Nelson Mandela: Master of Forgiveness

Nelson Mandela was a master of forgiveness. South Africa’s first black president spent nearly one-third of his life as a prisoner of apartheid, the system of white racist rule that he described as evil, yet he sought to win over its defeated guardians in a relatively peaceful transition of power that inspired the world.
As head of state, the ex-boxer, lawyer and inmate lunched with the prosecutor who argued successfully for his incarceration, sang the apartheid-era Afrikaans anthem at his inauguration and traveled hundreds of miles to have tea with the widow of Hendrik Verwoerd, the prime minister at the time he was sent to prison who was also the architect of white rule.
It was this generosity of spirit that made Mandela, who died on Thursday at the age of 95, a global symbol of sacrifice and reconciliation in a world often jarred by conflict and division.
Mandela’s stature as a fighter against white racist rule and seeker of peace with his enemies was on a par with that of other men he admired: American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. and Indian independence leader Mohandas K. Gandhi, both of whom were assassinated while actively engaged in their callings.
Mandela’s death deprived the world of one of one of the great figures of modern history and set the stage for days of mourning and reflection about a colossus of the 20th century who projected astonishing grace, resolve and good humor.
South African President Jacob Zuma made the announcement at a news conference late Thursday, saying “we’ve lost our greatest son.”
At times, Mandela embraced his iconic status, appearing before a rapturous crowd in London’s Wembley Stadium soon after his 1990 release from jail. Sometimes, he sought to downplay it, uneasy about the perils of being put on a pedestal. In an unpublished manuscript, written while in prison, Mandela acknowledged that leaders of the anti-apartheid movement dominated the spotlight but said they were “only part of the story,” and every activist was “like a brick which makes up our organization.”
He pondered the cost to his family of his dedication to the fight against the racist system of government that jailed him for 27 years and refused him permission to attend the funeral of his mother and of a son who was killed in a car crash. In court, he described himself as “the loneliest man” during his mid-1990s divorce from Winnie Mandela. As president, he could not forge lasting solutions to poverty, unemployment and other social ills that still plague today’s South Africa, which has struggled to live up to its rosy depiction as the “Rainbow Nation.”
He secured near-mythical status in his country and beyond. Last year, the South African central bank released new banknotes showing his face, a robust, smiling image of a man who was meticulous about his appearance and routinely exercised while in prison. South Africa erected statues of him and named buildings and other places after him. He shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with F. W. de Klerk, the country’s last white president. He was the subject of books, films and songs and a magnet for celebrities.
In 2010, Mandela waved to the crowd at the Soccer City stadium at the closing ceremony of the World Cup, whose staging in South Africa allowed the country, and the continent, to shine internationally. It was the last public appearance for the former president and prisoner, who smiled broadly and was bundled up against the cold.
One of the most memorable of his gestures toward racial harmony was the day in 1995 when he strode onto the field before the Rugby World Cup final in Johannesburg, and then again after the game, when he congratulated the home team for its victory over a tough New Zealand team. Mandela was wearing South African colors and the overwhelmingly white crowd of 63,000 was on its feet, chanting “Nelson! Nelson! Nelson!”
It was typical of Mandela to march headlong into a bastion of white Afrikanerdom — in this case the temple of South African rugby — and make its followers feel they belonged in the new South Africa.
The moment was portrayed in “Invictus,” Clint Eastwood’s movie telling the story of South Africa’s transformation through the prism of sport.
It was a moment half a century in the making. In the 1950s, Mandela sought universal rights through peaceful means but was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964 for leading a campaign of sabotage against the government. The speech he gave during that trial outlined his vision and resolve.
“During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people,” Mandela said. “I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”
He was confined to the harsh Robben Island prison near Cape Town for most of his time behind bars, then moved to jails on the mainland. It was forbidden to quote him or publish his photo, yet he and other jailed members of his banned African National Congress were able to smuggle out messages of guidance to the anti-apartheid movement, and in the final stages of his confinement, he negotiated secretly with the apartheid leaders who recognized change was inevitable.
Thousands died, or were tortured or imprisoned in the decades-long struggle against apartheid, which deprived the black majority of the vote, the right to choose where to live and travel, and other basic freedoms.
So when inmate No. 46664 went free after 27 years, walking hand-in-hand with his wife Winnie out of a prison on the South African mainland, people worldwide rejoiced. Mandela raised his right fist in triumph, and in his autobiography, “Long Walk to Freedom,” he would write: “As I finally walked through those gates … I felt — even at the age of seventy-one — that my life was beginning anew,”
Mandela’s release, rivaled the fall of the Berlin Wall just a few months earlier as a symbol of humanity’s yearning for freedom, and his graying hair, raspy voice and colorful shirts made him a globally known figure.
Life, however, imposed new challenges on Mandela.
South Africa’s white rulers had portrayed him as the spearhead of a communist revolution and insisted that black majority rule would usher in bloody chaos. Thousands died in factional fighting in the runup to democratic elections in 1994, and Mandela accused the government of collusion in the bloodshed. But voting day, when long lines of voters waited patiently to cast ballots, passed peacefully, as did Mandela’s inauguration as president
“Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another and suffer the indignity of being the skunk of the world,” the new president said. “Let freedom reign. The sun shall never set on so glorious a human achievement! God bless Africa! Thank you.”
Mandela also stood hand on heart, saluted by white generals as he sang along to two anthems now one: the apartheid-era Afrikaans “Die Stem,” (“The Voice”) and the African “Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika” (“Lord Bless Africa”).
Since apartheid ended, South Africa has held four parliamentary elections and elected three presidents, always peacefully, setting an example on a continent where democracy is still new and fragile. However, corruption scandals and other missteps under the ruling African National Congress, the liberation group once led by Mandela, have undercut some of the early promise.
President Jacob Zuma periodically observes that the South African white minority is far wealthier than the black majority, an imbalance that he regards as a vestige of the apartheid system that bestowed most economic benefits on whites.
When Mandela came to power, black South Africans anticipated quick fixes after being denied proper housing, schools and health care under apartheid. The new government, however, embraced free-market policies to keep white-dominated big business on its side and attract foreign investment. The policy averted the kind of economic deterioration that occurred in Zimbabwe after independence; South Africa, though, has one of the world’s biggest gaps between rich and poor.
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born July 18, 1918, the son of a tribal chief in Transkei, a Xhosa homeland that later became one of the “Bantustans” set up as independent republics by the apartheid regime to cement the separation of whites and blacks.
Mandela’s royal upbringing gave him a regal bearing that became his hallmark. Many South Africans of all races would later call him by his clan name, Madiba, as a token of affection and respect.
Growing up at a time when virtually all of Africa was under European colonial rule, Mandela attended Methodist schools before being admitted to the black University of Fort Hare in 1938. He was expelled two years later for his role in a student strike.
He moved to Johannesburg and worked as a policeman at a gold mine, boxed as an amateur heavyweight and studied law.
His first wife, nurse Evelyn Mase, bore him four children. A daughter died in infancy, a son was killed in a car crash in 1970 and another son died of AIDS in 2005. The couple divorced in 1957 and Evelyn died in 2004.
Mandela began his rise through the anti-apartheid movement in 1944, when he helped form the ANC Youth League.
He organized a campaign in 1952 to encourage defiance of laws that segregated schools, marriage, housing and job opportunities. The government retaliated by barring him from attending gatherings and leaving Johannesburg, the first of many “banning” orders he was to endure.
After a two-day nationwide strike was crushed by police, he and a small group of ANC colleagues decided on military action and Mandela pushed to form the movement’s guerrilla wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, or Spear of the Nation.
He was arrested in 1962 and sentenced to five years’ hard labor for leaving the country illegally and inciting blacks to strike.
A year later, police uncovered the ANC’s underground headquarters on a farm near Johannesburg and seized documents outlining plans for a guerrilla campaign. At a time when African colonies were one by one becoming independent states, Mandela and seven co-defendants were sentenced to life in prison.
The ANC’s armed wing was later involved in a series of high-profile bombings that killed civilians, and many in the white minority viewed the imprisoned Mandela as a terrorist. The apartheid government, meanwhile, was denounced globally for its campaign of beatings, assassinations and other violent attacks on opponents.
Even in numbing confinement, Mandela sought to flourish.
“Incidentally, you may find that the cell is an ideal place to learn to know yourself, to search realistically and regularly the process of your own mind and feelings,” he wrote in 1975 to Winnie Mandela, a prominent activist in her own right who was in a separate jail at that time.
Mandela turned down conditional offers of freedom during his decades in prison. In 1989, P.W. Botha, South Africa’s hard-line president, was replaced by de Klerk, who recognized apartheid’s end was near. Mandela continued, even in his last weeks in prison, to advocate nationalizing banks, mines and monopoly industries — a stance that frightened the white business community.
But talks were already underway, with Mandela being spirited out of prison to meet white government leaders. After his release, he took charge of the ANC, and was elected president in a landslide in South Africa’s first all-race election.
Perceived successes during Mandela’s tenure include the introduction of a constitution with robust protections for individual rights, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which he established with his fellow Nobelist, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It allowed human rights offenders of all races to admit their crimes publicly in return for lenient treatment. Though not regarded as wholly successful, it proved to be a kind of national therapy that would become a model for other countries emerging from prolonged strife.
Despite his saintly image, Mandela was sometimes a harsh critic. When black journalists mildly criticized his government, he painted them as stooges of the whites who owned the media. Some whites with complaints were dismissed as pining for their old privileges.
In the buildup to the Iraq War, Mandela harshly rebuked President George W. Bush. “Why is the United States behaving so arrogantly?” he asked in a speech. “All that (Bush) wants is Iraqi oil.” He suggested Bush and then British Prime Minister Tony Blair were racists, and claimed America, “which has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world,” had no moral standing.
Until Bush repealed the order in 2008, Mandela could not visit the U.S. without the secretary of state certifying that he was not a terrorist.
To critics of his closeness to Fidel Castro and Moammar Gadhafi despite human rights violations in the countries they ruled, Mandela explained that he wouldn’t forsake supporters of the anti-apartheid struggle.
To the disappointment of many South Africans, he increasingly left the governing to Deputy President Thabo Mbeki, who won the next presidential election and took over when Mandela’s term ended in 1999.
“I must step down while there are one or two people who admire me,” Mandela joked at the time. When he retired, he said he was going to stand on a street with a sign that said: “Unemployed, no job. New wife and large family to support.”
His marriage to Winnie had fallen apart after his release and he married Graca Machel, the widowed, former first lady of neighboring Mozambique.
With apartheid vanquished, Mandela turned to peacemaking efforts in other parts of Africa and the world and eventually to fighting AIDS, publicly acknowledging that his own son, Makgatho, had died of the disease.
Mandela’s final years were marked by frequent hospitalizations as he struggled with respiratory problems that had bothered him since he contracted tuberculosis in prison.
He stayed in his rural home in Qunu in Eastern Cape province, where Hillary Clinton, then U.S. secretary of state, visited him in 2012, but then moved full-time to his home in Johannesburg so he could be close to medical care in Pretoria, the capital.
He is survived by Machel; his daughter Makaziwe by his first marriage, and daughters Zindzi and Zenani by his second.

