President Barack Obama was “deeply humbled” by a visit Sunday to the cell where a now critically ill Nelson Mandela spent years as a prisoner, as he urged a young generation of Africans to take up his hero’s mantle.
The US leader lauded Mandela and other inmates of Robben Island who “refused to yield” in the face of white minority rule, as he paid homage to the ailing icon he was unable to see in hospital.
Obama, accompanied by his wife Michelle and young daughters Sasha and Malia, visited the bleak lime quarry where 34 communist and radical leaders –including Mandela — endured hours of backbreaking work on the rocky outcrop in the Atlantic Ocean.
After staring out the barred window of the small damp cell where Mandela spent two thirds of his 27 years in prison, and contracted tuberculosis, Obama took a few minutes to write a note in the visitors book.
“On behalf of our family we’re deeply humbled to stand where men of such courage faced down injustice and refused to yield,” he wrote.
“The world is grateful for the heroes of Robben Island, who remind us that no shackles or cells can match the strength of the human spirit.”
Obama later made Mandela the keystone of an address urging students at the University of Cape Town and elsewhere across the vast continent to make a difference.
“I took my first step in politics because of South Africa,” he said, recalling his attachment to the anti-apartheid movement in the 1970s as a student in California.
Echoing Robert Kennedy’s call for non-violent change that was made in the same wood panelled hall half a century ago, Obama urged the students to help shape a continent that is moving forward apace.
He recounted Kennedy’s electrifying words that June day in 1966.
“Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.”
“And crossing each other from a million different centres of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
Obama said leaders like Mandela and Kennedy were a challenge to him “but more importantly they stand as a challenge to your generation.”
“They tell you that your voice matters, your ideas, your willingness to act on those ideas, your choices can make a difference.”
“If there is any country in the world that shows the power of human beings to affect change, this is the one.
“You have shown us how a prisoner can become a president.”
While Obama acknowledged that Africa is moving forward, he said more work needed to be done.
“There is no question that Africa is on the move, but it is not moving fast enough for the child still languishing in poverty… It’s not moving fast enough for the protester who is beaten in Harare, for the woman who is raped in eastern Congo,” he said to a warm reception from the packed auditorium.
Obama’s warm welcome however was not universal. Riot police fired rubber bullets and stun grenades at around 300 hundred anti-Obama protesters on Saturday in the township of Soweto, once a flashpoint in the anti-apartheid struggle.
His tour of Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania is aimed at changing perceptions that he has neglected Africa since his election in 2008, while also countering China’s growing economic influence in the resource-rich continent.
Mandela’s illness placed Obama in a tricky political spot, forcing him to balance his desire to push for a new economic relationship with Africa, with the need to properly honour his hero, who has been in intensive care for more than three weeks.
On Saturday, Obama and his wife Michelle called Mandela’s wife Graca Machel, and the president then privately visited several daughters and grandchildren of Mandela, to offer support and prayers.
But he decided against rolling up in his massive entourage at the Pretoria hospital where the 94-year-old Mandela lies, worried that he would disturb his peace.
“I expressed my hope that Madiba draws peace and comfort from the time that he is spending with loved ones,” Obama said in a statement using Mandela’s clan name.
Machel said she drew “strength from the support” of the Obama family.
Mandela, once branded a terrorist by the United States and Britain, was freed in 1990 and became president after the first fully democratic elections in 1994. – AFP
The horror started just before midnight on Wednesday this week.
After listening to the latest television news about the health of Nelson Mandela, a South African family living not far from the former President’s hospital unit turned in for the night.
But Roelof and Laura du Plessis, a married couple with four children who live on a heavily fortified farm outside Pretoria, did not have a peaceful night’s rest.
In fact they were about to become the latest victims of what white pressure groups in this troubled nation say is nothing less than a savage war against them.
Hearing noises outside their home, Mr du Plessis, 46, got out of bed and ran outside.
To his horror, he found his 19-year-old son being held with a gun to his head by a gang of five armed black attackers.
Father and son were ordered to lie on the ground. The invaders did not ask for money or the keys to the expensive vehicles in the drive. They were there only to terrorise and kill.
Hearing voices outside, Laura, 44, came out of her bedroom to investigate — and her torch illuminated an awful scene as the gang pointed guns at her husband.
Her son managed to get up and sprint off into the darkness when the men were confused by the flashlight. But Du Plessis was not so lucky.
The intruders opened fire at once, shooting him six times through the throat, lungs and abdomen.
As he writhed on the ground in agony, the men ran off into the night leaving empty bullet cartridges littering the yard.
