SOUTH AFRICA:The grandson of South Africa's former president Nelson Mandela was draped in the lion's skin of an African tribal chief yesterday at a ceremony that anointed him as political heir to the anti-apartheid icon.
Mandla Mandela (32), who recently graduated with a political science degree from South Africa's Rhodes University, vowed to lift up the people of the rural Eastern Cape, which is home to Mr Mandela's Xhosa tribe and one of the nation's poorest regions.
"There are a lot of expectations, especially with the surname I carry," he said before the ceremony that installed him as chief of the Mvezo Traditional Council.
Mr Mandela, now 88, was among a large crowd of dignitaries who assembled for the ceremony in Mvezo, the village where he was born.
Tribal elders from across South Africa, many of them dressed in beaded traditional robes and animal skins and clutching official staffs as well as cellular phones, applauded as South Africa's premier statesman arrived.
Mandla Mandela's accession marks a return for the Mandela family after nearly 70 years. Nelson Mandela's father, chief Henry Mandela, was deposed in the early 1900s after a dispute with a local magistrate and Nelson renounced his claim to the title to become a lawyer and pursue his struggle to end white minority rule. Xhosa authorities recently decided to resurrect the Mandela chieftaincy and the former president said it should go to his grandson. - (Reuters)