SOURCE:http://www.theepochtimes.com

Egypt’s regime moves to outlaw January 25 revolution

The anti-protest law is an attempt by al-Sisi’s military regime to break the Revolution’s power. Instead, it is bringing Egyptians back into the streets.

On November 26, 2013, the “No Military Trials for Civilians” group in Cairo held a protest in front of the Shoura Council, against the new Constitution’s provision allowing military trials for civilians. The Interior Ministry dispersed the protest by force, thanks to the new protest law enacted by the government 2 days earlier.

The government had already tried to use the law to repress protests before. Under Morsi, during the 2012 Mohamed Mahmoud Street clashes; at Ittihadiyah; and during the second anniversary of the Revolution, Hisham Qandeel’s government had tried to pass a law to repress protests. But the Revolution was not silenced, the law was not passed; and we all know the result.

Even before, the Supreme Council of Armed Forces had tried to do the same thing. As soon as they took power, they passed a law criminalizing protests and strikes. But the Revolution was not silenced, and once again, rulers were unable to enforce the law.

South Africa’s untold tragedy of neoliberal apartheid

Twenty years after apartheid, the old freedom fighters of the ANC have come to reproduce the same structures of oppression against which they once arose.

We were driving down the N3 highway on our way back home from the Eastern port city of Durban, passing by the endless lines of improvised shacks that constitute the Katlehong township just outside Johannesburg, when we saw the flashing blue lights of a police car in the distance. As we approached, a horrific scene revealed itself. A local slumdweller, probably somewhere in his thirties, lay dead on the side of the road, his body awkwardly twisted into an impossible position, his eyes still wide open. Some two hundred meters ahead, a car had pulled over on the curb, its driver casually leaning on the vehicle while talking to a policeman. No one had even bothered to cover up the body. This man just lay there like a dead animal — another road kill in endless wave of needlessly extinguished lives.

Every year, more than 14.000 people are killed on the road in South Africa, an average of 38 per day — nearly half of whom are pedestrians. Of the other half, many die as overloaded buses, micro-vans or so-called bakkies crash during the daily commute from the townships to the city to work as waiters, clerks or house maids. Just today, a bus full of commuters slammed into a truck on a narrow and potholed road to Pretoria, killing 29. But in the aggregate, tragedies like these are only numbers in a cold statistical series. The front pages of the country’s newspapers remain splattered with horror stories and graphic photos of brutal killings, as fifty people are murdered daily. Another 770 people die from AIDS every day. A total of 5.7 million, or 18% of South Africans, is HIV/AID infected, the highest infection rate in the world. Needless to say, one of the bloody red lines that runs through the broken social fabric of this heartbreakingly beautiful country is that human life is accorded shockingly little value.

