Africans unite to honour Mandela
FORTY thousand people turned up at a funeral ceremony in the township of Soweto to farewell South Africa’s anti-apartheid heroine Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.
Madiki z e l a - Mandela’ s death on April 2 at the age of 81 after a long illness was met by an outpouring of emotion across the country, with the ruling African National Congress and opposition parties holding memorials to remember her courage in the struggle to end white-minority rule.
The official funeral service for the ex-wife of the late Nelson Mandela took place yesterday in Soweto, the Johannesburg township at the forefront of the battle against apartheid, where she lived.
The burial ceremony at Fourways Memorial Park Cemetery, north of Johannesburg, ended a nearly two-week mourning period.
Earlier, mourners sang and cheered as Madikizela-Mandela’s body was brought into the 40,000-seat Orlando stadium (pictured), filled to capacity for the funeral service. Many mourners were clad in the green and yellow colours of the ANC. Members of the leftist Economic Freedom Fighters party also attended.
During Mandela’s 27-year incarceration for his fight against apartheid, MadikizelaMandela campaigned for his release and for the rights of black South Africans undergo- ing detention, banishment and arrest.
Also present at the funeral service were President Cyril Ramaphosa, former presidents Thabo Mbeki, Kgalema Motlanthe and Jacob Zuma, dignitaries from African countries and celebrities such as British supermodel Naomi Campbell and US civil rights activist Jesse Jackson.
For many South Africans, the most memorable image of Madikizela-Mandela is of her punching the air in a clenchedfist salute as she walked handin-hand with Mandela out of Victor Verster prison on February 11, 1990.
For husband and wife, it was a crowning moment that led four years later to the end of centuries of white domination when Mandela became South Africa’s first black president.
Madikizela-Mandela’s legacy, however, was later tarnished. As evidence emerged in the dying years of apartheid of the brutality of her Soweto enforcers, some South Africans questioned her “Mother of the Nation” sobriquet.