JOHANNESBURG, Jan. 15 (Xinhuanet) -- More than ten thousand South Africans including President Thabo Mbeki and Archbishop Desmond Tutu were present at the funeral of Makgatho Mandela, the son of former president Nelson Mandela on Saturday in Qunu, Eastern Cape.     

    Cabinet ministers and the country's nine premiers were among those were went to pay farewell to Makgatho, 54, said a report of the SAPA news agency.

    Eleven speakers were scheduled to speak at the funeral, including Makhatho's son Mandla, and Monde Mase, a relative from the family of Mandela's first wife Evelyn, said the report.

    Mandela, accompanied by his wife, Graca Machel, arrived at his traditional home in Qunu on Wednesday. His former wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and their daughter, Zinzi, arrived on Thursday.

    Makgatho Mandela, a Johannesburg lawyer, died of AIDS-related complications on January 6, and Mandela used the announcement of his death to plead for openness on the disease.

    The 86-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner has been widely praised since he announced his son's AIDS status at a press conference a few hours after his death at a Johannesburg clinic.

    Mandela said he started his campaign more than three years ago to encourage people not to hide HIV/AIDS in order to make people understand HIV was an ordinary thing.

    "To come out and to say somebody has died because of HIV...people will stop regarding it as something extraordinary, as an illness reserved to people who are going to go to hell and not heaven," Mandela said then.

    Makgatho was Mandela's eldest child and only surviving son from his first marriage to Evelyn Ntoko Mase who died some time ago.

    Last year Makgatho Mandela's wife Zondi died of pneumonia.

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