Kagame to pay last respects to Mandela in SA

President Paul Kagame is expected in South Africa today to pay his last respects to departed anti-apartheid icon Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, a week after the revered statesman passed on after months of illness.According to the President’s office, Kagame will bid farewell to the man he eulogised as “a moral exemplar, inspirational figure and an unwavering fighter for freedom”, at the Union Building in Pretoria, where Mandela’s body lies in state.Earlier this week, President Kagame ordered that the Rwandan Flag fly at half-mast for five days from Tuesday through Sunday, when the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize laureate will be laid to rest in his ancestral home of Qunu in Eastern Cape Province.In one of his articles eulogising Mandela, affectionately referred to as Madiba, Kagame wrote, “It did not matter whether you knew him personally or had not met him. You had the feeling that you had known him all your life. And indeed for most of us, Mandela and the ANC (African National Congress, current ruling party in South Africa), was a feature of our youth”.Mandela died at age 95.President Kagame saluted Mandela’s pursuit of national reconciliation when he became president in 1994 as opposed to seeking revenge against a system that had kept him behind bars for 27 years–18 of them on Robben Island where he and his fellow political inmates were subjected to hard labour.“We grew up with the picture of an uncompromising enemy of injustice, an unwavering fighter for freedom, a man whose spirit and resolve were unbroken by the harshest prison conditions and deprivations of a normal life, patient and hopeful of victory, a rallying point for his comrades and those opposed to discrimination everywhere,” wrote Kagame, who himself led a liberation movement that stopped the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi and overthrew the genocidal regime in the process.He added: “Upon release, we saw another side of Mandela that his jailors had strenuously tried to conceal. We saw a person prepared to forgive and reconcile with his erstwhile enemies, a man able to rise above bitterness and desire for vengeance other people would have opted for, and a leader able to steer a whole movement on this path to the future.”For the past one week, South Africans of all walks of life have poured on to the streets to pay tribute to the departed liberation hero and celebrate the life of the man they fondly refer to as “Tata.”Three-day ‘Guard of honour’From Wednesday, South Africans have been lining the streets as Mandela’s body is driven through the city to lie in state at the Union Buildings, the seat of government. Mandela’s casket is being transported there at 7am local time on three successive mornings, before public viewing each day. On Saturday, the former president’s body will be flown to Eastern Cape ahead of the final rest.