South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa was jeered and whistled at on Saturday during his speech at Zimbabwe ex-leader Robert Mugabe’s funeral before he apologised for recent xenophobic attacks.
Following the jeers, the master of ceremony was forced to appeal to the crowd to give Ramaphosa a chance to speak.
“I stand before you as a fellow African to express my regret and to apologize for what has happened in our country,” Ramaphosa said, to cheers from the crowd.
Other heads of state who attended Saturday’s funeral included long-ruling leaders from Equatorial Guinea and Congo while China, Russia, Kenya and Cuba, which supported Zimbabwe’s liberation movements that fought white minority rule, were represented by officials.
However, prominent officials from Western countries, which were critical of Mugabe’s rule, did not feature in the official funeral program.