Madiba laid to rest after state funeral

Nelson Mandela was buried yesterday in the African ground that he loved after a funeral ceremony that included a 21-gun salute, fly-overs by military aircraft, and a eulogy by a traditional leader wearing an animal skin.

His casket was lowered into the earth after military pallbearers carried it to the family gravesite in the rolling hills of Qunu — the rural village in eastern South Africa which was the childhood home of the anti-apartheid leader who became the country’s first democratically-elected president.

South African television showed Mandela’s casket at the family gravesite, but the broadcast went to a different scene just before the coffin was lowered at the request of the Mandela family.