Editorial: Adventure on road for last journey

Nelson Mandela.

I nearly got run over by an armoured military vehicle at the weekend.

I was standing on the outskirts of the tiny village of Qunu in Transkei, South Africa, watching Nelson Mandela's funeral procession go by.

As the hearse carrying the body, draped in a South African flag, drew level with me I started taking photographs, swinging around to follow the car as it drove into the village. I was confident that I was out of the way of the following vehicles, but one big metal beast decided to come a bit closer than the rest.

The South Africans call them Ratels and this one literally brushed past me, any closer and I would have been bumped out of the road. Not a nice thought.

It was just one story in what was a day of incredible experiences on my trip to the Transkei to witness the historic homecoming of the former South African President's body.

Roads around the village were blocked a few kilometres in each direction, but being a journalist with accreditation for the funeral I was able to get through to the final roadblock on the outskirts of the village.

There I stood in the blazing sun, along with many foreign and local journalists. Television cameras were set up on any vantage point to capture the story the whole world wanted.

As we waited, I started interviewing some of the people who had begun gathering to pay tribute to Tata (Father) Madiba.

Three teenage boys sauntered up to me and we started chatting. They told me they had come from Umtata and were still at school.

I was astounded when one of the boys, 18-year-old Apiwe Ndende, told me that he was only in grade three. He said he did not know what the problem was but he had failed five times. He really wanted to be a lawyer, but felt his failure rate may be a handbrake on his ambitions.

The moment of the day for me was when the hearse was in the village as a large military helicopter hovered over the burial site. What a day.