UNPRECEDENTED SOCIAL MEDIA OUTPOURING AT MANDELA’S PASSING
Dec. 10 (GIN) – Record numbers of Facebook and Twitter users posted their thoughts and prayers for former South African leader Nelson Mandela and the nation with numbers running in the hundreds of thousands.
Poems, videos, prayers and elegies filled the internet ether, before, during and after the state’s memorial service which took place Tuesday under heavy rain in an open stadium in Soweto.
The loudest cheers – both virtual and online – were for Presidents Barack Obama and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.
Close to 3 million followers were following “Nelson Mandela” on Facebook as opposed to 35,000 for current president Jacob Zuma. More than 800,000 were following Mandela on Twitter as of Tuesday afternoon.
Mugabe, who has been repeatedly compared in western media to the South Africa leader, had a chilly relationship with the departed.
Mandela once said of his Zimbabwean counterpart, “He was the star, and then the sun came out.” Speaking with former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, Mandela hinted at a rivalry: “Before I was released from prison, (Mugabe) was the most popular African leader in this area, but when I was released, the media said this is the end of Mugabe from the point of view of popularity. In fact, he himself did not want me to come out of jail.”
Political analyst Ibbo Mandaza opined: “People like Mugabe regard South Africa as a later comer in the process toward independence, whereas South Africa has implicitly seen itself as the big brother in the region. So that tension has always been there.”
In Harare, Information Minister Jonathan Moyo retorted: “While the subtext of the gratuitous comparisons has been that other African leaders such as President Mugabe should emulate Mandela, the more important and rather self-evident fact is that God created only one Nelson Mandela with no clones in the same way he created only one Winston Churchill; one John F Kennedy, one Mao, one Lenin and one Mahatma Gandhi.
“In the same way that Britain has not had another Churchill and America has not had another Kennedy, Africa will not have another Mandela … the gratuitous comparisons of Mandela and other African leaders are ultimately a waste of time.”
The late Nobel prize-winner visited Zimbabwe once during his term in office. The main street to Zimbabwe’s parliament is named Nelson Mandela Avenue while South African currency that features Mandela’s face is legal tender in Zimbabwe.
MAYA ANGELOU PENS MANDELA TRIBUTE – ‘HIS DAY IS DONE’
Dec. 10 (GIN) – A video tribute to Nelson Mandela by poetess Maya Angelou is being distributed widely over the internet.
Ms. Angelou reads the poem with deep feeling on the video, which was heard today on the news show DemocracyNow! The American novelist, in an interview with CBS New York, described meeting Mandela in the 1960s. Mandela and Angelou’s husband were members of rival liberation movements when Mandela came to Egypt, where Angelou was living.
“I had been so used to these rivals arguing and shouting in the living room and shouting in the street against each other,” Angelou recalled. ”… But when Mr. Mandela came, he never had a cross word to say to anyone. I was amazed. He had a compliment to give to everybody, including my housekeeper and the doorman. A gentle giant he was.”
A link to the video: http://dailyoftheday.com/maya-
“He was a magician,” said Desmond Tutu, former Archbishop, “turning South Africa, a poisonous caterpillar, into a beautiful butterfly.”
“He came out of prison to set us free from hatred and racism,” Tutu continued. “The world expected a bloodbath and atrocities, what we now have, instead, is this wonderful multicultural rainbow.”
“Mr Mandela himself must not be adored on a pedestal, the cleric stressed. “One of the wonderful things about him is that he is so human. He is aware of that, in a way, there are feet of clay.”
The Archbishop headed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate crimes committed at the time of apartheid, at the request of Mandela.
Meanwhile, Father Sebastian J. Rossouw of the Regina Mundi Church – the epicenter of the Soweto township uprising in 1976 against white rule – described Mandela as “moonlight,” saying he offered a guiding light for South Africa. Hundreds of people attended the Mass.
“Madiba did not doubt the light,” Rossouw said. “He paved the way for a better future, but he cannot do it alone.” w/pix of M. Angelou
TWENTY YEARS SINCE HUMAN RIGHTS ACT, WORK IS ONLY HALF DONE, CRITIC SAYS
Dec. 10 (GIN) – Created by a proclamation of the U.N. General Assembly, Dec. 10 is designated Human Rights Day with the lofty goal of alerting the “peoples of the world” to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the common standard for all peoples and nations.
This year, senior U.N. officials and countries around the world, took time to reflect on the limited successes and some shortfalls in human rights records worldwide.
U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon, in his message for the day, observed: “Promoting human rights is one of the core purposes of the United Nations and the organization has pursued this mission since its founding.”
But, he acknowledged, the record to date has been far from good. Over the past 20 years, he said, “the world has seen genocide and many other appalling and large-scale violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.”
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, noted that a huge amount of work remains “to transform human rights from abstract promises to genuine improvement in daily lives”, particularly among marginalized or excluded groups.
This year, Ms. Pillay’s group will honor six recipients of the 2013 Human Rights Prize, an honorary award given every 5 years to individuals and organizations.
Among the winners is Biram Dah Abeid of Mauritania, a son of freed slaves and now a human rights defender and President of the anti-slavery NGO Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement in Mauritania (IRA).
Despite opposition from the Mauritanian government, which refuses to recognize IRA-Mauritania, Mr. Dah Abeid publically attacks the ‘slave code’ and has helped win the release of hundreds of slaves. In response, he has faced arbitrary detention, public harassment and torture. In April 2012, Mr. Dah Abeid was arrested and detained for four months along with six other members of IRA.
Although the government abolished slavery in 1981, the West African nation still has the highest prevalence of slavery in the world, with an estimated 140,000 enslaved.
“Your work advocating for the rights of the Haratines – the largest minority group in Mauritania, yet the most politically and economically marginalised as a result of centuries of enslavement by the dominant Arab-Berbers – is essential to advance the cause of a democratic and multi-ethnic Mauritania,” wrote the group No Peace Without Justice, which has an office in New York. w/pix of B. Dah Abeid
FRENCH-AFRICAN TEEN WINS BEAUTY PAGEANT, IGNITING NATIONAL UPROAR
Dec. 10 (GIN) – A radiant French teenager whose mother hails from Benin was crowned Miss France on live TV, thrilling those who acknowledge the diverse population of the European nation.
Flora Coquerel said: ‘I am very proud to represent a cosmopolitan France. It shows that today’s France is a mixed France, where there is every culture, and I think a lot of people will see themselves in me.’
Ms Coquerel from Orleans, was voted Miss France 2014 by a combination of votes from the TV audience estimated at 8.2 million viewers and a celebrity jury.
Within minutes of the crowning, social media was drowned in comments – many were racist. A portion of the comments were horrifying: “I’m not a racist but shouldn’t the Miss France contest only be open to white girls?” to “Death to foreigners.”
Last month, the pageant’s former lifetime president, movie star Alain Delon, resigned after it was revealed he supported the National Front, France’s far-right, anti-immigration party. And the pageant has itself been singled out for perpetuating racism. Louis-Georges Tin, the head of a minority rights group, Representative Council of Black Associations (CRAN), asked why there were so few black contestants in the competition.
“The failure to represent the contemporary French population in an event such as this is obviously serious,” Tin said. “It amounts to denying the very existence of French people of African origin.
Prior to the contest in the city of Dijon, Ms. Coquerel said that her mixed heritage would be an advantage in the race. “It shows that today’s France is a mixed France, where there is every culture, and I think a lot of people will see themselves in me,” she said.
A widely attended “march for equality and against racism” to support Ms. Coquerel was held Nov. 30 in the streets of Paris. w/pix of Miss France and Mom
