Sudan was represented by newly appointed first vice president Bakri Hassan Saleh. Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, who faces two international arrest warrants, did not attend, following his indictment by the International Criminal Court. In China there was little discussion of who would attend – and vice president Li Yuanchao was present as a special representative of president Xi Jinping. It was rumoured that Iranian president Hassan Rouhani and foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif might attend but they changed their mind to avoid a face-to-face meeting with Obama, instead sending vice president Mohammad Shariatmadari. Perhaps Mandela’s support for the Palestine and his view that freedom for the Palestinians was an unrealised cause and is more relevant than Netanyahu’s newfound personal economy drive. Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu gave logistical and cost reasons for his failure to attend. Shimon Peres, a fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate, did not attend for medical reasons. Knesset speaker Yuli Edelstein and a delegation of six Knesset members represented Israel. But Mandela’s old ally the former Soviet Union is no longer and the memorial service is no place to explore Russia’s no doubt complicated attitudes to South Africa and Mandela.
#Ubuntu meaning free
Had the new South Africa eschewed the free market economy model it embraced under Mandela’s early presidency and thus perhaps been able to honour more of its promises to address the dreadful poverty and deprivation of its black population, perhaps the great leaders of the free (if ever more unequal) world would be less enthusiastic in their praise of his leadership. The South African anti-apartheid movement was glad of Soviet support at a time when the West propped up the apartheid regime, when Margaret Thatcher denounced him as a terrorist, and the US saw the National Party regime as an important ally in the Cold War. It is this historic link that has led many right-wing Republicans in the US to utter unseemly denunciations of the dead man as a communist – something Mandela himself always denied but which is suggested in documents that have come to light over the past couple of years. Yet the Soviet Union was a supporter of the South African Communist party, whose members were often also ANC members.
Business as usual is the order of the day.
Russian, Chinese, Israeli and Iranian presidents all sent lower-ranking representatives.Īlthough President Vladimir Putin left a message of condolence at the South African embassy in Moscow on Monday, Russia was represented by upper house Federation Council speaker, Valentina Matviyenko, and there has been little media coverage of Mandela’s death in Russia. Indeed, not all the world leaders were there or wanted to be. Nor was there much evidence of ubuntu in the ranks of international leaders and their representatives in attendance. Although Mandela was always going to be hard act to follow, Mbeki managed to gain the respect of many South Africans, whereas Zuma has not. The crowds booed South African President Jacob Zuma a number of times. In spite of the embrace of Mandela’s ex-wife Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Mandela’s widow Graça Machel, other evidence of ubuntu was thin on the ground. But the gesture was there - and it was widely picked up and commented on. It may be too much to hope for ubuntu to break out suddenly between the US and Cuba, two nations that have boycotted and shunned each other for more than 50 years. Perhaps, moved by this same spirit, Obama shook the hand of Cuban president Raul Castro’s hand before stepping up to the podium in recognition, perhaps, of the stand that Fidel Castro had taken against apartheid. There is a word in South Africa – Ubuntu – that describes his greatest gift: his recognition that we are all bound together in ways that can be invisible to the eye that there is a oneness to humanity that we achieve ourselves by sharing ourselves with others, and caring for those around us. Mandela understood the ties that bind the human spirit. In spite of the rain, thousands gathered to hear the tributes by the eminences in the FNB stadium in Soweto, which is where Madiba addressed the world on the day of his release in 1990.īut it was a word uttered by Barack Obama in the middle of his tribute that really caught the attention, as he referred to Mandela’s inspirational commitment to forgiveness and humanism: “ubuntu”. Many fine words of tribute were uttered as some of the world’s most powerful people gather to pay tribute to former President Nelson Mandela.
0 kommentar(er)