In the darkness, Laura attempted heart massage on her husband, who could still talk despite his appalling injuries, but to no avail.
When I arrived at the farm on Thursday and was invited in by Mrs du Plessis, I found her with blood still caked under her fingernails after she’d cradled her dying husband.
‘He was shot through the lungs and I was doing CPR,’ she told me, between huge sobs. ‘He said “please go and fetch the car and take me to hospital”. But he was too badly hurt and he died in my arms.’
In the morning, when white friends from neighbouring farms followed the trail of the raiders, they discovered the men had carefully cut through fences and skirted areas with security patrols — suggesting how closely they had planned their route of attack.
‘It is definitely coming down to a race thing,’ Laura du Plessis told me as she was comforted by her family. ‘They hate white people. We have never had a fight with any black people. I always stop and give others a lift. We employ black people.
‘My husband fought for me. I am grateful that he wasn’t tied up and forced to watch me being raped before he was killed. He was an amazing man. He was my life.’
A friend of the family, who asked not to be named, told me he was certain that the killings are part of a sinister, systematic bid to drive white people — and, in particular, farmers — out of South Africa.
‘If this was happening in any other country, the military would be deployed to protect us,’ said the friend. ‘There are gangs moving around the country targeting white people.’
Of course the violence and privations South Africa’s blacks faced under apartheid were just as unforgiveable. Certainly, there would have been more bloodletting after the white government fell in the Nineties were it not for Mandela’s message of reconciliation.
But now, as he nears death, fears are growing that a wave of violence will be unleashed against the white population.
The statistics — and the savagery of the killings — appear to support claims by these residents that white people, and farmers in particular, are being targeted by black criminals.
Little wonder that what unfolded on the Du Plessis homestead has sent tremors of fear through the three-million-strong white community.
Last month alone there were 25 murders of white landowners, and more than 100 attacks, while Afrikaner protest groups claim that more than 4,000 have been killed since Mandela came to power — twice as many as the number of policemen who have died.
It is not just the death toll, but the extreme violence that is often brought to bear, that causes the greatest fear in the white community.
Documented cases of farm killings make for gruesome reading, with children murdered along with their parents, one family suffocated with plastic bags and countless brutal rapes of elderly women and young children.
These horrors have prompted Genocide Watch — a respected American organisation which monitors violence around the world — to claim that the murders of ‘Afrikaner farmers and other whites is organised by racist communists determined to drive whites out of South Africa, nationalise farms and mines, and bring on all the horrors of a communist state’.
Indeed, a disturbing number of whites are terrified that Mandela’s passing will lead to an outpouring of violence from black South Africans, no longer contained by the sheer power of the great man’s presence, which endures today even though he stood down as president in 1999.
For its part, the ruling ANC party dismisses claims that such murders are part of any sinister agenda, pointing out that South Africans of all colours suffer violent crime, and that wealthy whites are simply more likely to be targeted.
Perhaps. But white nerves have not been soothed by the disturbing behaviour of Jacob Zuma, the ANC’s leader and the country’s third black president since Mandela.
There has been an increase in murders of white farmers in a country where there are already 60 murders each day
At a centenary gathering of the African National Congress last year, Zuma was filmed singing a so-called ‘struggle song’ called Kill The Boer (the old name for much of the white Afrikaner population).
As fellow senior ANC members clapped along, Zuma sang: ‘We are going to shoot them, they are going to run, Shoot the Boer, shoot them, they are going to run, Shoot the Boer, we are going to hit them, they are going to run, the Cabinet will shoot them, with the machine-gun, the Cabinet will shoot them, with the machine-gun . . .’
Alongside him was a notorious character called Julius ‘Juju’ Malema, a former leader of the ANC youth league, who is now Zuma’s bitter enemy and is reportedly planning to launch a new political party after Mandela’s death.
A bogeyman to white South Africans, Malema is popular among young blacks, and has also been an enthusiastic singer of Kill The Boer and another song called Bring Me My Machine-Gun.
Polls this week showed a huge surge in support among young black South Africans for his policies, which he says will ignore reconciliation, and fight for social justice in an ‘onslaught against [the] white male monopoly’.
With chilling echoes of neighbouring Zimbabwe, where dictator Robert Mugabe launched a murderous campaign to drive white farmers off the land in 2000, Malema wants all white-owned land to be seized without compensation, along with nationalisation of the country’s lucrative mines.
Ominously, Malema, 32, who wears a trademark beret and has a fondness for Rolex watches, this month promised his new party will take the land from white people without recompense and give it to blacks.
