Nelson Mandela funeral: Former South African leader is laid to rest

Thousand of guests, some singing and dancing, gathered earlier in a huge tent at the family compound of the anti-apartheid leader.

Following a state service the former South African leader Nelson Mandela has been put to rest following a state funeral service at his home village of Qunu.

In the early hours the country paid tribute to its former leader with speeches, songs and a traditional Xhosa ceremony.

Around 4,000 guests attended the proceedings, where family and friends spoke of their time with the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who died on 5 December aged 95.

A smaller service for clan members, current and former heads of state, officials and clergymen followed on the hillside above the main marquee, where Mandela's body was lowered into the ground.

“Yours was truly a long walk to freedom and now you have achieved the ultimate freedom in the bosom of your maker, God almighty,” said Bishop Ziphozihle Siwa in the graveside sermon.

“A great tree has fallen,” said tribal chief Ngangomhlaba Matanzima, a representative of Mandela's family. “He is now going home to rest with his forefathers – we thank them for lending us such an icon.”

Earlier today the former leaders’s casket was carried by gun carriage to a marquee outside his family home. It came to rest, draped in the South African flag, below the lectern where guests delivered their eulogies.

Overlooked by a portrait of Mandela and a backdrop of 95 candles, Ahmed Kathrada, an anti-apartheid activist who was jailed alongside him on Robben Island, remembered his old friend's “abundant reserves” of love, patience and tolerance.

Some mourners wiped away tears as Mr Kathrada spoke of his final meeting with Mandela in hospital, his voice trembling with emotion.

“Farewell my dear brother, my mentor, my leader,” he said.

Nandi Mandela said her grandfather went barefoot to school in Qunu when he was boy but went on became president and a global icon.

“It is to each of us to achieve anything you want in life,” she said, recalling kind gestures by Mandela “that made all those around him also want to do good.”

In the Xhosa language, she referred to her grandfather by his clan name: “Go well, Madiba. go well to the land of our ancestors, you have run your race.”

Mandela's widow, Grace Machel, and his second wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, were dressed in black and sat on either side of South African President Jacob Zuma.

Guests included veterans of the military wing of the African National Congress, the liberation movement that became the dominant political force after the end of apartheid, as well as US Ambassador Patrick Gaspard and other foreign envoys.

Prince Charles, Monaco's Prince Albert II, US television personality Oprah Winfrey, billionaire businessman Richard Branson and former Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai were also there.

The service was not without its hitches, overrunning by more than an hour. It meant the tradition of burial at midday “when the sun is at its highest” could not be met - which experts said would be a cause for concern with tribal chiefs.

More than an hour into the service, people were still filling empty seats in parts of the marquee. Soldiers moved in at one point to occupy some chairs.

Earlier, South African honour guards from the army, navy and air force marched in formation amid rolling green hills dotted with small dwellings and neatly demarcated plots of farmland. Clouds cast shadows over the landscape.

After the funeral ceremony, a smaller group of guests moved away to attend Mandela's burial at a family grave site on the estate in Qunu, a rural village in Eastern Cape province. A 21-gun salute and a flyover by planes were among the final acts planned before the casket was put into the earth.

The burial will end 10 days of mourning ceremonies that included a massive stadium memorial in Johannesburg and three days during which Mandela's body lay in state in the capital, Pretoria.

Mandela spent 27 years in jail as a prisoner from apartheid, then emerged to lead a delicate transition to democracy when many South Africans feared that the country would sink into all-out racial conflict. He became president in the first all-race elections in 1994.

While South Africa faces many problems, including crime, unemployment and economic inequality, Mandela is seen by many compatriots as the father of their nation and around the world as an example of the healing power of reconciliation.