REPORT: Mandela's long walk nears journey's end

        
The body of Nelson Mandela arrived on Saturday at his ancestral home in the rolling hills of South Africa's Eastern Cape and was greeted by singing, dancing locals ahead of the anti-apartheid leader's state funeral set for the following day.         

As the hearse bearing the remains of South Africa's first black president appeared on the horizon, crowds by the road broke into "Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika" (God Bless Africa), the evocative national anthem adopted after the end of apartheid in 1994.          

"I'm so excited and at the same time I'm so hurt because I'm seeing him for the last time," said grandmother Victoria Ntsingo, as military helicopters escorting the cortege clattered overhead.         

"After his long life and illness he can now rest. Madiba is home. His work is done," she said, referring to Mandela by his clan name.          

Mandela, who died on Dec. 5 aged 95, will be buried in his family homestead on Sunday after a state funeral combining military pomp and the traditional rites of his Xhosa abaThembu clan.         

It will be the final act in ten days of mourning for the 'Father of the Nation', who suffered 27 years in prison before emerging to preach forgiveness and reconciliation in the quest to build a multi-racial democracy from the ashes of apartheid.          

But in a sign of tensions in South Africa's complicated post-apartheid social fabric, there were suggestions that the peace prevailing in Qunu, a hamlet of a few hundred houses 700 km (450 miles) south of Johannesburg, was not replicated across the nation of 53 million.           

Retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a leading light of 'The Struggle' while Mandela was in prison, said he had not been invited to the funeral of "Tata", the Xhosa word for father by which Mandela is affectionately known.           

"Much as I would have loved to attend the service to say a final farewell to someone I loved and treasured, it would have been disrespectful to Tata to gatecrash what was billed as a private family funeral," Tutu said in a statement.            

"Had I or my office been informed that I would be welcome there is no way on earth that I would have missed it," said Tutu, whose testy relationship with the ruling African National Congress (ANC) has soured in the last decade.           

Presidency Minister Collins Chabane confirmed that no specific invitation was sent to Tutu, but said the accreditation he had used at an earlier memorial on Tuesday would have allowed him in principle to attend the Qunu event.           

"We would like to reiterate that anyone wanting to attend the funeral service is welcome to do so," Chabane said.        


REUTERS


To watch Dalal Abou Haydar's report, please click on the VIDEO above