Townsmen line the streets as a military policeman escorts a hearse containing the flag draped coffin of former South African President Nelson Mandela through the center of Mthatha, South AfricaWith the aid of Ed Cropley QUNU, South Africa (Reuters) – The body of Nelson Mandela arrived on Saturday at his ancestral residence of Qunu in South Africa's Japanese Cape, the place it was once greeted via singing, dancing local residents ahead of the anti-apartheid chief's state funeral set for the following day. As police and armed forces helicopters buzzed overheard, the hearse carrying the is still of South Africa's first black president rolled with a police escort into the hamlet of scattered properties mendacity between green pastures. Delighted residents broke into the South African national anthem as the cortege appeared on the road from Mthatha airport, 700 km (450 miles) south of Johannesburg. Mandela, who died on December 5 aged ninety five, will be buried in his household home in Qunu on Sunday after a state funeral combining military pomp and conventional rites of Mandela's Xhosa abaThembu clan.