“Madiba”, the man who rose from a cattle herd boy in the poor Eastern Cape to turn the tide of South African history, has returned to his childhood home, this time maybe for good.
The tradition is that you don’t abandon your own people, you always come back to your own people
The frail, 93-year-old former president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela is back in his beloved Qunu, which he left as a youngster in the 1920s to begin a journey that turned him into a global icon.
“Once you see the flags flying, then you know that he’s there,” said Zimsile Gamakulu, 45, who belongs to the same “Madiba” clan – which gave Mr Mandela his tribal name – as his world-famous neighbour.
His fellow villagers believe his return to the tightly guarded compound, which lies across a busy national road from his former home, is both fitting and permanent after a health scare in January sent the nation into a frenzy.
“I think he’s come back for good because this is the (fourth) month now and it’s been a long time he’s been requesting to be brought back here,” said Gamakulu, who leads walks from the Nelson Mandela Museum tracing his early footsteps.
“The tradition is that you don’t abandon your own people, you always come back to your own people because we say you go back to your roots,” he added.
Mr Mandela was born in nearby Mvezo but as a boy moved to Qunu, where his love of open spaces and nature grew while stick-fighting, drinking milk from cow udders, and sliding on his bum down a rock slope with other boys.
Situated in the Eastern Cape where unemployment is rife, the village now has piped water, electricity and brick houses.
But life remains tough with gardens for homegrown food, simple stores selling basic goods, and dirt roads.
Mr Mandela has not made a public appearance since July 2010 and no longer leaves his tree-filled property which has two houses, including one modelled on his last prison house.
The village, made up of 18 settlements, peddles no keepsakes in his image which has morphed into a lucrative brand elsewhere. But his legacy is celebrated at the museum bearing his name overlooking the hills.
“It’s absolutely special, it’s absolutely inspiring,” the museum’s boss Khwezi Mpumlwana said about working with Mandela 800 metres (yards) away.
Mr Mandela receives visitors but remains firmly out of sight with a view of the gentle hills that he once criss-crossed as a boy and where he is regarded with immense pride as a homegrown hero but also as a fellow villager.