WATCH | Heavens open as Mama Winnie makes final journey home

The heavens opened as rain poured down as anti-apartheid icon Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was laid to rest on Saturday.

Madikizela-Mandela’s death on April 2 at the age of 81 after a long illness was met by an outpouring of emotion across the country, with the African National Congress (ANC) and opposition parties holding memorials to remember her courage in the struggle to end white-minority rule.

It began to pour at the end of the five-and-a-half-hour funeral programme at Orlando Stadium in Soweto as Madikizela-Mandela’s body was taken to Fourways Memorial Park for burial. There is a superstition that if there is rain during the funeral‚ the departed is on her way to heaven.