‘We need the land that was taken from our people, and we are not going to pay for it,’ he said. ‘We need a party that will say those who were victims of apartheid stand to benefit unashamedly, and those who perpetuated apartheid must show remorse and behave in a manner that says they regret their conduct.’
Enthusiastically backed by Winnie Mandela, Nelson’s second wife — who is still hugely popular in South Africa despite her suspected role in several murders — Malema is a charismatic figure who once threw a BBC correspondent out of a press conference for asking about his wealthy lifestyle.
His words have done nothing to allay the fears of white communities, some of which have taken extreme measures to protect themselves.
This week I visited Kleinfontein in Pretoria, a white-only community of 1,000 men, women and children who live behind high fences, with a gatehouse manned by men in military fatigues, who also carry out regular patrols of the grounds to prevent black intruders entering.
Anyone without an appointment with an official resident is refused entry. If they are black, they will not get in at all.
Inside, there is a shopping mall, while the town has its own water supply and sewage system. All manual work is carried out by white residents.
There is a rugby pitch, opulent homes overlooking miles of open countryside where antelope and zebra roam, and a hospital for the elderly residents.
Most crucially of all, in a country with 60 murders a day, there is no armed robbery, murder or rape in Kleinfontein. ‘An old lady can draw money here without any fear,’ says Marisa Haasbroek, a resident, mother of two teenage girls, and my guide for the morning.
‘It’s safe, quiet and peaceful. It’s not racist — it is about protecting our Afrikaner cultural identity.’
Like all the residents, she is descended from the first Afrikaners, the Dutch settlers who came to South Africa and were driven into the African interior on the famous Great Trek during the war with the British from 1899 to 1902.
Kleinfontein has been in existence since Mandela’s first presidency in 1994 — but its existence remained largely unknown until reports last year that black police officers had been barred from entry to the property.
To get round race laws, Kleinfontein insists its criteria for entry are not based on skin colour. It claims to exist to protect distinct Afrikaans-speaking people and culture, and that English-speaking white people are also banned, so the community is non-racist.
The Afrikaners, of course, were those who devised and presided over apartheid, a gruesome social experiment that did so much to divide the nation and subjugate the black population.
With Mandela on a life support machine, the founders of this community in the so-called ‘Rainbow Nation’ were this week being inundated with requests by other whites to join them.
‘I think there will be trouble,’ Anna, an elderly lady tending her garden inside the all-white compound, tells me.
‘There may be tribal warfare first between the black races. Then they might turn on us.’
Standing near a sign written in Afrikaans stating ‘ons is hier om te bly’ (we are here to stay), Marike, another resident, was convinced that there is a sinister plot to kill all whites.
‘You don’t attack farms and rape 80-year-old women with broken bottles and kill their husbands for a mobile phone,’ Marike says. ‘People say it’s not genocide — but it is.’ – Daily Mail
US President Barack Obama was met Saturday with songs, cheers and laughter from young South Africans at a university in the Soweto area of Johannesburg.
Before he entered the room, the crowd sang songs from the struggle against apartheid and burst into a lively round of Shosholoza, an old miners song from southern Africa with a call and response format that became more lively with each chorus.
As he appeared, Obama shouted out, “Yebo Mzanzi!” or “Yes, South Africa!” to jubilation from the crowd.
The president used the town-hall-style meeting, which was hooked up via video link to several other African nations, to encourage young people to innovate and act on their imaginations.
While Nelson Mandela, the ailing anti-apartheid leader who Obama said was a personal hero and “one of the greatest people in history,” was still in hospital in critical condition, his spirit was felt in the room.
“Building the future you see, realizing the vision you have not only for your own country but for the world – it will not be easy,” Obama told the hundreds of young people in attendance at the University of Johannesburg’s Soweto campus.
“But as you go forward, think of the man who is in our prayers today. Think of 27 years in prison. Think of the hardship and struggles and being away from family and friends,” Obama said, referring to Mandela’s time in jail for opposing white minority rule.
Obama was quick to stress the importance of education, as Mandela had always done, saying it was the “best investment” any country could make in its youth.
Or, indeed, for its politicians. “I don’t want to reinforce for the American press here that Africa is just one big piece of land on the map,” Obama, a Democrat, said in an apparent reference to widely reported claims that former US Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin believed Africa was a country, not a continent.
He was met by loud cheers from the crowd and laughter from his travelling press corps.
The questions he received were often tough, focussing on trade, the environment, women’s rights and even a promise he made to travel to Kenya, his father’s home, during his presidency.
