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The road to Qunu: Mandela laid to rest

From wealthy areas of Johannesburg to poor townships, South Africans remember a man who changed their nation.

A young boy tries to squeeze a short but sweet (***)We love you(***) onto a Nelson Mandela poster hung outside a museum made in the anti-apartheid hero(***)s honour in the suburb of Soweto, in Johannesburg. Hundreds of mourners took to the streets to mark his passing and celebrate South Africa(***)s most famous man.
By Hannah McNeish
Published On 14 Dec 2013

Twenty years after apartheid ended in South Africa, deep divisions remain but the country has also moved on, thanks largely to Nelson Mandela’s legacy.

On a journey spanning over 1400km from Mandela’s Johannesburg haunts to his boyhood village of Qunu, Al Jazeera visited some of the most starkly contrasted places to find out how “the father of the rainbow nation” will be remembered and whether his legacy will continue.

Many of the people who had flocked to Mandela’s Jhome in Johannesburg, hours after hearing about his death had never been to the upscale Houghton district before.

Its wide, leafy streets and mansions hidden behind high gates and large white walls are a far cry from the packed streets of South Africa’s townships, where beer-weary men slump on old sofas outside crumbling homes, waiting for state benefits as jobs are elusive, while “nyaope” a mix of heroin, rat poison, drain cleaner and drugs used to treat HIV/Aids claims many lives. Those crammed into sites on the outskirts of towns complain that they have not received their land back.

Hundreds of kilometres south in Orange Free State, space is not an issue. Vast farms mainly owned by Dutch descendants that arrived in the 17th Century, dot the hillsides, and people still fear attacks on white-owned farms, but also expect that the negotiations Mandela brokered in 1993 to win personal freedoms have not yet extended to the economy.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in Dimbaza – a dumping ground for people deemed “surplus to requirements” in towns, and relocated outside by an apartheid government. The place was also home to more thanr 100 ex-Robben Island prisoners- where Mandela spent 18 of his 27 year incarceration- to live so that they could be watched.

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A packed children’s cemetery outside town is testament to the poor rations under apartheid, while drugs are now the biggest killer of today’s kids.

Further into the Eastern Cape lies Qunu, Mandela’s boyhood village that is little more than a cluster of homes on a hillside where sheep outnumber people. About 20km along dirt roads lies the even smaller village of Mqhekewenzi, where members of Mandela’s adoptive royal family from the Thembu clan say his time with them gave him the ability to stare down an apartheid government, and who will be laying animal skins on his coffin to mark his greatness and aristocratic links.

All agree that a great man has passed, and hope that someday, someone will replace him to continue his long walk to freedom across South Africa.

Dimbaza resident Anatmi Ngodwane stands in the ruins of one of the many factories left to rot in this township in South Africa(***)s Eastern Cape that was the chosen site for hundreds of families deemed (***)surplus to requirement in nearby towns by the apartheid government. Now, people survive on benefits and drug-use and alcoholism are high.
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Zolile Twebe stands outside his home in Dimbaza township, where his father Moses, a founding father of an anti-apartheid military wing, was dumped along with 100 other prisoners from Robben Island, where he spent years incarcerated alongside Nelson Mandela. Hundreds of families deemed (***)surplus to requirement(***) were moved from nearby towns by the apartheid government in the 1970s. This home was donated by the government, but some still live in wooden huts with no water or power.
A young girl in Dimbaza township, where hundreds of families deemed (***)surplus to requirement(***) were moved from nearby towns by the apartheid government in the 1970s. Poor rations and healthcare led to many child deaths, packing a cemetery outside town. Now, poverty is pushing many children to smoke drugs.
Chief Zanomethetho Mtirara wears a leopardskin that will be draped over Mandela(***)s coffin on Sunday, as a mark of his (***)royal blood(***) after being adopted age 9 by Mtirara(***)s grandfather, a Thembu king of the Xhosa tribe.
In the streets of Soweto in Johannesburg, Mandela mourners like Thabo Thobedi-who fashioned earrings out of keyrings gather around his former home, remembering a man who took down apartheid.
Crowds sing and dance in the streets of Soweto in Johannesburg to celebrate Nelson Mandela(***)s life. It was here that he opened a law firm after earning his degree from a British university during his 18 years of imprisonment on Robben Island for trying to beat apartheid.
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Mourners scribble tributes onto a Nelson Mandela poster hung outside a museum made in the anti-apartheid hero(***)s honour in the suburb of Soweto, in Johannesburg. Hundreds of people took to the streets to mark his passing and celebrate South Africa(***)s most famous man.
Vendors sell merchandise related to the passing of South Africa(***)s first black president.
Mourners carry posters from the struggle for freedom.
A boy poses next to a shop newly named Madiba Nelson Mandela(***)s clan name, in South Africa(***)s Eastern Cape, where the anti-apartheid hero grew up.
Mandela(***)s coffin arrives in Qunu.
Kids wave South Africa flags at Nelson Mandela(***)s village in Qunu in South Africa(***)s Eastern Cape, as the great man(***)s body comes home to its final resting place.