Machines are keeping him alive until Obama gets there. I've considered him walking dead for a long time, and in preparing this post counted no less than 12 articles appearing in the Globe the last five months regarding his trips in and out of the hospital. While intending no disrespect, I do wish to put the AmeriKan media attention into context.
It's a CIA-infiltrated media since the 1950s, and Mandela was once one of their assets (another reason he gets a lot of print and pub in my press). That is how they knew where he was when they tipped off the South African authorities, leading to his capture and imprisonment. And Mandela was still a militant. Granted, a moderate militant, but the Gandhi of South Africa (interesting; that is where the great soul got his start) is Chief Luthuli, a man lost to history for obvious reasons.
As for the changed(?) South Africa he is leaving behind:
"South Africa debates persistent troubles since end of apartheid" by Christopher Torchia | Associated Press, April 13, 2013
JOHANNESBURG — This month, South Africa reopened a conversation over the extent to which the legacy of apartheid drives persistent imbalances in services and opportunities. Some argue that current leaders lean on the past to justify squandered chances to improve South Africa and even invoke the specter of apartheid for political gain....
See: South Africa Still the Same
South Africa's New Apartheid
Turns out i$ not about race after all.
A faltering education system, an uneven record on providing basic services, and allegations of corruption and cronyism that drain public faith in the government. The African National Congress, in power since the first all-race elections in 1994, has improved housing for many poor people and presides over a society that is immeasurably more tolerant than its predecessor. But the gulf between the wealthier white minority and the millions of blacks who can’t find work and live in shacks remains wide.
‘‘While wanting to see change happening fast in every corner of the country, we are under no illusion that South Africa will automatically and comprehensively change in only 20 years. That is impossible,’’ President Jacob Zuma said this week. ‘‘The legacy of apartheid runs too deep and too far back for the democratic administration to reverse it in so short a period.’’
Zuma has pointed to old inequities, noting white South Africans earn far more than blacks even if political power is now in the hands of elected leaders. Yet South Africa is in ‘‘a much better place’’ than it was under apartheid....
Is it?
The grim reference point of apartheid is fading among younger voters. The general elections in 2014 will mark the first time that the leading edge of the generation born after apartheid, known as the ‘‘born frees,’’ will be eligible to vote. An estimated 3 million young people, or 10 percent of the electorate, with no direct experience of apartheid will be able to vote.
A foundation chaired by F.W. de Klerk, the last apartheid-era president who negotiated a power transition with Mandela and later shared a Nobel Peace Prize with him, said in a statement Friday that Zuma’s references to apartheid are diverting attention from the need for effective policies.
Recent cases of alleged police brutality, a staple of the apartheid era, reinforce the idea that South Africa is morally adrift, even if the rate of some violent crimes has dropped in recent years.
On Friday, a judge postponed to May 24 a case against nine police officers charged with murder in the death of a Mozambican taxi driver who was dragged by a police vehicle in February. Also Friday, eNCA.com, a South African news outlet, posted CCTV footage purportedly showing a woman being beaten by an off-duty police officer in view of two of his uniformed colleagues.
While South Africa has made ‘‘huge advancements’’ in the past two decades, ‘‘there is still a long way to go,’’ said Lesiba Seshoka, spokesman for South Africa’s National Union of Mineworkers.
He said whites mostly dominate industry and that there should be a ‘‘radical transformation’’ to distribute economic resources more equally.
White income earners make on average four times as much as blacks, according to a recent study published by the South African Institute of Race Relations in Johannesburg.
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That's what is killing him.
"Report finds uphill fight against graft in South Africa" Associated Press, May 04, 2013
JOHANNESBURG — South Africa is fighting a losing battle against corruption, which sucked up nearly $111 million in taxpayers’ money last year, according to a new report that contradicts government statements that efforts to stamp out financial misconduct are going well.
You would at least thought you were getting an honest government, but nope!
‘‘Corruption is rampant,’’ the author of the report, financial forensics expert Peter Allwright, said Friday. ‘‘It’s out of control . . . and the dedicated units that have been created to fight financial misconduct are in essence fighting a losing battle.”
South Africa is awash in scandals about misuse of government money and power — in one of the latest, taxpayers forked out around nearly $28 million on upgrades to President Jacob Zuma’s private residence.
And what was he blaming the current troubles on above?
The gulf between the fabulously wealthy and the impoverished is growing ever wider in the country with the continent’s largest economy, fueling ever more violent service protests as the governing African National Congress party gears up for elections next year.
That's a familiar story around the planet.
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"South Africa scandalized by wedding" Associated Press, May 04, 2013
JOHANNESBURG — Five South African officials, including police and military commanders, have been suspended after a chartered plane carrying about 200 guests from India to a lavish family wedding was allowed to land at a South African Air Force base, the government said Friday.
The scandal, in which the passengers allegedly bypassed customs en route to a gaudy entertainment complex, has angered many South Africans who see the episode as a case of cronyism linking big business and the highest levels of government.
And they thought they got change. It's not color, it's cla$$.