“I’m going to be president for another three and a half years,” he said when asked via a video link from Nairobi why he had not visited the country. “You learn as president that people not only want you to fulfil your promises but want you to fulfil your promises yesterday.”
But Obama admitted that the International Criminal Court warrant out for that country’s new president and vice president had influenced his decision.
“I did not think it was an optimal time for me to visit,” he said but pledged he would still make a trip to Kenya before his time in office ends, which would be 2017.
For many in the crowd, however, the key concerns they had were jobs and economic opportunities. They wanted clear words from the president that he envisioned an economic partnership between the United States and Africa.
“Everywhere I go in Africa, people want to break out of the dependency trap,” Obama said.
“What we need is an Africa that is building, manufacturing, creating value, inventing and then sending those products around the world and receiving products in return under fair terms of trade,” the president said. “If we do that, there is no reason Africa cannot succeed.”
Obama insisted the US was not interested in global domination, a concern often felt strongest in countries once subjected to colonial rule, which milked resources while oppressing their people.
“I was elected to end the wars,” he said, adding that he regularly visits young US soldiers who have been gravely injured in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“This idea that we want to get more involved militarily around the world is not true,” he said.
Obama said the US would rather be “selling iPads and planes” rather than using its military abroad, drawing applause from the crowd, many of whom snapped photos of the president and his large entourage on their smartphones and tablets. – dpa
Former president FW de Klerk has cut short his Europe trip because of former president Nelson’s Mandela’s ill-health, De Klerk’s foundation said on its website on Saturday.
“Mr FW de Klerk and his wife Elita have decided to suspend their current working visit and holiday in Europe because of Mr Mandela’s medical condition,” it said.
“They will arrive back in Cape Town tomorrow. Their thoughts are with the Mandela family during this difficult time and they join in the prayers for an improvement in Mr Mandela’s health.”
There was no further information on whether De Klerk would be visiting Mandela.
It has been three weeks since Mandela was admitted to the Medi-Clinic Heart Hospital in Pretoria.
On Saturday, President Jacob Zuma said his condition was still critical but stable.
“We’re hoping that it [Mandela’s health] is going to improve,” Zuma said at a press briefing on Saturday.
“I think with all the prayers and good wishes that are being made, certainly it would do something.” – Sapa
Barack Obama was barely 15 years old when riots erupted in the South African township of Soweto over a circular concerning the use of Afrikaans and other African languages in black schools. Decades later, its residents are preparing to welcome the US president as a “fellow African”.
Obama, now 51, will host a town hall meeting at a university campus as part of his visit to a crucible of the fight against apartheid, which saw protests break out in 1976 that spread across the country.
Although the white nationalist regime was not defeated, the 1976 riots spawned a new generation of black liberation leaders who continued the struggle while senior figures like Nelson Mandela and others languished in prisons.
While hundreds of anti-Obama protesters marched on the US Embassy in the capital Pretoria, 80 kilometres (50 miles) to the north on Friday, many Sowetans were keenly anticipating the visit by the first black US president.
“I want it to be a message of hope. I hope he talks about important things like education and the importance of going to school,” Christopher Mutangwa, a 20-year-old accounting student, said outside the University of Johannesburg’s (UJ) satellite Soweto campus.
“But I also hope that he can learn something about us and what happened here in Soweto during the struggle,” Mutangwa told AFP.
“He should, because I think he is an African.”
While there were few signs of preparation ahead of the highly anticipated visit at the UJ campus, many residents said they planned to line the streets, or watch the event on television.
“I was planning to visit my grandmother … but now I think I would rather go see Obama,” said Sibongiseni Kekana, 22, who makes a living as a struggling artist.
“Maybe I’ll even sell something to him,” Kekana laughed as he showed AFP around his tin shack, which also doubles as his art studio.
“In any case, I hope for inspiration from him,” Kekana said.
But even with Obama visiting Soweto, the continuing illness of South Africa’s own first black president, Nelson Mandela, never strays far from the conversation.
Mandela, 94, spent a third week in the intensive care section of a Pretoria hospital where he is being treated for a recurring lung infection.
After taking a turn for the worse last weekend, Madiba, as he is popularly known by his clan name, has been showing tentative signs of recovery.
— Two generations of black leaders —
With a possible visit by Obama to the ailing statesman on the cards over the weekend, inevitable comparisons are being drawn in many conversations.
“To me, Madiba represents an older and perhaps more traditional generation of black leaders, while Obama represents the new generation,” Tshepo Mofokeng, 43, told AFP.
