President Jacob Zuma of South Africa Friday said that the late anti-apartheid hero, Dr Nelson Mandela, would be buried on Dec. 15 at his ancestral home in the Eastern Cape.
This is just as former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo said with the demise of Mandela, the world has lost a leader. Obasanjo stated this in his tribute in honour of the late icon.
Zuma said the country’s first black president would be laid to rest in a family plot at his ancestral village of Qunu, 700 km (450 miles) south of Johannesburg.
Three of Mandela’s children and other close family members had been buried there.
Zuma had also announced that the former president would be honoured with a Dec. 10 memorial service at Johannesburg’s Soccer City Stadium, the site of the 2010 World Cup final.
“We will spend the week mourning his passing. We will also spend it celebrating a life well lived’’, Zuma said.
Meanwhile, South Africans were united in mourning for Nelson Mandela on Friday. Some celebrated his remarkable life with dance and song.
Others fretted that the anti-apartheid hero’s death would make the nation vulnerable again to racial and social tensions.
On Friday, the country’s 52 million people absorbed the news that their most revered statesman, a global symbol of reconciliation and peaceful co-existence, had departed forever.
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