The life and now the death of Nelson Mandela have touched the hearts of people around the world. This extraordinary man, sentenced to life imprisonment in 1962, who served 27 years in jail for his beliefs, walked free, without bitterness, to lead the rebuilding of South Africa as a multi-ethnic nation founded on human rights Read more
It’s taken a long time for us to let you go, Madiba. For several years, even as your health faltered irreparably and rumours of your increasing fragility could no longer be denied, the world refused to release its hold. We said prayers, sent love and held vigils until we had brought our Madiba — a Read more
David Olivier, principal of St Peter’ College in Palmerston North, New Zealand was once the principal of Christian Brothers’ College Mount Edmund in Pretoria, located just 1 kilometre from the state president’s residence. He has a personally signed copy of ‘A Long Walk to Freedom’. His wife bought it for him as a Father’s Day Read more
Fr Michael Lapsley, a South African Anglican priest and social justice activist, born in New Zealand, will be in Wellington this coming weekend for a conference to be held at Victoria University. Lapsley was active in support of the liberation struggle in South Africa and was critically injured in an assassination attempt by parcel bomb in Read more
It is thirty years since the 1981 Springbok tour took place. It was a “coming of age for New Zealand, a time when the country’s traditional cultural roots and a sense of social justice and progressive idealism crashed head on in spectacular fashion. The collision of those competing values, while violent and spiteful, changed New Zealand forever. Read more