NOT an 100% accurate assessment of either person!
Mandela’s homeland is plagued by deep social problems
Long-term poverty and hopelessness persist
By Sue Montgomery, The Gazette
Photograph by: Markus Schreiber , AP
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRIDA — Katlego Makhafola takes a break from pumping gas for his upper-middle class customers at the ENGEN garage in Parktown neighbourhood to reminisce about the day his — and the country’s — hero, Nelson Mandela, was released after almost three decades in prison.
He was going to watch his brother play soccer when he heard euphoric whistling, singing and people yelling “free at last,” and as a wide-eyed 7-year-old, he wasn’t quite sure why, but he knew life was about to change for the better.
Twenty-two years later, as the country mourns the death of Mandela, Makhafola fears that he will never live up to his first name, which means success in the Sotho language.
“I knew then that things were going to change and we would live free, have education and everything was possible, even work,” he said. “Today, our government is corrupt, but they should be leading by example as Mandela did.
“If the head doesn’t move, the body can’t follow.”
MORE
In a display of stereotypical Canadian niceness, former prime minister Jean Chrétien said South Africans should not have booed their president, Jacob Zuma, at the Nelson Mandela memorial. “It was wrong. It’s not an occasion to do these things,” said Chrétien, speaking in Pretoria on Wednesday after viewing Mandela’s casket with Prime Minister Stephen Harper. “They were there to honour Nelson Mandela,” he says. “It was not the time to voice political views.”
He was going to watch his brother play soccer when he heard euphoric whistling, singing and people yelling “free at last,” and as a wide-eyed 7-year-old, he wasn’t quite sure why, but he knew life was about to change for the better.
Twenty-two years later, as the country mourns the death of Mandela, Makhafola fears that he will never live up to his first name, which means success in the Sotho language.
“I knew then that things were going to change and we would live free, have education and everything was possible, even work,” he said. “Today, our government is corrupt, but they should be leading by example as Mandela did.
“If the head doesn’t move, the body can’t follow.”
MORE
Pageantry around Mandela’s death belies realities of life in South Africa
Away from the international headlines, the reality is less dramatic
(Foto24/Nelius Rademan/REX)
No comments:
Post a Comment