“I’m sure he will be welcomed here as an African,” said Mofokeng, as he took some pictures on his mobile phone of his children at the Hector Pieterson Museum, which covers the 1976 uprising.
“I just think he (Obama) is sexy,” his wife Nomsa, 36, added with a laugh.
Even though many people will flock to welcome the US head-of-state, not all Sowetans were happy with his presence and demonstrations were planned for Saturday.
“I don’t think it’s a good thing that he’s coming here,” said Freddy Mhaule, 25.
“Especially with him spying on the world,” he added, referring to the recent revelations about PRISM, the US Internet surveillance programme.
“Obama’s visit will have zero impact on us,” said an art vendor, who only wanted to be identified as “Lebo”, at the Hector Pieterson Museum, which commemorates the death of the youth activist, shot dead in 1976 by apartheid police at the age of 12.
“To me he’s just another politician,” Lebo added, as he tried to sell tourists a wooden model of the Soweto home where Mandela once lived, which today serves as a museum. – AFP
FC Hamman, a South African freelance film-maker, was escorted away by police along with the helicopter camera he was flying with his 21-year-old son Timothy outside the clinic where Mandela (94) has spent three weeks with a lung infection.
After nearly four hours of questioning by police, Hamman was released but the drone camera was confiscated.
“From a security point of view, they are concerned. They are inspecting our equipment to make sure it didn’t violate any security regulations,” Hamman told Reuters, adding police had not pressed any charges for the moment.
“We didn’t realise we were breaking any laws,” he said.
Hamman said he had intended to offer to media organisations the aerial shots of intense activity around the hospital, where crowds of jostling journalists have mingled with well-wishers paying tribute to South Africa’s former president.
“We were careful not to fly over the hospital,” he said.
The intense media scrutiny has angered some of Mandela’s family. Daughter Makaziwe on Thursday lambasted foreign media “vultures” for not respecting his privacy as he lay critically ill.
Hamman said he had already used the home-built flying camera in other film projects and had also assisted police with surveillance work in operations against suspected drug-dealers in the crime-plagued Johannesburg suburb of Eldorado Park.
“You can’t fly one of those things without a permit,” one police officer said at the hospital after Hamman was escorted away. Pretoria police declined to comment further.
The incident came just hours before US President Barack Obama started an official visit to South Africa, which will include stops in Pretoria, Johannesburg and Cape Town.
Asked how he thought Obama’s huge security detail might react if he launched the flying “eye in the sky” in the vicinity of the president, Hamman chuckled: “That would be a mistake.” – Reuters
Scene at the Medi-clinic Heart Hospital in Pretoria
by Laszlo Trankovits
“Viva Mandela! Viva Mandela!” sing the colourfully dressed women dancing in front of the hospital in Pretoria. Children bring pictures they have drawn, teddy bears, dolls and balloons, while adults lay down bouquets and greeting cards.
The closely guarded hospital is increasingly a place of pilgrimage. Behind its walls, national hero Nelson Mandela is struggling for his life.
At night, candles burn in front of the hospital. People are often seen praying together. During the day there is a lot of singing, especially the old anthems of the ANC liberation movement, now South Africa’s ruling party.
Everyone praises the achievements of the now seriously ill former president. A wealthy businessman was permitted to release 100 white doves into the sky on Tuesday in recognition of the work towards reconciliation of the father of South African democracy.
All of South Africa is agitated. Whether in offices, businesses or government offices, in the huts of townships such as Khayelitsha or the luxury villas in Camps Bay and Constantia: Everywhere, radios and televisions chatter constantly, everyone following the news spellbound.
The fate of the grand old man of South Africa is on everyone’s lips. “Let him die with dignity at last,” Cape Town businesswoman Glini Le Roux said, articulating what many are thinking.
The media, who have besieged the hospital for weeks in tents, caravans and satellite vans, have come in for criticism. Mandela’s eldest surviving daughter Makaziwe called foreign journalists camped outside the building “vultures” who were “waiting for the last carcasses.”
“There is an element of racism to their attitude. That is the image that we have as a family,” she said in a TV interview.
Mandela’s struggle is increasingly affecting public life. South Africa’s politicians have put aside all their plans. After President Jacob Zuma hurried to Mandela’s bedside on Wednesday, he announced he would not take part in a regional summit in Mozambique.
Many took this as a sign that Mandela was now dying – or even already dead, as some sensationalist reports had it. On Thursday, there was a surprise: Following his second visit to Mandela’s bedside in 24 hours, Zuma reported his condition had improved.
