“It’s truly a moving event. As you walk past his body, you’re overcome with emotion,” said Sakib Khan, a British national living in South Africa since 2002.
Mandela’s body is scheduled to be taken to Waterkloof air force base early Saturday morning, for the two-hour flight to Qunu in Eastern Cape province, where he grew up.
On Sunday, some 5,000 people, including foreign dignitaries, are expected to participate in a formal, two-hour ceremony beginning at 8am (0600 GMT).
But the actual burial will be a strictly private affair, barred to both the public and the media, government spokeswoman Phumla Williams told AFP.
“The family has indicated they want to make the burial a family matter,” Williams said.
“They don’t want it to be televised. They don’t want people to see when the body is taken down,” she added.
Around 3,000 members of the media have already descended on Qunu where a special stage and marquee have been erected for the invited guests, who include Britain’s Prince Charles.
The funeral will be held according to traditional Xhosa rites overseen by male members of Mandela’s clan.
The slaughtering of an animal – a ritual performed through various milestones of a person’s life – will form a crucial part of the event.
During the ceremony, Mandela will be referred to as Dalibhunga – the name given to him at the age of 16 as he entered adulthood.
Although Mandela never publicly declared his religious denomination, his family comes from a Methodist background.
While Qunu residents are expected to benefit from the status that will be attached to their village as Mandela’s final resting place, some are upset they will not be given a chance to view the body before burial.
“No one thought of us,” said Nomakula Mfikeleli, 61, who like many others in the village could not afford the time or money to travel to Pretoria for the lying in state.
“We would have loved to be given a chance to bid him farewell… like we have seen others doing on television,” Mfikeleli said.
Mandela always spoke nostalgically of what he remembered as an idyllic early childhood in the rolling hills around Qunu.
“From these days I date my love of the veld (grassland), of open spaces, the simple beauties of nature, the clean lines of the horizon,” Mandela wrote in his memoir “Long Walk to Freedom”.
He will be buried in the family estate he built there following his release from prison in 1990.
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