Eastern Cape bids final farewell to Nelson Mandela

It has been a weekend of high emotion – much of it celebratory, some reflective and sad – in the Eastern Cape, where Nelson Mandela was laid to rest today.

And, like the changing moods of those who live in and were visiting the Eastern Cape at this poignant time, the weather was mercurial, changing from burning sunshine to thick mist in the lowlands, to dark, threatening thunderclouds and back to sunshine again.

On Saturday crowds of people gathered all along the main roads of Mthatha, singing and dancing, celebrating the life of one of their own.

From the town all the way to the tiny village of Qunu where Mr Mandela would be buried about 30 kilometres away, hundreds of people gathered along the route of Madiba’s final journey home.

They waited for hours as the body was flown from Pretoria to the Mthatha Airport and then driven in a convoy numbering hundreds of cars to Qunu.

Young and old sang Struggle songs, waved flags, joined hands to form human chains and danced along the route. Among the crowd were members of the emergency services who formed a guard of honour along the road.

It was only when the hearse carrying the flag-covered coffin went past that some in the crowds fell silent. 

Some silenced their children as the cortege went by, telling them to be silent for Tata. Many were left in awe as the motorcycle and motorcade passed, vying for space with the media contingent – which heralded from all around the world and ran to thousands – to get good pictures on their cellphones.

Renchia Adams, a resident of Mthatha, said, “Nelson Mandela is an icon for all of us and we honour him. We are where we are in South Africa today because of him. I just think it’s extremely disheartening that it took our country, that it took Mthatha, to clean up and step up, due to his death. I feel that we should be stepping up every day, we should be making him proud every single day of our lives. We should strive for that.”

Early on Sunday morning, in the dark and hours before the funeral started, hundreds of cars could be seen snaking their way along the N2 to Qunu.

As the village woke up, many people went about their daily business of fetching water or getting breakfast ready, seemingly oblivious to the huge numbers of video crews and international media who were camped on their doorsteps. The occasion was made for small entrepreneurs, who set up shop selling food and drinks, and Mandela and African National Congress T-shirts, caps and flags.

A few kilometres away, outside the Nelson Mandela Museum in Qunu, hundreds of community members gathered – some dressed in their finest – to watch the proceedings on a big-screen TV. A few visitors came from further afield, such as the Eastern Cape’s biggest town of Port Elizabeth.

Outside the tent, erected for the community, were three giant books in which people could write tributes to Mandela.

From their vantage point the crowd could see some of what was happening at the official funeral tent – the buses that dropped off the dignitaries, members of the navy and army forming a guard of honour and cannon firing off a salute.

Among the crowd who gathered on the hill was the Greybe family, who had arrived in South Africa from different countries to bury their mother on Saturday.

“It was almost like this was a last gift from our mom – we all came home, from different countries, to bury her and are now able to be here for Nelson Mandela’s funeral,” said Anne Greybe. 

The crowd watched an emotional Ahmed Kathrada give a heartfelt farewell to his long-time friend, saying how devastated he was to see Mandela “a shadow of himself” in hospital, at their last meeting.

“Farewell my dear brother, my mentor, my leader,” he said, towards the end of his speech. 

He added, “In your life, and in your death, you have united the people of South Africa and the world on a scale never before experienced in history. … South Africa will continue to rise because we dare not fail you.

“When Walter [Sisulu] died I lost a father, now I have lost a brother. My life is in a void – I don’t know who to turn to,” he said.

Members of the crowd could be seen wiping away tears.

But they burst out laughing when Mandela’s granddaughter, Nandi Mandela, told stories of a grandfather who was full of mischief and also a great storyteller.

One of his favourite stories he would regale them with, she said, was the story of how, when he was young and visiting a girlfriend’s house he tried desperately to spear a piece of chicken on his plate, but each time he would pierce it with his fork the meat would jump away, much to his embarrassment.

But he was a very strict grandfather – a disciplinarian who “prepared [each of] us to be a better person with or without him,” she added.

As the day of Mandela’s funeral drew to a close, songs paying tribute to the Eastern Cape’s greatest son wafted over the breeze. Memories of this time – and the legacy of a great man and leader born into humble circumstances in the green hills of this area – will live on for a long, long time. As Bantu Holomisa, a family friend, remarked at the funeral, “The Madiba song may have ended, but its melody lingers on.”