“They Only Care About Power, Not People”

All of this became painfully obvious in August last year when militarized police forces violently cracked down on a wildcat miners’ strike in the platinum town of Marikana. In the ensuing bloodbath, the most serious bout of state violence since the Sharpville massacre of 1960 and the end of apartheid in 1994, 34 workers were killed after being peppered with machine gun fire at close range. Needless to say, the Marikana massacre brought back painful memories of police brutality under white minoritarian rule. This time, however, the policemen and politicians responsible for the massacre were mostly black and represented the same party that had once led the struggle against racial oppression: the ruling ANC of President Jacob Zuma and the iconic freedom fighter Nelson Mandela. The Marikana massacre was the most powerful expression yet that little had changed below the surface. The violence of the state simply reasserted itself anew under the ANC.

Today, the ANC faces a growing crisis of legitimacy. While it is still on course to win next year’s elections, disillusionment with the party and its leaders has become widespread even among its traditional support base: poor people living in the shantytowns. “The ANC today is all about power, not the people,” union organizer Teboho Masiza said during the one-year commemoration of the massacre in August this year. “They are supposed to be here to listen to the problems of the people of South Africa. But they are nowhere to be seen. They only look after themselves.” Andile Nkoci, a young miner from the East Cape, said he felt betrayed: “They have abandoned us. They are only looking to make money for themselves.” Another miner, Alton Dalasile, more recently echoed the exact same frustration: “They have abandoned and betrayed us. The ANC is no longer the party of the poor man, the working man. They care only about enriching themselves.”

DROGBA AND EBOUE SANCTIONED FOR MANDELLA

DIDIER Drogba and Emmanuel Eboue face
fines from the Turkish FA after displaying
vests bearing tributes to Nelson Mandela.
The two Ivory Coast internationals unveiled
their personal messages after Galatasaray’s
game against Elazigspor on Friday, their first
game after the death of South African icon
Mandela.
Chelsea legend Drogba peeled off his shirt at
the 2-0 win to reveal a tribute which said:
‘Thank you Madiba’ and former Arsenal
defender Eboue’s vest said: ‘Rest in Peace
Nelson Mandela’.
Eboue and Drogba
The Turkish FA (TFF) are planning to summon
the Galatasaray pair to appear before the
Professional Football Discipline Committee
because they had not sought prior permission
to display their messages.
It is in contrast to England where games this
weekend have been preceded by a minute of
applause in celebration of Mandela’s life and
his role in ending apartheid in South Africa
and transforming the international profile of
Africa.
Plans to discipline Drogba and Eboue are
certain to attract criticism and fuel debate in
Turkey, where the TFF are trying to keep
political imagery out of football as directed by
FIFA, although it has proved increasingly
difficult in a football-crazy nation beset by
political tension.

Amid protests, Thailand's PM Yingluck Shinawatra dissolves parliament

 An anti-government protester blows a whistle in front of Thai flags during a rally at Bangkok's Democracy Monument on Friday, one day after the embattled Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra survived a no-confidence vote in parliament.

Anti-government protesters blow whistles as they rally at the Department Special Investigation in Bangkok on November 27, 2013. Flag-waving protesters vowing to topple the Thai prime minister took to the streets of Bangkok for a fourth day Wednesday, declaring they would take over "every ministry" of the government. 

Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra dissolved the nation's parliament Monday and called for new elections. But the move did little to appease anti-government protesters who remained on the streets by the thousands.

Between 100,000 and 150,000 demonstrators rallied in Bangkok, with protest leaders said their goal Monday is to storm Shinawatra's office, known as Government House.

"I don't want our country and the Thai people to suffer from more losses," Yingluck said in a televised address. "I have decided to dissolve the house."

A day earlier, Thailand's main opposition party said its roughly 150 members would resign en masse from parliament because they could no longer work with the government.

"This government is no longer justified to run the country, as this house is no longer justified. Today we resign to express that stance," opposition party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva said.

Dissolving parliament and calling elections appear unlikely to placate protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban, a former deputy prime minister for the Democrat Party. He has called for power to be transferred to an unelected "people's council."

Thaksin's influence

During the weeks of demonstrations, protesters have occupied various government offices. The rallies have been mostly peaceful, but clashes between protesters and government supporters on November 30 left five people dead.

Protesters and police, who had confronted each other with tear gas and rocks in parts of Bangkok last week, agreed to a truce Tuesday in a show of respect for Thailand's revered king, who celebrated his 86th birthday Thursday.

Protest leaders have said they want to rid Thailand of the influence of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the older brother of Yingluck.

That's an ambitious goal in a country where parties affiliated with Thaksin, who built his political success on populist policies that appealed to Thailand's rural heartland, have won every election since 2001.

Thaksin was ousted in a military coup in 2006 and has spent most of the time since then in exile overseas. If he returns, he risks a two-year prison sentence on a corruption conviction, which he says was politically motivated.

The current protests in Bangkok were prompted by a botched attempt by Yingluck's government to pass an amnesty bill that would have opened the door for her brother's return.

That move added fuel for critics who accuse Yingluck of being nothing more than Thaksin's puppet, an allegation she has repeatedly denied.

SOURCE:www.cnn.com

Free at last: Five headline-making exonerations

The exact number of exonerated American prisoners is unknown. But data gathered by university law schools indicates it's more than 2,000. Fascinating details surrounding some of these exonerations set them apart from the rest. Here are five recent exonerations that made headlines.

1. Michael Morton

The subject of a CNN film, Michael Morton wasn't home when his wife, Christine, was beaten to death in front of their 3-year-old son at their Austin, Texas-area home in 1986. But a prosecutor said the evidence suggested otherwise. The problem was, the jury was prevented from hearing all the evidence in the case.

Wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison, a team of loyal supporters and DNA evidence helped Morton win his freedom in 2011. Last month, Morton's former prosecutor pleaded no contest to a court order to show cause regarding evidence that was not used in the trial.

2. Brian Banks and the incredible twist

At age 17, fearing a potentially long sentence, college football hopeful Brian Banks followed the advice of his attorney and pleaded no contest to assaulting a Long Beach, California, high school classmate in 2002.

Banks maintained his innocence throughout nearly six years of imprisonment, subsequent probation and registration as a sex offender.

But in 2011, the case took an incredible twist when the alleged victim sent Banks a Facebook friend request.

According to the California Innocence Project, the woman later admitted that Banks had not kidnapped or raped her during a consensual encounter at Long Beach Polytechnic High School, where Banks was a middle linebacker with a scholarship offer from the University of Southern California.

pictures at memorial service for Nelson Mandela at ASO VILLA CHAPEL ON DECEMBER 8, 2013

A memorial service was held for late President Nelson Mandela at the Aso Villa Chapel today. Meanwhile President Jonathan will leave Abuja tomorrow evening Monday December 9th to join other world leaders in South Africa at events leading up to the burial of Dr. Nelson Mandela. See more photos from the Abuja memorial service after the cut...

- See more at: http://www.reubenabati.com.ng/PRESIDENT-JONATHAN-TO-ATTEND-MEMORIAL-SERVICE.html#sthash.oJ39gbnU.dpuf

Nelson Mandela: A Tribute- EMEKA ANYAOKU

In the gallery of world statesmen of the twentieth century, Nelson Mandela occupies an exceptional position.  His name will be forever linked with the struggle of the South African people to end apartheid, the coping stone of the racism and the injustices to which they had been subjected for so long.  However, this is not the heart of the matter.  What sets Mandela apart in world history is the charity with which he led the struggle against apartheid and at the rendezvous of victory, successfully barred the way to any form of recrimination or racial vainglory on the part of the victorious majority.  It was the end to which every step in his long and eventful journey had been directed.

