Final rites at ongoing Mandela’s burial

Final rites at ongoing Mandela’s burial
on december 15, 2013 at 12:11 pm in news
Nelson Mandela’s Grandson, Mandla Mandela,
(right) watches as local priests drape the casket of
late South African former President, Nelson
Mandela with a lion skin, as it arrives at the
Mandela’s residence in Qunu, South Africa.
At the ongoing funeral of South Africa’s first
democratically elected President, Nelson Mandela,
his remains was wrapped in the South African flag,
standing atop animal skins at the beginning of the
funeral in Mandela’s southeastern childhood village
of Qunu.
The ceremony was poised to be an eclectic mix of
traditional rituals, Christian elements and those of a
state funeral.
An ox is slaughtered, the deceased is wrapped in a
lion skin and a family elder keeps talking to the
body’s spirit: The state funeral for South Africa’s
anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela will also include
those rituals from the tradition of the Xhosa people,
to whom Mandela’s Thembu clan belongs.
His body will be buried at noon, “when the sun is at
its highest and the shadow at its shortest,” Cyril
Ramaphosa, deputy leader of the country’s ruling
party, the African National Congress, said during the
ceremony.