Traditional Tribal Rituals At Mandela's Funeral

Nelson Mandela's casket was draped in a lion skin, an ox was ritually slaughtered and a family elder kept talking to the body's spirit: The state funeral for South Africa's anti-apartheid icon NelsonMandela on Sunday included these rituals from the tradition of the Xhosa tribe, to whom Mandela's Thembu clan belongs.

 The coffin of the country's first democratically elected President was wrapped in the South African flag, standing atop animal skins during the funeral in Mandela's southeastern childhood village of Qunu.

 The ceremony was an eclectic mix of traditional rituals, Christian elements and the military honors of a state funeral.

 His body was buried around noon, "when the sun is at its highest and the shadow at its shortest," Cyril Ramaphosa, deputy leader of the country's ruling party, the African National Congress, said during the ceremony.

 The Xhosa recognize the presence of ancestral spirits and call upon them for guidance. Veneration for the world of the ancestors, or Umkhapho in Xhosa, plays an important role in their culture and this act was not missing as part of the traditional ceremony to convey Mandela to the world beyond.

 The ceremonial slaughtering of animals is one of the ways the ancestors are called upon for help, according to a website of South Africa's Tourism Department.

 Following a tradition called Thetha, Xhosa culture elders stayed with Mandela's body and explained to his spirit what is happening. "When the body lies there, the spirit is still alive," said Rev. Wesley Mabuza, chairman of South Africa's Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the right of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities.

 "The body must be informed of whatever is happening before the funeral," said Nokuzola Mndende, director of the Icamagu Institute for traditional religions.

 For people of a high rank like Mandela, who is the son of a traditional clan chief, the body or the casket is usually wrapped in the skin of a leopard or a lion, according to Mndende. Mandela's body was wrapped in a lion skin. "But because Madiba is also a former statesman, His casket was also wrapped in the South African flag, a ritual showing deep respect for the deceased."

 Xhosa tradition requires the slaughtering of an animal early on the day of the burial. After the ritual throat slitting, the animal was eaten by some of the mourners, outside the family house. For Mandela an ox was killed.

 Traditional mourning for mandela will last for a whole year according to Xhosa tradition.

 A year after the burial another ox will be slaughtered and eaten by the family to mark the end of the mourning period, in a tradition called Ukuzila.

 And the Rituals does not stop then, bringing back ritual will hold in another year later (two years after Mandela's burial), a joyous ceremony is celebrated to bring back the deceased into the family so that the person will henceforth be looking over the family and its children as a well-meaning ancestor, a ritual called Ukubuyisa.