I will leave it to his countrymen and comrades who were by his side in the heat and dust of the struggle, to tell the world of the unique qualities of leadership he brought to bear; and confine myself to only what I saw of him as we worked together to achieve a negotiated end to apartheid especially in the wake of his release from prison in February 1990.

At the beginning of 1986, I visited South Africa. with the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group (EPG) appointed by Commonwealth leaders to bring about negotiations between the apartheid regime and the opposing political parties.  Mandela was still in prison at Pollsmoor, and it was there that we met him.  He had been incarcerated for 23 years, but the years of incarceration appeared to have left no mark on his spirit that I could detect.  A number of other things also struck me about him: his personality was both warm and magnetic; he exuded a natural and effortless authority; and although already well into his sixties, he remained ramrod straight in spite of his unusual height.  Here, I concluded, was one of nature’s true aristocrats.  I knew and felt that we were in the presence of a special being, and so when later I came to write about him, I recalled William Hazlitt’s essay on ‘Mind and Motive’ where he paid tribute to those “who walked by faith and hope,” who “live in the midst of arrows and of death” but on whom the world has no hold.

The apartheid regime’s Minister for Prisons, Kobie Coetsee, had requested that he and his officials be present at our meeting with the inmate Nelson Mandela. It was left to the two EPG Co-Chairmen and myself first to ascertain Mandela’s reaction to the request. I still remember the magisterial confidence with which he told us: “Let him and his team be at our discussions because there is nothing I will say to you that I have not told them”.

We briefed Mandela on the discussions at the Nassau  Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting that had led to the appointment of the EPG and its mandate. He listened attentively, and expressed wholehearted support for the mission.  However, in the same breath, he stressed that while he personally supported the objectives, he could not speak for the ANC.  Only the leadership in Lusaka could speak on behalf of the party, and he hoped we would go there to seek the party’s view.  This epitomised Mandela’s unique humility and modesty. The world might regard him as the embodiment and conscience of the struggle but he insistently saw himself at that moment and always, as no more than an individual within the party, deferring to the party leadership at every turn.

In July 1990, four months after Mandela had finally been released from prison, I assumed office as Commonwealth Secretary-General. In May of the same year, during Mandela’s visit to Nigeria, we had begun to plan on how to work together to ensure the success of the negotiations between the South African Government and all other political parties. Over that period, a warm friendship developed between us leading to his writing the Foreword both to my Memoirs and to my biography.

It was in that May that we agreed that my very first official dinner in my first week in office in London, would be one in his honour to provide him with an opportunity to engage with major business companies with interests in South Africa. My wife and I hosted the dinner on 5 July, 1990 at the headquarters of the Royal Commonwealth Society. Nelson, and his former wife, Winnie attended, together with the representatives of 42 major companies operating in South Africa.

On another one of his visits to London, at the end of a lunch I hosted for him in my residence, Mandela made the following remarks which again epitomised the special person he was. In a reminiscent vein, he spoke about the divisions within South African society that the Second World War had brought about, and the contrasting positions between his father’s generation and his own.  The older generation was ambivalent as to which side to support.  In their view, there was nothing to commend the white South African Government which was supporting Britain with the Prime Minister General Smuts in the forefront of the war effort.  They could not overlook the fact that they had taken Britain’s side in the Anglo-Boer war only to have their hopes of a better deal betrayed. Mandela observed that his own generation took a different position. As they viewed the situation, the stakes involved in the Second World War were much greater than any local grievances, however protracted, and for this reason, they worked and prayed for a British victory.  The higher good, not the parochial advantage: that was what always guided Mandela.

In December 1991, the long expected and hoped for negotiations between the government and the political  parties were finally launched at Kempton Park in Johannesburg within the framework of the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA). I sent a small but high powered group of senior Commonwealth statesmen to the inauguration, not only to show support for the process, but also to underscore the importance that the Commonwealth attached to the success of the negotiations.  However, just as the talks were beginning to make progress, a wave of violence broke out in many parts of the country, including a massacre of no less than six supporters of the ANC at Boipatong.

Following discussions with Mandela in Dakar, Senegal where he had been invited to an OAU summit meeting, I hurried back to South Africa to negotiate with the State President F W de Klerk and the leaders of the opposition political parties, for international observers to be sent to the country.  As a consequence, the Commonwealth, the United Nations, the European Union and the Organisation for African Unity (OAU), in effect the entire international community, sent observers to contain and help end the violence.  

If the violence had been allowed to subvert the negotiations, it would have been the end of everything that Nelson Mandela and his generation had worked for.  To be sure, the struggle would have resumed, but in those circumstances it would have been practically impossible to keep it within the old, established moral perimeters:  non-racialism and minimum violence.  These were values that the ANC leadership had worked so hard to inculcate into black South Africans over the years, values that had been overwhelmingly accepted.  The South Africa that might have emerged from such a renewed struggle would be one reared on dust and ashes and Mandela did not care to think of such a society.  In this affirmation the real Mandela stood out. It remains an unforgettable image in my mind and, I am sure, in the minds of many others who were present at the Union Buildings amphitheatre in Pretoria on May 10, 1994 to witness Nelson Mandela take the oath of office as the first democratically elected President of South Africa. I still remember the tears of joy that rolled down the faces of so many at that wonderful occasion.

At the end of apartheid there were voices within the country that wanted some of the egregious racist criminals, in the days of apartheid, to be tried and punished.  They may not have put their demands in terms of Nuremberg, but that was clearly the spirit of what they were asking for.   The decision to replace a Nuremberg-style process with a Truth and Reconciliation process was a dramatic exemplification of the best of a national leader, allowing his head to see further than his heart  when confronted with an intractable moral problem.  The world has been several shades saner and safer for that rare example of statesmanship.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, another South African, Olive Schreiner, said that “the problem which this century will have to solve is the accomplishment of this interaction of distinct human varieties on the largest and most beneficent lines, making for the development of humanity as a whole”.  Olive Schreiner saw a special role for South Africa in contributing to bring about this “interaction of distinct human varieties” and concluded that on the power of South Africans “to solve it regally and heroically depends our greatness.”

In Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, South Africa finally found the man who gave the lead to the people of South Africa in all their “human varieties” to resolve the intractable challenge of apartheid regally and heroically.

Nelson Mandela was a rare human being. What an honour and privilege it is to have been associated with him.
Hamba Kale, Madiba. Go well, and may your succession never end.

SOURCE: www.thisdaylive.com

Madiba: A symbol of the power of good

Nelson Mandela will be remembered as a symbol for wisdom, for the ability to change, and the power of reconciliation - an obituary by Mark Gevisser.