The government sought to stem public outrage over the incident, launching an investigation into how the jet was given permission to land Tuesday at the Waterkloof Air Force Base and ordering it to fly on Thursday to a civilian international airport in Johannesburg. The wedding festivities wrapped up on Friday.
The guests attended the wedding of Vega Gupta, whose Indian immigrant family has powerful business interests in South Africa, and groom Aakash Jahajgarhia in an extravaganza spanning several days at a leisure center northwest of Johannesburg.
With South African blacks living in slumdog tin shacks just around the corner.
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Hey, at least there is another political party:
"In South Africa, another opposition party" Associated Press, February 19, 2013
JOHANNESBURG — Dr. Mamphela Ramphele, a longtime anti-apartheid activist, announced the creation of a political party Monday, lambasting the 101-year-old African National Congress of Nelson Mandela for corruption and power abuse.
Ramphele told a news conference that her party will contest the 2014 elections, campaign ‘‘from village to village,’’ and serve millions of South Africans ‘‘who have confirmed a hunger for a new beginning.’’
The 65-year-old medical doctor was a cofounder of South Africa’s Black Conscious Movement. She was close to activist Steve Biko before he was assassinated and has a son with him.
Her party joins several in the opposition at a time when South Africa is burdened by a growing chasm between rich and poor, as well as massive unemployment and increasingly violent protests against job losses, utility shortages, and an education and health system in crisis.
She said Monday she was appalled to learn that 71 percent of South Africans between the ages of 15 to 38 are unemployed. That group, she said, makes up 60 percent of the population.
Ramphele, among four people appointed managing directors of The World Bank in 2000, has what South Africans call ‘‘struggle credentials.’’
She spent seven years under house arrest enforced by the white-minority apartheid regime in the 1970s, and she used her expulsion to a remote rural area to start a health program and empower women through initiatives such as small-scale farming.
But analysts say they don’t know what she will bring to the political table, noting that her criticisms of the ANC are no different from those of other opposition leaders and that she has no grass-roots support and is not well-known. The ANC party that fought to end apartheid has won resounding victories at past elections.
My newspaper seems to like her.
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Somehow I don't think average South Africans care:
"South African man dragged to death behind police truck; Video is vivid reminder of apartheid days" by Lydia Polgreen | New York Times, March 01, 2013
JOHANNESBURG — The footage is shaky but unmistakable. A slender black man dressed in a red T-shirt, black pants, and sneakers is tied to the back of a police truck. He kicks. He writhes. The vehicle pulls away, dragging the man behind it. Police officers run along with him. Cellphone cameras snap away.
“What did he do?’’ bystanders shouted.
“It was him who started it,’’ a police officer replied.
Late Tuesday night, the man, who has since been identified as Mido Macia, 27, a taxi driver from Mozambique, died of head injuries at the Daveyton Police Station, 27 miles southeast of here.
In South Africa, where violent crime, vigilante attacks, and police brutality are daily fare, the video, captured on a mobile phone and first published by The Daily Sun, a local tabloid, has incited outrage for its brazen and outsize cruelty.
‘‘We come across a lot of cases of police brutality,’’ said Moses Dlamini of the Independent Investigative Directorate, which investigates police crimes, in a television interview. ‘‘The police don’t even care that people are watching.’’
For many, the video was a reminder of the harsh treatment meted out to black citizens by white policemen under apartheid, when South Africa’s police force was notorious for its harsh tactics against the country’s black majority.
“If this was apartheid police we’d riot,’’ wrote Zackie Achmat, a prominent social activist, on Twitter.
Back then, the officers were likely to be white and at the command of a racial dictatorship. Now they are almost entirely black, serving a democratically elected government.
I guess it isn't race that matters most; it's POWER and AUTHORITY over ANOTHER INDIVIDUAL!
After 1994, when apartheid ended and the African National Congress was voted into power in the country’s first fully democratic elections, reforming the police force was a top priority.
Millions of dollars were spent on cashing out apartheid-era officials and recruiting new members to the force. Its emphasis was supposed to shift from controlling black South Africans to serving them.
But a fierce crime wave washed over South Africa in the years after apartheid. Violent crime increased by 22 percent. Murder, carjackings, and armed robberies were endemic. South Africa’s reputation suffered.
The government, under intense pressure to clamp down on crime, enacted tough new policies. Huge recruitment drives added 70,000 new officers and administrators to the force.
Supervisors found they were responsible for twice as many officers, many of them inexperienced and poorly trained. Discipline suffered.
The past year has been a tough one for South Africa’s troubled police force.
By the end it is poor cops!
In August 2012, officers opened fire on platinum miners engaged in a wildcat strike in the town of Marikana, killing 34 of them in the biggest mass shooting since the end of apartheid.
Related: South African Miners Strike
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"Eight S. Africa officers charged with murder" by Raf Casert | Associated Press, March 02, 2013
JOHANNESBURG — Eight South African police officers were charged with murder on Friday in the death of a taxi driver dragged by a police vehicle, a videotaped episode that became a worldwide symbol of police brutality in this country.
Earlier on Friday, friends and relatives of Mido Macia gathered around a simple table adorned with a few flowers in the poor township of Daveyton, to mourn the death of the slender 27-year-old who died shortly after the dragging episode on Tuesday.