Mandela’s health has weighed on the visit of US President Barack Obama, who is expected in Johannesburg on Friday with an entourage of about 1,000 people.
“The US diplomats here are deeply concerned,” one of them said, given what would happen in the event of Mandela’s death and the subsequent national mourning.
They know that if Mandela died, the president’s agenda, with a visit to Soweto, academic honors in Johannesburg and Cape Town and a keynote speech in Cape Town – probably on the future of Africa – would be impossible. – dpa
Three family graves at the Qunu, Eastern Cape, home of critically ill former president Nelson Mandela had no human remains when they were exhumed earlier this week, a Mthatha undertaker told Sapa on Friday.
Luvuyo Titi said the Mandela family had asked his company to exhume the graves of Mandela’s oldest son Makgatho Mandela, Mandela’s first daughter Makaziwe, and his second son Madiba Thembekile.
Makgatho Mandela died on January 6, 2005, aged 55; Makaziwe died aged nine months in 1948; and Madiba Thembekile died in a car accident on July 13, 1969, aged 24.
“The family informed us that they obtained permission from the municipality to go ahead with exhumations of the graves,” Titi said.
“When we opened the graves they contained no human remains.”
The exhumations were conducted under the supervision of a municipal health inspector.
Titi reported what he had found to the Mandela family, who called an urgent meeting at the Mandela home on Tuesday.
Two Mandela family members at the meeting told Sapa that Mandela’s grandson, Mandla Mandela, was confronted about ordering the removal of the remains from the family cemetery.
“When the family confronted Mandla about the missing bones, he conceded to having them moved to his home village in Mvezo,” said the relative, who asked to remain anonymous.
“When Mandla was ordered to bring back the remains, he stormed out of the meeting.”
During the meeting, Mandla’s younger brother, Ndaba, said he wanted his father, Makgatho, back.
Mandela family members accused a family elder, Napilisi Mandela, of supporting Mandla.
“He is not supposed to support Mandla as he presides over family affairs,” the relative said.
“The family was not consulted about the first exhumation of the graves.”
On Friday, 16 applicants from the Mandela family applied for an urgent high court interdict against Mandla Mandela, the Eastern Cape health department and the Eastern Cape premier.
Details of the interdict were not made public, with lawyers for the applicants and the State refusing to take questions from the media on the matter.
It emerged in court on Friday that the sheriff of the court was unable to deliver the summons to Mandla Mandela to appear in the Mthatha High Court, as the gate of his Mvezo home was locked. He was also unreachable by telephone.
Mandla Mandela has until Saturday to respond to the interdict. – Sapa
SAPA, the South African Press Association, is bent on anti-white propaganda, it appears. A steady stream of misleading information flows freely from most of its press reports on the ailing health of Mandela.
Here are some of the snippets from SAPA that indicate that the Association is less concerned with news than it is with spreading naked anti-white vitriol. These SAPA reports were written by one Shabtai Gold.
The most recent report includes this gem: “His lungs were damaged during his imprisonment for 27 years under the white-minority regime.”
Mandela, however, lived to be 94 on a continent where the median age is 38 for African men.
Earlier we were treated to this: “Mandela was kept in prison for 27 years by white racist regime”. Mandela was actually in prison for inciting violence, armed struggle and high treason.
The then premier, PW Botha repeatedly stated that he would pardon Mandela if he agreed to a peacefully negotiated settlement.
Mandela plotted instead with fellow communists to violently overthrow the government. Remember the Cold War?
A while ago SAPA reported that “Mandela’s eyes were damaged during his 27 years of imprisonment on Robben island.” But at the ripe old age of 94 Mandela still does not wear glasses.
US President Barack Obama flies to South Africa Friday hoping to pay homage to the legacy of his critically ill hero Nelson Mandela, who is fighting for his life in hospital.
Mandela’s ill health means the two men, who shattered racial boundaries on either side of the Atlantic, are not expected to have a long-anticipated meeting for the cameras.
Still, reflections on Mandela’s extraordinary journey from prisoner to president are likely to permeate Obama’s three-day stay.
Mandela, who turns 95 next month, was rushed to hospital three weeks ago with a recurrent lung disease and has since appeared close to death.
On the eve of the visit, South Africa’s first black president was said to be in a critical condition, but had stabilised since a scare forced his successor Jacob Zuma to cancel a trip to neighbouring Mozambique.
“He is much better today,” said Zuma after seeing Mandela on Thursday for the second time in less than 24 hours.
Yet South Africans, including Mandela’s family, remain braced for the worst.