The words "Nelson Mandela is dead" feel strange in the mouth today, almost impossible to say, given the unique way he was both martyred and canonised during his lifetime. He embodies a paradox: on the one hand we love him for his humanity; on the other, he already passed long ago from the world of the flesh. He is a peak of moral authority, rising above the soulless wasteland of the 20th century; he is a universal symbol for goodness and wisdom, for the ability to change, and the power of reconciliation. In person, he was not notably affectionate, but his image beams a very particular sensation: you just look at him and you feel held, hugged.
Mandela epitomised those instincts we most associate with childhood: trust, goodness, optimism; an ability to vanquish the night's demons with the knowledge that the sun will rise in the morning. But he also made us feel good, and warm, and safe, because he found a way to play an ideal father, beyond the confines of his biological family or even his national one. He was the father we would all have wanted if we could have designed one. He was wise with age, benignly powerful, comfortingly irascible, stern when we needed containing, breathtakingly courageous, affirming when we needed praise – and, of course, possessed of the two childlike qualities that make for the best of fathers: an exhilarating playfulness and a bottomless capacity to forgive.
Mandela is often paired with MK Gandhi. Unlike the godly Indian liberator, however, he was an unapologetic (even if delightfully self-deprecating) patriarch. A leader's claim that his subjects are his children can be the very definition of tyranny, but what made Mandela so singular a leader of modern times is the way he re-appropriated such clichés. He inhabited his paternity in such a way that it seemed fresh and emancipatory even as it comforted in the way it recalled more traditional understandings of what a leader should be.
In his own life, he was a failure as a father – in part, but not entirely, because of his three decades of incarceration. His daughter Maki once said to him, describing a rebuffed hug: "You are a father to all our people, but you have never been a father to me." Like so many great leaders, he found refuge from the difficulties of familial intimacy in politics and struggle – in the family of humanity. This led to a personality that combined "extreme heartiness with impenetrable reserve", as Arthur Schlesinger famously described Franklin Roosevelt, cited by Anthony Sampson in his biography of Mandela.
For most of humanity, only the heartiness was visible. "Ah, Elizabeth!" he once greeted the British queen with a rural bellow as she approached him at Buckingham Palace, folding her in embrace. "You are as beautiful as ever! How do you manage to keep so young?" While courtiers and diplomats expired with embarrassment at his multiple faux pas, the queen simply blushed – and giggled: "Nelson!"
Perhaps America's former president Bill Clinton put his finger on the power of the Mandela icon when he welcomed his fellow-president to Washington in 1998. Speaking of the universal experience of suffering and hatred as an "apartheid of the heart", Clinton said that the world adulated Mandela because it sought "wisdom from the power of his example to do whatever we can, however we can, wherever we can, to take the apartheid out of our own and others' hearts".
Second chances
Just as apartheid became a global semaphore for evil, so too did Mandela come to symbolise the power of good. More than that: the impulse, in an increasingly malevolent world, to look evil in the eye and do good. Listen, for example, to Clinton's description – 10 years after the above comment – of the roots of Mandela's sanctity: "Mandela is a very godly man because he's the living embodiment of the importance of second chances in life: giving them and getting them, and becoming bigger through adversity."
Mandela got his second chance – at liberty, at leadership, at love. Forgiveness allows both victim and perpetrator to start again, and the way that Mandela bettered himself through adversity serves as an object lesson to us all: if he can walk out of 27 years in jail without anger or the desire for retribution, we too can rise above our petty problems and disputes. Brilliantly, Mandela set himself up to embody the nation – and then, as he saw his effect, to allow himself to be turned into a symbol for that best of human impulses: the desire to make things better. He made a fetish of his biography. As he was in chains, so were we; as he managed to negotiate himself into freedom, so could we; as he forgave his oppressors and his adversaries, so must we. Now, though, this makes his death more complicated: witness ANC chief whip Mathole Motshekga's inane comments, made when Mandela was admitted to hospital in June 2013, that the ill man's "well-being is a barometer for the well-being of the nation".
The Jesus imagery has always been present. Listen to Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu: "Suffering can of course embitter the one who suffers. But in many other circumstances it can ennoble the sufferer. We are richly blessed that the latter happened with Mandela."
But to view Mandela's prison experience solely through the prism of revelation is to misunderstand his life. Certainly, he went into jail a militant hot-head (in the 1940s, if you needed a meeting broken up you called Mandela) and came out a profound statesman. Even if prison damaged him irrevocably in some senses – how could it not? – he did succeed in using it as both a political laboratory and a place of profound introspection. Sampson describes how he was "cut off from mass audiences, public images and television cameras, stripped down to man-to-man leadership and to the essentials of human relationships". He thus "learned about human sensitivities and how to handle the fears and insecurities of others, including his Afrikaner warders. He was sensitised by his own sense of guilt about [the] family and friends he had used during his political career." Mandela, writes Sampson, was "racked by remorse" about his absence as a husband and a father. By coming to see himself as an actor – a perpetrator, if you like – as well as a victim, he developed his most admirable quality: a capacity for empathy.
He used this to formidable effect, and while he may indeed have lived the racial reconciliation he preached, this is critical to any understanding of the man and his political gifts: he deployed empathy as a strategy to get what he wanted – for himself while in prison, for his people, and for his country. He learned Afrikaans in prison not because it was a beautiful language or even because he wished to use the master's tools to destroy the master's house, but so that he could sweet-talk his warders into granting him and his fellow-prisoners the concessions that would make their lives more bearable.
He came upon his almost inhuman lack of bitterness and desire for reconciliation in the prison laboratory because he saw that this approach lifted the scrim of prejudice from his savage captors' eyes and transformed them into human beings. Once they were human, they could reason, and once they could reason, they would – as he had – understand that South Africans' futures were interlocked, and that they were dependent on each other.
Politics of gesture
He might have had an extraordinary instinct, but he was profoundly instrumentalist: he often told intimates that his legendary humour was part of his "sense of duty", used either to help his interlocutors relax, or to disarm them, or both, depending on the circumstance. He did not take a step – do a jig – without calculating its odds.
From the way he cultivated a romantic "Black Pimpernel" image while in hiding during the 1960 state of emergency, through to the way used the 1995 Rugby World Cup to deepen his project of racial reconciliation, he was a master at the politics of gesture. Even his legendary public outburst at FW de Klerk during the 1992 multiparty negotiations cannot be simply described as a pot boiling over: it was carefully calibrated to humiliate the South African president at a key moment, thereby demonstrating both to recalcitrant whites and to impatient blacks that the balance of power had shifted. As Jacob Zuma once told me – speaking, no doubt, from personal experience – if you wanted to win a battle, you needed to get Mandela on to your side.
The conventional wisdom is that Mandela's extraordinary sense of self, unassailable by even the grossest depredations of apartheid, has its roots in his heritage as a Thembu noble. While there is truth to this, he bore another – potentially damaging – legacy from childhood: he was also a fatherless son, taken on by the Thembu king out of obligation to a trusted adviser. From a distant branch of the royal house, he was raised to be a courtier himself, without the expectation of ever attaining power. This trained him to be frank and strategic. He was an outsider – both in the Thembu royal house and in the ranks of the ANC elite he would find in Johannesburg – and he would need wit and courage and charisma to match his ambition.
He was always a maverick within the ANC. In two critical instances, he took on the conventional wisdom in his movement and won. In the 1940s and 1950s, when the ANC was the preserve of conservative "Black Englishmen", he advocated taking up arms and fomenting insurrection; three decades later, when the ANC was too often blindly following revolutionary theory, he insisted on laying down these arms, even if it meant being branded a sellout. He was deeply and intractably loyal to the ANC – and often, to a fault, to many of his comrades in it its leadership. But, unlike his successors Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma, he transcended membership of the "ANC family" into the "South African family" once he came out of jail, and self-consciously sought to embody the nation rather than just the movement.
It is naive to believe, as many in both the ANC and his own family have, that he was duped by his advisers into setting up his Nelson Mandela Foundation, outside of both family and party, as custodian to his legacy: he did this very deliberately, precisely so that he could put himself beyond the reach of more atavistic familial or political ties – and remain there, even when he no longer had agency, or life.
But it is equally naive to believe that Mandela was duped into his last – and very grand – public act: appearing before the rapturous masses at the party's final 2008 election rally, as if to grant a benediction to Zuma, the ANC's presidential candidate. Certainly by this point Mandela was, if not in his dotage, then stuck on certain subjects, in the way that very old people often are. One of these subjects was Mbeki: how poorly he had treated Zuma, and how he had wrecked the ANC. Certainly, too, many of Mandela's closest friends and advisers were now firmly in the Zuma camp, including Mac Maharaj, and his own grandson Mandla Mandela.
Still, to the last, the elder Mandela was calculating. He saw how Zuma's global reputation was deeply sullied by both the corruption and the rape charges, and he understood how this might negatively affect South Africa's own global reputation. Zuma would be president with or without Mandela's imprimatur: the elder statesman thus calculated that it would be in the national interest to lend his moral authority to the new leader.
Perhaps, too, Mandela succumbed to Zuma's flattery: the new leader's promises that he would return the ANC to a Mandela style of leadership from which the party had strayed under Mbeki. But even if Mandela's support for Zuma was driven in part by his often-remarked-upon vanity, it had a salutary effect on South African statecraft: it re-established "the Madiba way" as the ANC way, the South African way.
Zuma set out to emulate Mandela, and claimed to subscribe to his values of reconciliation and non-racialism, of accountability and responsiveness. But in Zuma's singular failure as South African president – and the ANC's unwillingness to let go of him – there is an important lesson: an empty template, like an empty icon, can be filled to suit one's own needs. And in the way that Julius Malema distorted Mandela's history in the ANC Youth League to buttress his own ambitions, we saw the Mandela legacy further sullied; a short-cut to demagoguery and tyranny rather than the model for a way out of it. Even when it is practised with the finesse and integrity of a Nelson Mandela, paternalism is ultimately antithetical to democracy.
'This brick once imprisoned me. Now I will hold it captive'
My relationship with Mandela was professional, not personal. I met him frequently as a journalist and interviewed him several times. It is no measure of my prowess that he always recognised me, and sometimes remarked on something I had written: he practised this art indiscriminately, on my colleagues great and small. I learned one great lesson from him, in 2003, when, in my capacity as heritage curator at Constitution Hill, I showed him round the site.
Constitution Hill is the home of South Africa's Constitutional Court, built on the site of Johannesburg's notorious Old Fort prison; constructed, brilliantly, out of the very bricks of the prison, and surrounded by the abandoned old buildings, as if to demonstrate architecturally how the possibilities of South Africa's future are built on the difficulties of its past. Every significant political prisoner passed through the Old Fort's gates, from Gandhi to Mandela, who was held there twice.
On his visit, Mandela was presented by the then-chief justice Arthur Chaskalson (his legal counsel at the Rivonia trial) with one of the bricks of the old jail, encased in glass. As always, after painstakingly greeting every construction worker and cleaner, Mandela said the right thing, upon receiving the brick: "Ah! This brick once imprisoned me. Now I will hold it captive!"
More edifying, for me, was his attitude during the tour of the old prisons. As we pored over a model of the site and explained it to him, and took him to see the cell he was held in when he was arrested in 1962, he seemed listless and even a bit bored. He only lit up when we mentioned to him that there was a new centre for research into and treatment of Aids across the road, animatedly asking questions to which we were not qualified to respond.
His lesson was an invaluable one, and one I am sure he would want us to apply to his own life: do not dwell in the past. Use it, rather, to attack the problems of the present.

