World Bids Mandela Final Goodbye

World bids Mandela final goodbye

With military pomp and traditional rituals, South Africa buried Nelson Mandela on Sunday, thus  marking  the  end of an exceptional journey for the prisoner turned President.

Mandela,  who died on December 5   at the age of 95,  was laid to rest in his childhood village of Qunu.  His body traveled from Pretoria by air to Mthatha in Eastern Cape province, and then by road to Qunu .

Present at the private burial   were about 450 members of the Mandela family,  political and religious leaders as well as foreign dignitaries, including  Britain’s Prince Charles, American civil rights activist ,Reverend Jesse Jackson and talk show host Oprah Winfrey.

 Tribal leaders clad in animal skins joined the dignitaries in dark suits at the grave site overlooking the rolling green hills.

As pall-bearers walked toward the site after a funeral ceremony,  three helicopters whizzed past dangling the national flag. Cannons fired a 21-gun salute and their   echoes rang over the quiet village.

  Mandela’s widow, Graca Machel, dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief as she watched the proceedings.

“Yours was truly a long walk to freedom. Now you have achieved the ultimate freedom in the bosom of God, your maker,” an officiator at the grave site  was quoted by the Cable News Network as saying.

Military pall-bearers gently removed the South African flag that draped Mandela’s   coffin and handed it to President Jacob Zuma, who gave it to the   former President’s family.