ULUNDI: Thousands of people, some holding spears and dressed in traditional warrior clothes, on Saturday attended the funeral of South Africa's divisive Zulu leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi. Mourners crowded a stadium in Ulundi, the ancient capital of the Zulu kingdom in eastern South Africa, to pay tribute to the founder of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), who died on September 9 aged 95.
Family members dressed in black, followed by men holding shields and spears, led a coffin covered by an animal skin and an IFP flag across a red carpet inside the stadium before it was placed under a black canopy on the pitch.
Earlier, members of the IFP Women's Brigade were chanting in Zulu as guests including President Cyril Ramaphosa and his predecessor Jacob Zuma arrived at the venue.
"He treated all of us Zulus as one person. That is why I am here," said Bonga Makhoba, 31, who said he drove 150 kilometres to attend the ceremony.
"I just respect him and I want him to... rest in peace."
Ramaphosa, who ordered flags to be flown at half staff across the country, was to deliver a eulogy during the service celebrated by the head of South Africa's Anglican Church.
"Buthelezi has been an outstanding leader in the political and cultural life of our nation, including the ebbs and flows of our liberation struggle," Ramaphosa had said when announcing Buthelezi's death.
The party was his political home until he broke away to form the Inkatha movement in 1975.
Born of royal blood, he was to some the embodiment of a proud and feisty Zulu spirit, while to others he often acted as a warlord.
Admired as a charismatic speaker, Buthelezi went on to become one of the country's longest-serving lawmakers, widely recognisable with his slender silhouette and distinctive rectangular glasses.
The Sowetan, a daily born out of the liberation struggle, wrote that "For his supporters, who worshipped the ground he walked on, he is held in high regard as a hero".
"Everybody has their past but Buthelezi to me, he was the best," Fisokhule Buthelezi, 45, a distant relative sporting a black IFP beret, said as she sat on the stands waiting for the ceremony to begin. — AFP
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