SOURCE: http://mg.co.za

Hmmmmmm. Man Gets Caught Manufacturing Fake Cough Syrup In His Toilet

A trader, Chijioke Nwagu, has been apprehended by the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control for allegedly manufacturing and selling counterfeit drugs.

According to NAFDAC, the suspect, who lives on Elemijaye Street, Ajamgbadi area of Lagos State, carries out the illegal manufacture in the toilet of his two-bedroom flat where he mixes chemicals in a
200-litre drum.

Chijioke had been caught after one of his boys, Uzodinma Odoemena, was caught with fake drugs following an intelligence report and surveillance mounted at Alafia, Orile Iganmu, where Nwagu supplies counterfeit Tutolin with codeine cough syrup that he manufactures.

 Odoemena then led investigators to Nwagu’s house where it was discovered that Nwagu carries out the illegal manufacture in the toilet of his house by pouring different locally-manufactured cough syrup of reputable companies into 200 litres drum and after mixing them, he then dispenses them into empty bottles and labels it as Tutolin with codeine cough syrup.

The Director-General of the agency, Dr. Paul Orhii said:

In his house, we found: 

• four cartons of Uniplex cough syrup, 

• four rolls of Bancof cough expectorant,  

• 50 bottles of Dr Meyers’ Coflin Cough Linctus,  

• 1,500 bottles of Exiplon Epectorant,  

• two cartons of Halfan tablet,  

• 200 litres drum,  

• one carton of Dr Nando double 77 keys to power and empty containers of these drugs as well.”

PUNCH Metro learnt that the suspect’s wife, Jane, who was at the house, was also arrested by the agency.
But the suspect explained that he did not plan on selling the goods in Nigeria, saying they were meant for export to Benin Republic.
He said:

“I bought the packaging material of Tutolin with codeine from one Chibuike in China and the product was meant to be supplied to Benin Republic. In the course of my business, I met one Chisom Onwudinjo, who came to my house to see how I manufacture my goods in my house. 

“He subsequently agreed to be my distributor and he also accepted that we will not sell the product here in Nigeria.”

Another suspect, Ugbo Collins, who resides in Onitsha, Anambra State, was arrested for importing over 1,000 cartons of fake drugs worth over N54m into the country.
The NAFDAC boss said,

The agency intercepted a 20 feet container imported by NGOD’s Success Ventures. The importer fraudulently gave its name as Lamek’s Global Links Limited on the consignment bill purported to have originated from Pakistan, but investigations revealed the real name of the importer and that the goods came from China. 

Investigations revealed that Collins from Onitsha contacted one Larry Amah to clear the consignment for him. Amah in turn, sub-contracted the job to one Okey, an employee of Ocean Star Shipping Company. 

The container was impounded and counterfeit pharmaceuticals worth N54, 702, 500 were discovered in the container. Some of them include 348 cartons of Strepsil Tablets; 34 cartons of Augmentin Suspension, eight cartons of Disprin Tablet, 99 cartons of Septran Syrup and 20 cartons of Bonjela. 

