SW Radio Africa news - The Independent Voice of Zimbabwe
Former Prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai will be among those who will attend the burial of former South African President Nelson Mandela. Mandela, who died last week, will be buried on Sunday in his ancestral home of Qunu in Eastern Cape. A Tuesday NewsDay report quoted Tsvangirai’s spokesperson, Luke Tamborinyoka, saying the South African government was ‘aware’ that the MDCT-T will be attending and that his travel arrangements were being worked out. Tamborinyoka avoided saying if the former premier had been invited, choosing to say that in African culture you do not need to be invited to a funeral. An official memorial service was held on Tuesday at the Soccer City stadium in Johannesburg where 52 presidents and 16 prime ministers were amongst mourners from all over the world. In Zimbabwe, diplomats, government officials and South African citizens resident in the country converged on Ambassador Vusi Mavimbela’s residence in Harare to pay their last respects to one of the most adored leaders to have ever lived. Already Mandela’s funeral is being billed as one of the world’s biggest funeral events. According to a Wednesday BBC report, ‘few events can have provided quite so much political stardust’ as the Tuesday memorial. According to the same report, the largest funeral attendance in history is thought to have happened in 1969 when 15 million people reportedly took to the streets of Chennai, the capital city of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, when chief Minister CN Annadurai died.