South Africa’s police chief, General Riah Phiyega said she shared ‘‘the extreme shock and outrage’’ over the video evidence of abuse of Macia by police officers and said his rights were ‘‘violated in the most extreme form.’’
Dressed in a formal police uniform, Phiyega said at a press conference that she stands by the integrity of her police force and insisted she will do her utmost to bring to justice those guilty of the death of Macia.
The cops were laughing as they ran along!
Hours later, Moses Dlamini of the police investigation unit said eight policemen from Daveyton were charged with murder.
The restraining and dragging of the man, who had allegedly parked in the wrong spot, was videotaped by members of a horrified crowd of onlookers who beseeched the police to stop their abuse and questioned their motives in dragging the taxi driver away with their police car, as he was struggling for his life.
No serve and protect in South Africa (or anywhere else for that matter).
He was found dead in prison a few hours later, suffering from head and upper abdomen injuries, including internal bleeding. The injuries could be from the dragging and he could also have been beaten later in police custody.
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Adding insult to fatality:
"Officers testify in dragging death" by Christopher Torchia | Associated Press, March 09, 2013
JOHANNESBURG — One of nine South African police officers charged with murdering a taxi driver who was dragged from a police vehicle testified Friday that the man insulted him and grabbed a fellow officer’s gun.
So that justifies tying him to the back of a truck and dragging him to death? Jerk has been watching too many Indiana Jones movies.
The killing of Mido Macia, a Mozambican who died in police custody on Feb. 26, shocked South Africans and viewers around the world after graphic video footage of him being tied to a vehicle by uniformed officers and dragged down a street was broadcast and posted online.
Protesters gathered outside the Benoni Magistrate’s Court, east of Johannesburg, to demand that the officers not be granted bail. Eight officers were initially arrested, and South Africa media reported Friday that a ninth was also detained....
The lawyer for officer Thamsanqa Ncema, read his client’s testimony, which maintained that 27-year-old Macia was blocking the road with his car, the South African Press Association reported.
‘‘I asked him to move and he insulted me and told me I am a ‘useless cop,’’’ Ncema said in the affidavit.
He said Macia grabbed an officer’s gun and pointed it at them before handing it back. Then an altercation started and Macia was arrested when police backup arrived.
I guess cops testilie everywhere.
The driver of the police vehicle, Lungisa Ewababa, testified that after his car window was broken in the commotion, he began to drive away and did not realize Macia was being dragged behind him.
Then, Ewababa testified, officers put Macia inside the vehicle and he drove to the police station, SAPA reported.
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More protests:
"FARM WORKERS PROTEST -- Demonstrators blocking South Africa's N1 national highway advanced on police in De Doorns on Thursday. Workers across the Western Cape are demanding that their salary of about $7.50 a day be doubled (Boston Globe January 11 2013)."
"23 youths die in initiation rites in South Africa" by Wandoo Makurdi | Associated Press, May 18, 2013
JOHANNESBURG — Twenty-three youths have died in the past nine days at initiation ceremonies that include circumcisions and survival tests, South African police said Friday.
South Africa has hazing, too?
Police have opened 22 murder cases in the deaths in the northeastern province of Mpumalanga, according to spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Leonard Hlathi.
He said an inquest is being held into the 23d death, of a youth who complained of stomach pains and vomited.
Initiation ceremonies are common in South Africa, where youths partake in various activities as a rite of passage into adulthood, usually over the course of three weeks.
Some 30,000 youths signed up for initiation this year.
In addition to being circumcised, the boys and young men are put through a series of survival tests which sometimes include exposure to South Africa’s chilly winter conditions with skimpy clothing.
Their faces are painted with red clay and they also are given herbal concoctions to drink.
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Time to dig the grave:
"Bodies believed tied to Mandela’s ex-wife" by Michelle Faul | Associated Press, March 13, 2013
JOHANNESBURG — Forensic scientists exhumed two bodies on Tuesday believed to belong to young activists last seen 24 years ago at the home of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, as police said they have opened a new murder investigation.
The case reopens a dark chapter in the life of the then-wife of Nelson Mandela. Many South Africans still revere the 76-year-old as ‘‘the mother of the nation,’’ but others have feared her as a vengeful and heartless operator. She had ‘‘the blood of African children on her hands,’’ her former friend Xoliswa Falati told South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
In the late 1990s, the commission found that Madikizela-Mandela was responsible for the disappearances in November 1988 of 21-year-old Lolo Sono and his friend Sibuniso Tshabalala, 19. But nothing was done to pursue allegations that she was directly involved in their killings, even though her chief bodyguard, Jerry Richardson, told the commission he and a colleague stabbed the young men to death on Madikizela-Mandela’s orders.
Mortuary records indicate the two bodies that were unearthed on Tuesday had multiple stab wounds
In front of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Madikizela-Mandela denied all knowledge of the two and said allegations she was involved in six other killings were rubbish. Madikizela-Mandela could not be reached for comment.
Richardson was head of the Mandela United Football Club, a crowd of young men who acted as Madikizela-Mandela’s bodyguards.
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Also see: Sunday Globe Specials: Batch of Obituaries