Others include 126 cartons of CaC-1000 Tablets, 92 cartons of Cicatrin powder, four cartons of Mydriacyl Eye Drop, seven cartons of Glucophage Tablet, 27 cartons of Nystatin, 11 cartons of Apmiclox Suspension, 246 cartons of Dettol Antiseptic Liquid, 22 cartons of Optalidon Tablet, 28 cartons of Encephabol Liquid and 23 cartons of V-tab.”

 The suspect, however, said he did not know that the products were fake, adding that he had even been administering the drugs to his children.

“I have four children and they all use the drugs. I even give my seven-month-old baby. I was told that the goods were from Pakistan, I did not know they were from China,” he said.

Orhii urged members of the public to continue to give the agency useful information that could lead to the arrest of drug counterfeiters.

Cook Survives 3 Days in Air Pocket of Sunken Ship Off Nigerian Coast

in the murky waters off the coast of Nigeria, divers were performing the grim task of recovering the bodies of 12 crew members from the Jascon 4, a sunken tug 100 feet below the surface on the ocean floor, when they got quite the surprise.
“We had already recovered four bodies,” said Tony Walker, the dive crew’s team leader, who was in the control room on the surface in May. “So the anticipation wasn’t great that we were going to find anybody alive at that stage.”
Then, incredibly, after nearly three days, a survivor emerged.
The survivor — Harrison Okene, the ship’s cook — had been in the bathroom onboard the tug just before 5 a.m., when a massive rogue swell capsized the ship. As it sank, Okene scrambled into a cabin and found an air pocket — just a few feet of precious air.
He stayed there for more than 60 hours in utter darkness and in fear of sharks until the dive team found him. He prayed and drank six sodas.
“The diver saw a hand in the passageway and assumed it was another body,” Walker told ABC News today. “When the diver reached up to grab the hand, the hand grabbed the diver.”
The team used a standby umbilical diving cable to help Okene reach a diving bell, talking him through the treacherous wreck. Okene’s ordeal is believed to be the longest anyone has ever survived after being trapped underwater.
“When he surfaced again, he didn’t want to go to sea again,” Walker said. “He wanted to go back to being a cook in the hotel.”

Source:www.abcnews.go.com

Chef Nigella Lawson tells court she used cocaine twice

 

Celebrity chef Nigella Lawson twice used cocaine, she admitted Wednesday as she testified in the fraud trial of two former personal assistants in a London court.

She told the court she had used the drug once with her late husband, John Diamond, when he learned that his cancer was terminal, in order to give him "some escape from his treatment," and once in July 2010 when she felt subject to "terrorism" by her then-husband Charles Saatchi.

At that point she felt trapped, isolated and unhappy, she said, and a friend offered her the drug.

Saatchi had claimed in an e-mail that Lawson had used drugs regularly, but in testimony Friday he backed off that claim.

Lawson's admission of cocaine use came after she earlier testified that Saatchi had threatened to "destroy" her if she did not "clear his name."

She had been asked about her reluctance to attend court as a witness in the assistants' trial -- a case that has gripped the media as claims emerge about the couple's troubled personal life.

"I have been put on trial here where I am called to answer, and glad to answer the allegations, and the world's press, and it comes after a long summer of bullying and abuse," Lawson said. "I find it's another chapter in that."

Referring to Saatchi's request for her to attend the trial, made in a letter sent by his lawyers, Lawson said: "He had said to me if I didn't get back to him and clear his name he would destroy me."

Lawson said she felt she had to do her civic duty. "It's difficult for me, it's very difficult for my children, but I want to do the right thing," she added.

The former aides, Italian sisters Francesca and Elisabetta Grillo, deny embezzling hundreds of thousands of pounds on company credit cards while employed by Lawson and Saatchi.

'No hard evidence'

ASUU: On the path to self-destruction-by Niyi Akinnaso

“One does not fight to save another person’s head only to have a kite carry one’s own away”

—A Yoruba proverb

As the Academic Staff Union of Universities’ industrial action entered its sixth month last Sunday, December 1, 2013, my mind went straight to Ola Rotimi’s Kurunmi, in which the Tortoise’s obstinacy was retold: Sensing that Tortoise persisted on a senseless journey, he was asked: “Brother Tortoise, when will you be wise and come back home?” The Tortoise replied, “Not until l have been disgraced, …disgraced,…not until l have been disgraced”. Tortoise and the legendary Alaseju must have been created from the same mould. Instead of heeding advice, Alaseju pursued his goal to the point of self-destruction.

Even before ASUU’s strike entered its sixth month on December 1, 2013, the public had started to sing an adaptation of the famous Beatles song: All we are say…ing, go back to work. From the beginning, public opinion did not favour a strike, let alone a protracted one, partly because strikes have become a tired and worn-out strategy associated with ASUU and partly because it would put innocent students in jeopardy (again!). It really has become a despised method of seeking redress, especially by university lecturers, in advanced societies.

Nevertheless, ASUU initially drew sympathy from some quarters, including me, particularly because of its main excuse that it was fighting for the students, that is, for the provision of appropriate facilities in order to enhance the quality of their education. No one who has visited any of our premier universities lately or read the Needs Assessment of Universities would quarrel with ASUU’s excuse. That’s why, at the initial stage, the Federal Government was seen as the enemy of progress. Implement the 2009 Agreement and the Memorandum of Understanding signed with ASUU, yelled some observers at the Federal Government.

