A new road is prepared in Qunu near the home of Nelson Mandela. Photograph: Rogan Ward/ReutersOn the road through the little hamlet of Qunu in South Africa's Eastern Cape, a local television crew is filming a group of boys playing with a home-made go-kart on a hill.
The journalists gather them together and ask them to raise their fists and shout for the camera "Dalibhunga!", the name given to Nelson Mandela on his circumcision.
Behind them, hidden by a red brick wall and a screen of trees built on the N2, which passes south from Durban to East London, is Mandela's compound.
On Friday bulldozers were busy carving out a pair of access roads behind the house, both rising up to a ridge of pale yellow grass overlooking the village, converging on a rocky shoulder dotted with brilliant orange flowers.
The residents of Mandela's home village, where he arrived as a young child and returned to after his 27 years in prison, understand well what these preparations mean. The roads, which construction workers began after his first serious bout of ill health, will carry mourners to Mandela's grave site.
Indeed, the journalists who have arrived to interview locals in Qunu, the bulldozers, police and figures in plain clothes surveying the shallow gulley running through the village all point to a thing that most in the village do not want to talk about too openly but that they still acknowledge: soon, too soon for them, Qunu's most famous son will be interred on a hill overlooking the scattering of pastel-coloured houses.
If villagers are cautious about discussing the implications of the activity in Qunu, it is because in Xhosa custom, as in many other African cultures, it is taboo to discuss a person's death while they are still alive.
Tension in the village has risen because Mandela has never given exact instructions for his funeral. Instead, South Africa's government has been forced to rely on indications he made 20 years ago – including in an interview with the country's Guardian and Mail newspaper – insisting in the most general terms on his desire for the simplest of ceremonies in Qunu.
And like most people in South Africa, residents of Qunu, including relatives, have been forced to rely on sparse information from television and radio, even while watching preparations for an event they hope might no happen just now.
"There's no right time to discuss the death of a person who's still alive," Penuel Mjongile told the South African Press Association as he watched over his cattle. "That is taboo. It's not done."
However, the mortality of Africa's most celebrated figure has for years imposed itself on the lives of the residents of Qunu. International media companies long ago bought the rights to pitch their equipment on plots of land attached to the houses along the main road close to Mandela's house.
In the nearby town of Mthatha, where family disputes over where Mandela should be buried reached a courtroom on Friday, guesthouses and hotels have been block-booked long in advance. For now, however, the media is camped out en masse outside the hospital in Pretoria where Mandela is being treated – Qunu and nearby Mthatha will be their next stop.
Opposite Mandela's house, a young woman sells fruit from the back of her car. She is happy to talk but prefers not to be identified by her Xhosa name and asks to be called Amanda instead, complaining she has already been misquoted.
"Madiba's family needs the space and time to grieve for him," she says, using the clan name for Mandela, by which he is affectionately known. She says she understands the concern of the family – not least his daughter Makaziwe, who condemned the media gathered outside the hospital as "vultures" on Thursday – but says she believes there is "never a right way".
Asked how much the funeral should be a private family affair or a matter of international interest, Amanda answers that he is a global figure. "He's an international icon. People here understand that the world is interested in Madiba and cares about him," she says.
She recalls being invited to his house as a child for a "Christmas feast" soon after he was freed from prison. "I was very small but I remember the year he was released. It was the year my grandfather came back from exile," she said.
At her house across the road from where Mandela will be buried, the former president's granddaughter Nosiphelo cradles her seven-week-old son. "They just started again in the last few days," she said, indicating the earthmovers busy on the slopes above, the new roads guarded by police cars.
Amid reports that a large area around Qunu might be cordoned off for a funeral, she added: "I don't think that would be right." She agreed with Amanda that "Madiba is for everyone.
"I remember him most as a kind man. We would go to his house for Christmas. When I was young I didn't really know that much about his life," she said.
At the nearby Nelson Mandela Museum, Nokuzola Tetani, 52, who has always lived in Qunu, is anxious that Mandela's legacy is carried on by his family.
"I last saw him in October. I went to a function with the family. He was so full of love and life. When he saw his wife Graça Machel arrive, he said: 'Hello, my life,'" she adds, touched by the recollection.
It is also unclear is whether Mandela's final resting place in Qunu will be a public or a private location.
Indeed his His eldest daughter, Makaziwe, indicated on Thursday that the grave – far from being a public monument – would probably be considered private.
"Family graveyards … they're not for public," she told the state broadcaster. "They are for public once when you've buried a loved one and you invite people to that. And that is the end. After that it becomes strictly a family sacred place."
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