 5.
South Africa’s current president, Jacob Zuma, eulogized the late leader as the standard-bearer for a nation that remains a work in progress.
“We learned from you to build a new society, a new South Africa, from the ashes of apartheid colonialism, we needed to rise above anger and the human desire for retribution. In this way you offered hope in the place of hopelessness,” said Mr. Zuma. “As your journey ends today, ours must continue.”
The late South African leader was celebrated on Tuesday in a 90,000-seat soccer stadium, with tributes from world leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama. But it was Qunu, a small village in the Eastern Cape province, that was designated his ultimate resting place.
Around 4,500 guests were expected to attend, including several heads of state from Africa, Charles Prince of Wales and American talk-show luminary Oprah Winfrey.
Guests streamed to the white marquee set up on Mr. Mandela’s farm in the early hours of the morning. The sound of a marching band—and spontaneous singing from guests—wafted over Qunu’s green hills. Meanwhile, some community members started arriving at big screens set up around the village to view the proceedings.

Nelson Mandela’s coffin was escorted to the funeral hall on Sunday. Watch highlights of the coffin making its way to the hall, where guests included Oprah Winfrey, Prince Charles and Richard Branson. Photo: Getty Images

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“I just want to come and say farewell,” said 32-year-old Shirley Kobo. “He took us from the dust.”
Still, crowds at the viewing area were scattered and small. Many in Qunu stayed away in a sign of local displeasure of being barred from saying goodbye to a native son.
In one of the viewing areas around Qunu, women cooked in a corner. Many in Qunu saw the funeral as a rally for Mr. Mandela’s African National Congress.
“People don’t want to support the ANC,” Ms. Kobo said. “The leaders today are abusing the ANC name.”
Mr. Mandela’s remains arrived at the burial site on Saturday by road from the airport in Mthatha 30 miles away. All night vigils were held around the region before his burial on Sunday. The funeral mixes of elements of Christian and Xhosa—Mr. Mandela’s ethnic group—traditions.
The late president will be buried at noon, when the sun is at its highest point and the shadows are at their shortest, ANC Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa told the funeral crowd.

African National Congress supporters attending the funeral ceremony. European Pressphoto Agency

Mr. Mandela became a global icon not only for his resistance to South Africa’s white apartheid regime, a stance for which he and other liberation leaders endured long stints in prison, but also for his promotion of reconciliation when he was president. Mr. Mandela spent a total of 27 years in prison. His release in 1990 signaled the demise of the apartheid regime, the dismantling of its segregationist legislation and the dawn of South Africa’s multiracial democracy.
The 1994 national elections brought Mr. Mandela to power—the country’s first black president—along with his ANC party.
Instead of retribution for former white rulers, Mr. Mandela promoted forgiveness and reconciliation. The approach was taken for pragmatic as well as idealistic reasons. In the early 1990s, the country was a political tinderbox and the economy on the edge of crisis. Mr. Mandela sought to reassure ordinary whites and businesses they had an important role to play in the country’s future. Mr. Mandela’s multiracial embrace, evident in the massive crowds that turned out to see him, earned South Africa the nickname “Rainbow Nation.”

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Mr. Mandela stepped down in 1999, after a single five-year term, as president. Several years later, he was offered the position of chief in his birthplace of Mvezo but declined, instead asking his grandson Mandla Mandela to take the role in 2007. When Mandla was anointed as chief, his grandfather said, “Now I can die in peace.”
Nelson Mandela was born in Mvezo in 1918 and moved to nearby Qunu when he was two years old. At the age of nine, he was sent by his mother to another village in the area called Mqhekezweni to be raised by the chief.
But in his memoirs “Long Walk to Freedom,” he remembers Qunu most fondly. “My life and that of most Xhosas at the time was shaped by custom, ritual, and taboo,” Mr. Mandela said in his book. While Mr. Mandela remained closely tied to the traditions of his birthplace, he went on to break many taboos in South Africa.
Mr. Mandela’s funeral has again brought many parts of a still deeply divided South Africa together, but it has also highlighted the stark inequalities that persist. In his memoirs, Mr. Mandela spoke of his boyhood in Qunu, where he remembered two small primary schools, a general store and places to care for cattle. Little has changed. Unemployment in Qunu, like many parts of South Africa, is higher than the national average of 25%. Families rely on government grants of up to $1,500 a month.
“Coming here you realize we still have so much to do,” said Lindiwe Ndaba, a 41-year-old auditor who drove from Cape Town to watch the funeral in Qunu. “We need to continue his long walk.”
Write to Devon Maylie at devon.maylie@wsj.com

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