“I won’t lie. It doesn’t look good,” daughter Makaziwe Mandela said. But “if we speak to him he responds and tries to open his eyes — he’s still there.”
“Anything is imminent, but I want to emphasise again that it is only God who knows when the time to go is,” she told local radio.
Meanwhile Obama, the United States’s first black president, led a chorus of support for the man he dubbed a “hero for the world.”
Mandela’s plight has lent a deeply poignant tone to the visit, around which Obama has built a three-nation Africa tour, and his plans could yet be upended by sudden developments in the ex-president’s condition.
“The president will be speaking to the legacy of Nelson Mandela and that will be a significant part of our time in South Africa,” said deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes.
“The president will treasure any opportunity he has to celebrate that legacy.”
The White House says it is in the hands of the Mandela family and the South African authorities on any aspect of the visit.
“We will obviously be very deferential to the developments that take place and the wishes of the family and the South African government,” Rhodes said.
A visit by Obama to Mandela’s former jail cell on Robben Island, off Cape Town on Sunday would now take on extra “profundity”, he added.
Speaking in Senegal on the first leg of his long-awaited African trip, Obama described Mandela as “a personal hero.”
“I think he is a hero for the world, and if and when he passes from this place, one thing I think we all know is that his legacy is one that will linger on throughout the ages.”
The US president recalled how Mandela had inspired him to take up political activity, when he campaigned for the anti-apartheid movement as a student in the late 1970s.
South Africans have also been marking the life of a man who led their country out of centuries of white rule.
Outside Mandela’s hospital a wall of messages and flowers has become the focal point for a nation saying a long goodbye to one of the greatest figures of the 20th century.
“There is no sadness here. There is celebration. He is a giant,” said Nomhlahla Donry, 57, whose husband served time with the revered leader.
Mandela has been hospitalised four times since December, mostly for a stubborn lung infection.
The man once branded a terrorist by the United States and Britain walked free from prison near Cape Town in 1990.
He went on to negotiate an end to white minority rule and won South Africa’s first fully democratic elections in 1994.
He forged a path of racial reconciliation during his single term as president, before taking up a new role as a roving elder statesman and leading AIDS campaigner.
He stepped back from public life in 2004 and has not been seen in public since the football World Cup finals in South Africa in 2010.
But Mandela still draws vast global interest, interest which now appears to be wearing on his family.
Mandela’s oldest daughter Makaziwe on Thursday slammed the “crass” media frenzy around her critically ill father, likening the press to vultures.
“They violate all boundaries,” she said accusing the foreign press of “a racist element” by crossing cultural boundaries.
“It’s like truly vultures waiting when a lion has devoured a buffalo, waiting there you know for the last carcasses.”
With his health now fading, Mandela’s supporters are starting to show signs of resignation — while preparing to celebrate his legacy.
In the rural village of Qunu where he grew up amid cattle and mud-walled huts, 93-year-old Keqane Keledwane said she was not ready to say goodbye to her neighbour.
“I want him to get well. I don’t want to be the only one left behind,” said Keledwane, who lives across the road from Mandela’s house. “I wish him a long life, my old friend.” – AFP
Former president Nelson Mandela’s condition has improved, the presidency said on Thursday.
“President Jacob Zuma visited former president Nelson Mandela in hospital in Pretoria today, 27 June, and was informed by the medical team that Madiba’s condition has improved during the course of the night.
“He remains critical, but is now stable.”
Zuma added: “I cancelled my visit to Mozambique today so that I can see him and confer with the doctors. He is much better today than he was when I saw him last night.
“The medical team continues to do a sterling job. We must pray for Tata’s health and wish him well. We must also continue with our work and daily activities while Madiba remains hospitalised.”
The presidency’s update contrasted with remarks by Mandela’s eldest daughter that her father did not look well and that the family was living in uncertainty.
“Yes. Tata’s [father] situation is critical. I’m not going to lie. He does not look good,” Makaziwe Mandela said.
She told SABC television she last visited Mandela on Wednesday.
“I can reiterate that Tata is very critical, that anything is imminent, but I want to emphasise again that it is only God who knows when the time to go is.” – Sapa
South Africans prayed and waited on Thursday after another downturn in the condition of ailing anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela forced President Jacob Zuma to cancel a trip to neighboring Mozambique.
Zuma had been due to attend a summit in Maputo of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to discuss regional infrastructure, but pulled out after visiting the 94-year-old former president in hospital late on Wednesday.
“Over the past 48 hours, the condition of former president Madiba has gone down,” presidential spokesman Mac Maharaj told state broadcaster SABC, using the clan name by which Mandela is affectionately known.
