Posts by Hebe
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Pope Francis.
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Hard News: Mandela, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
a man who personally invited his jailers to his presidential inauguration
That's advanced forgiveness! As for the make-up of the NZ delegation, I don't have a problem with who is included -- it is who, and what groups, are not included that is telling.
Would the anti-apartheid movement be able to crowd-fund a trip by Minto or whoever to represent us?
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Hard News: Mandela, in reply to andin,
But as a New Zealander I wonder why john Key is inserting himself into the funeral process and going, it feels wrong somehow.
He’s the PM: it’s his job! Of course he must go.
The issue I have with the NZ guest list is Jim Bolger and Don McKinnon are included but not John Minto: that is a call that brings shame on those who made it. What does it say to South Africans? We’ll send to the funeral of your Gandhi those who supported the Tour, those who cannot remember whether they supported it or not, but we can’t find the space for one of the figureheads of the movement that helped tip over the regime that ruled so inhumanely.
Bad call: do the decent thing Mr Key.
It smacks of inept and ungenerous political management: can't send Minto because he will gain respectability and credibility in time for the general election next year. If it's a civil servant decision: change it!
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Bad me wants to know what side John Key really was on during the Tour. One of the protesters on Willis St? One of the beer-lobbing brutes? One of the peer-out-the-window-in-shirtsleeves-and-back-to-work brigade? The snappers of the time took a lot of shots: somewhere, just somewhere there might be one that could jog his memory.
Now back to respect. Mine has not been reading the acres of print about a human, who was wonderful and fallible: I can't be bothered with the cut and pastes. I've stuck to PAS because I know it will have insights from a range of people expressed in an interesting way. Thanks all; even Krankylite. -
Speaker: Need, in reply to Jackie Clark,
You are the gem in this!
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Speaker: Need, in reply to Jackie Clark,
Jackie: you are amazing. I've been following this and am determined to chip in locally after Christmas -- the need intensifies in January-February after the "festive" season.
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....[finishing the above] Not that pubs and cafes are in any way linked to human rights.
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Hard News: Mandela, in reply to Kumara Republic,
... a reason why [the Tour] didn’t become NZ’s French May moment. At least according to veteran union leader Ken Douglas.
But it was in a way: the tour was, to my cohort who had left school towards the drear end of the1970s, the first real glimpse that we had any power to influence anything in this country. We were too young for the anti-war movement and had a somewhat cynical disregard of its lasting influence. The Tour protests showed we could do something. I think it's what led to the 1984 Labour government (easy to look back with disdain at that now; seeing Muldoon and National go lifted a huge cloud over us -- there was a new way and it wasn't old white men) nuclear-free New Zealand, pubs and cafes open all hours and so on through to gay marriage.
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Hard News: Mandela, in reply to Matthew Hooton,
Lest anyone think I am a bleeding heart liberal
For Nelson Mandela, today we’ll let you in the club Matthew. I was going to write more later but I won’t: you’ve said much of it, and eloquently.
The pitch invaders were brave: I watched the live broadcast at the old Railway Tavern on Wellington's waterfront, surrounded by wharfie rednecks with my friend who was the barman. We kept very, very quiet. The rednecks were murderous in a non-recreational way.
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I am so happy for him that he died at home, at 95, with his people. Who would have thought in 1981 that could happen? I had no hope then that what we were doing in New Zealand would make one bit of difference in South Africa.