THE STORY BEHIND THE BUS

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old African American woman who worked as a seamstress, boarded this Montgomery City bus to go home from work. On this bus on that day, Rosa Parks initiated a new era in the American quest for freedom and equality. She sat near the middle of the bus, just behind the 10 seats reserved for whites. Soon all of the seats in the bus were filled. When a white man entered the bus, the driver (following the standard practice of segregation) insisted that all four blacks sitting just behind the white section give up their seats so that the man could sit there. Mrs. Parks, who was an active member of the local NAACP, quietly refused to give up her seat.
Her action was spontaneous and not pre-meditated, although her previous civil rights involvement and strong sense of justice were obvious influences. "When I made that decision," she said later, “I knew that I had the strength of my ancestors with me.”
She was arrested and convicted of violating the laws of segregation, known as “Jim Crow laws.” Mrs. Parks appealed her conviction and thus formally challenged the legality of segregation.
At the same time, local civil rights activists initiated a boycott of the Montgomery bus system. In cities across the South, segregated bus companies were daily reminders of the inequities of American society. Since African Americans made up about 75 percent of the riders in Montgomery, the boycott posed a serious economic threat to the company and a social threat to white rule in the city.
A group named the Montgomery Improvement Association, composed of local activists and ministers, organized the boycott. As their leader, they chose a young Baptist minister who was new to Montgomery: Martin Luther King, Jr. Sparked by Mrs. Parks’ action, the boycott lasted 381 days, into December 1956 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the segregation law was unconstitutional and the Montgomery buses were integrated. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was the beginning of a revolutionary era of non-violent mass protests in support of civil rights in the United States.
It was not just an accident that the civil rights movement began on a city bus. In a famous 1896 case involving a black man on a train, Plessy v. Ferguson, the U.S. Supreme Court enunciated the “separate but equal” rationale for Jim Crow. Of course, facilities and treatment were never equal.
Under Jim Crow customs and laws, it was relatively easy to separate the races in every area of life except transportation. Bus and train companies couldn’t afford separate cars and so blacks and whites had to occupy the same space.
Thus, transportation was one the most volatile arenas for race relations in the South. Mrs. Parks remembers going to elementary school in Pine Level, Alabama, where buses took white kids to the new school but black kids had to walk to their school.
“I'd see the bus pass every day,” she said. “But to me, that was a way of life; we had no choice but to accept what was the custom. The bus was among the first ways I realized there was a black world and a white world” (emphasis added).
Montgomery’s Jim Crow customs were particularly harsh and gave bus drivers great latitude in making decisions on where people could sit. The law even gave bus drivers the authority to carry guns to enforce their edicts. Mrs. Parks’ attorney Fred Gray remembered, “Virtually every African-American person in Montgomery had some negative experience with the buses. But we had no choice. We had to use the buses for transportation.”
Civil rights advocates had outlawed Jim Crow in interstate train travel, and blacks in several Southern cities attacked the practice of segregated bus systems. There had been a bus boycott in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1953, but black leaders compromised before making real gains. Joann Robinson, a black university professor and activist in Montgomery, had suggested the idea of a bus boycott months before the Parks arrest.
Two other women had been arrested on buses in Montgomery before Parks and were considered by black leaders as potential clients for challenging the law. However, both were rejected because black leaders felt they would not gain white support. When she heard that the well-respected Rosa Parks had been arrested, one Montgomery African American woman exclaimed, “They’ve messed with the wrong one now.”
In the South, city buses were lightning rods for civil rights activists. It took someone with the courage and character of Rosa Parks to strike with lightning. And it required the commitment of the entire African American community to fan the flames ignited by that lightning into the fires of the civil rights revolution.

SOURCE: www.thehenryford.org

Josh Romney’s Awkward Car-Crash ‘Selfie’

Mitt Romney’s son rescued four people from a car crash—then tweeted a photo of himself grinning next to the wreck. Bad move if you’re an aspiring politician.

 

When, as, and if Josh Romney runs for public office, an ambition he is rumored to harbor, he will have the best team of political professionals money can buy. He will have pollsters, strategists, admakers, opposition researchers, get-out-the-vote organizers and a campaign press secretary who knows how to use a Rolodex and plant a positive story with no fingerprints.
But for now, handsome, strapping Josh—a 38-year-old real estate developer in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Mitt and Ann Romney’s No. 3 son—must do it himself. Thus, on Thanksgiving night, when Josh happened by a traffic accident in Salt Lake City and managed to help four people out of a car that had just crashed into a house, it fell to him, and him alone, to publicize his good deed on Twitter.

Revenge pornography

It’s 11am on a Monday morning. You forgot your phone in one of the crevices of your bag. You had earlier left it on silence mode to ensure you do not disrupt the meeting that morning. When finally you remember you have one and may possibly have missed a number of calls, you lazily deep your hand in the bag.

After about three changes in hand positions, you eventually find it. It’s one of the newest brands in the market. You absent-mindedly draw the pattern that unlocks the phone. You get a ‘sorry, try again’ message.

You carefully draw the right one. Right there on your screen is a carefully lettered  – 56 missed calls. You are genuinely surprised. You notice another 22 text messages. You start by checking the messages and everyone of them seem to be hinting at something online you should react to or should have seen.

Five minutes after checking your messages and timeline on Facebook, you find it all there  – different pictures and a three-minute video of you in nude form.

You remember the pictures; they were the ones your ex-boyfriend took of you some years ago. You recall making the video yourself. You quickly squeeze the buttons of your phone and type the uniform resource locator of one of the leading entertainment blogs in the country in the address bar and you find the news there.

You check the comment section and there are already 1,004 comments at that time of the day. Your eyes are wet and you know life would never be the same again for you.

Revenge pornography, also called e-venge pornography, is fast trending as one of the quickest ways of getting a good pound of the flesh from a wronged lover. It entails online circulation of sexually explicit materials – videos, pictures or text – of a clearly mentioned or pictured individual with humiliation of the person as the goal of the distributor.

With revenge pornography, the culprit is usually a wronged lover or a hacker. The later happens in rare instances.

  Unlike other anonymous pornographic materials online, revenge pornography makes the face of the act clear and ensures the name is also known. In some extremely harsh instances, the mobile contact, work details and home address of the pictured person are made available.

It first became more pronounced about three years ago.  As is usually the case, the pictures or videos are captured by the victims themselves or by the assailant with the consent of the victim when there was a warm relationship between both.

Since revenge pornography always has women as victims most times, it can also be right to describe it as sexual violence against women with the sole aim to embarrass, humiliate and degrade a woman sexually, if she is  career driven, she may be disgraced professionally.

The international legal firmament is already witnessing various fireworks to address the weak presence or outright absence of legislation around this. Some of the anti-revenge porn legislations are hoping in addition to criminalising revenge porn also target service providers whenever the actions of their users are misguided.

About two years ago, circumstance would bring a lady across my path. She was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She craved my intervention since I had faint knowledge of her may-soon-be assailant.

She had been in a relationship with him for years and they had seen it all including a number of abortions. When things circumstantially went sour between both of them, he threatened to make public her nude pictures in his possession.

He threatened to do so offline and online. The pictures were her gift to him on his birthday in one of the years they were together. They were taken privately while the romance lasted. Together with her, we went back and forth on possible solutions and remedies. I was to later introduce her to a social worker who had competence in such genre of sexual abuse.

She threw her expertise at the issue and in weeks, it was laid to rest. At least till this moment.            The internet would continue to grow. More smart phones would be added by the day making access to the internet instant and easy.

People would continue to fall in love. Humans would also continue to fall out of love and have heart breaks. Certainly, break ups can be bitter and painful. The memories shared together are what could become the tool in the case of retribution pornography.

And it has ruinous implications for the life of the victim. Asides the misdemeanour of the perpetrator, phones or digital storage devices with possible revenge pornography content may be misplaced ending up in the wrong hands.

Once it is online, you can never take it back. In the Web 2.0 age, it is clear that it is the law that has to continue trying to catch up with the loads of daily inventions in cyber space.

With revenge pornography, the pictures may also be published for the purpose of blackmail by jilted men. Since most victims never bother to seek redress through legal means especially, it may continue to be perceived as an issue not worthy of major attention.

Young people who engage in the act are also vulnerable. Sexting refers to the act of sending lewd images and words through text messages. With the internet, we all need to understand that once anything is sent, the chances of losing control over what happens to that content is huge.

With non-consensual pornography which intentionally inflicts emotional distress becoming a growing burden, it is up to people to protect themselves in addition to only engaging in relationships built on trust and a sizeable amount of caution.

Our offline well-being is now intricately linked to the lives we lead when we access the internet. The rule is simple – never send anything to anyone that may be used against you and never allow anyone take pictures or videos of you in private acts or intimate moments.

SOURCE: www.punchng.com