On Thursday morning, Mandela’s eldest daughter Makaziwe led a group of his grandchildren to see the retired statesman in the Pretoria hospital where he has been receiving treatment since June 8 for a lung infection.
Makaziwe told SABC radio after her visit that Mandela was responding to touch.
“I won’t lie, it doesn’t look good. But as I say, if we speak to him, he responds and tries to open his eyes. He’s still there. He might be waning off, but he’s still there,” she said.
One granddaughter, Ndileka, described him as “stable” and thanked well-wishers from around the world for their support.
Maharaj had earlier declined to comment on media reports that South Africa’s first black president was on life support, saying his privacy should be respected.
Mandela’s fourth hospitalization in six months has forced a growing realization among South Africans that the man regarded as the father of their post-apartheid “Rainbow Nation” will not be among them forever.
“Mandela is very old and at that age, life is not good. I just pray that God takes him this time. He must go. He must rest,” said Ida Mashego, a 60-year-old office cleaner in Johannesburg’s Sandton financial district.
Mandela is admired around the world as a symbol of resistance to injustice for the way he opposed his country’s apartheid system, spending 27 years in jail, more than half of them on notorious Robben Island.
He is also respected for the way he preached reconciliation after the 1994 transition to multi-racial democracy following three centuries of white domination.
“CELEBRATING HIS LIFE”
U.S. President Barack Obama is due to visit South Africa at the weekend as part of a three-nation Africa tour he has already started in Senegal. Maharaj said it was too early to say whether Obama’s schedule in Johannesburg and Cape Town on Saturday and Sunday might be affected by Mandela’s worsening condition.
Well-wishers’ messages, bouquets and stuffed animals have piled up outside Mandela’s Johannesburg home and the wall of the hospital compound where he is being treated in the capital.
As they headed to work on Thursday, South Africans seemed resigned to the prospect of losing their hero.
“We are all going to feel bad when he passes, but at the same time we will be celebrating his life. He has done so many great things for this country,” said John Ndlovu, a 25-year-old office worker.
Mandela stepped down in 1999 after one five-year term in office.
Since then he has played little role in public life, dividing his time in retirement between his home in the wealthy Johannesburg suburb of Houghton and Qunu, the village in the impoverished Eastern Cape province where he was born.
The public’s last glimpse of him was a brief clip aired by state television in April during a visit to his home by Zuma and other officials from the ruling African National Congress.
At the time, the 101-year-old liberation movement said Mandela was “in good shape”, although the footage showed a thin and frail old man sitting expressionless in an armchair. – Reuters
The throng outside the Medi-clinic Heart Hospital in Pretoria
A convoy of four luxury vehicles fitted with blue lights arrived at the Pretoria hospital on Thursday where former president Nelson Mandela remains critically ill.
Three BMWs and a Mercedes-Benz Vito minivan passed through a security checkpoint at one of the hospital’s entrances. It could not immediately be confirmed whether President Jacob Zuma was in one of the cars.
The convoy arrived not long after Mandela’s relatives left the hospital.
The family members broke their usual visit routine and collected flowers well-wishers had placed outside the Medi-Clinic Heart Hospital.
Ndileka Mandela, a granddaughter of the anti-apartheid icon, said he was in a critical, but stable condition.
Another grandchild, Zoleka Mandela, said it had been a tough time for the family.
“He’s stable, and we’d like to thank everyone for their support,” Zoleka Mandela said.
Ndileka Mandela said the public exposure had not been easy for the family to deal with.
“They’re [the family] anxious; he’s critical but stable. Lots of comfort from the messages of support. It’s harder going through this in the public eye.” – Sapa
Traditional healers in Limpopo held a ceremony at the ANC’s offices in Polokwane on Thursday to pray for former president Nelson Mandela who is critically ill in a Pretoria hospital.
African National Congress Limpopo task team chairman Falaza Mdaka said the traditional healers had asked to perform a ritual at the offices, as it was Mandela’s “home”.
Mdaka said Mandela was a special person and the world still needed him.
“We are pleading for him to continue to be with us. We understand that he is old,” he said.
Tradition healers sang struggle songs and burnt incense, calling on the ancestors to heal the country’s beloved statesman.
“Mandela needs ancestors’ help,” said one of the healers, Sylvester Hlathi.
Mandela, 94, was admitted to the Medi-Clinic Heart Hospital in Pretoria on June 8 for treatment of a recurring lung infection.
The presidency has said that his condition remains critical. – Sapa
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