South Africa buried Nelson Mandela yesterday, leaving the multi-racial democracy he founded without its living inspiration and still striving for the “Rainbow Nation” ideal of shared prosperity he had dreamed of.

The Nobel peace laureate, who was held in apartheid prisons for 27 years before emerging to preach forgiveness and reconciliation, was laid to rest at his ancestral home in Qunu after a send-off combining military pomp with the traditional rites of his Xhosa abaThembu clan.

As the coffin was lowered into the wreath-ringed grave, three army helicopters flew over bearing the South African flag on weighted cables, a poignant echo of the anti-apartheid leader’s inauguration as the nation’s first black president nearly two decades ago.

He has achieved ultimate freedom in the bosom of the maker

A battery fired a 21-gun salute before five fighter jets flying low in formation roared over the valley.

“Yours was truly a long walk to freedom, and now you have achieved the ultimate freedom in the bosom of your maker,” armed forces Chaplain General Monwabisi Jamangile said at the grave site, where three of Mandela’s children already lie.

Among the mourners at the private burial ceremony were relatives, political leaders and foreign guests including Britain’s Prince Charles and American civil rights activist Reverend Jesse Jackson.

Mandela died aged 95 in Johannesburg on December 5, plunging millions more around the world into grief, and triggering more than a week of official memorials to one of the towering figures of the 20th century.

More than 100,000 people paid their respects in person at Mandela’s lying in state at Pretoria’s Union Buildings, where he was sworn in as president in 1994, an event that brought the curtain down on more than three centuries of white domination.

Before the burial, 4,500 family, friends and dignitaries attended the state funeral service in a huge domed tent, in a field near Mandela’s homestead.

The flag-covered casket was carried in by military chiefs, with Mandela’s grandson and heir, Mandla, and South African President Jacob Zuma following in their footsteps.

It was then placed on black and white Nguni cattle skins in front of a crescent of 95 candles, one for each year of Mandela’s life, as a choir sang Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, the national anthem adopted after the end of apartheid in 1994.

“The person who is lying here is South Africa’s greatest son,” said Cyril Ramaphosa, deputy leader of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), who presided over the three-hour ceremony broadcast live across the nation and around the world.

From the Limpopo River in the north to Cape Town in the south, millions watched on TV or listened to the radio. In some locations, big screens transmitted the event live. In his eulogy, Zuma paid tribute to a life that went from freedom-fighter to political prisoner to president. He also turned attention to the future, pledging to continue Mandela’s quest for a free and equal society, free from racial discrimination.