Did Mandela like Israel?

Yes, he worked on a kibbutz when he was on day release from Robben Island.

Don't envy you that one bit. I visited in 2010 on a rugby tour and Joburg is a scary place. You drive from one secure place to another e.g your gated secure housing to the equally secure shopping mall. Personal security is big business and forget any idea of wandering round the streets after dark. Or indeed just wandering round the streets period!

One night on returning to Joburg from a visit to a safari park we arrived after dark and the owners of the place we stayed in were very nervous about having the security gate open long enough for a coach load of us to unload.

How people don't go even slightly mad given the caged existence they live in that part of the country is beyond me.

Cape Town is different. You still have to be careful but it's more in line with common sense of how you would behave in a big city. Some of the smaller towns down that area are also much more relaxed.



I have a friend who lives in the Cape Town area and he says the same thing.

Did he like it there ?

Enjoyed it although the conditions were quite spartan.

It's been alright really. Yes, all middle class housing is in gated communities. However we have walked around Sandton and Norwood during the day, and eaten at pavement cafés in areas that are not secured away. I'm in the airport heading back now. Mandela still dominating the local news, lots of road closures for events tomorrow, but all very peaceful.

Only been in Jo'burg long enough to walk between airport terminals and get a connecting flight, but Pietermaritzburg is bonkers. Tom Sharpe's first two books, [iRiotous Assembly[/i and [iIndecent Exposure[/i were set there – it's absolutely recognisable and I swear I met at least one of the characters on one visit.

I've also been carted to every bloody shopping mall in that town – all of them bland and utterly boring.

TB's mother used to get very funny comments from other white people because she was perfectly happy to get one of the combis into town to go shopping and they had a mindset that assumed she'd get raped or butchered when alone with all those black people.

The British ex-pats can be mad, but Afrikaaners are in another class.

Some of TB's old schoolmates held a braai to which we were invited as guests of honour.

All the blokes stood around the fire with cans of beer. I was expected to sit with the women in a corner: none of them were drinking and they weren't even talking to each other, let alone me, the 'guest'.

We also visited the mother in law's bowling club – like stepping back in time to the beginning of WWII: I felt as though I was sitting on the set of [iTenko[/i before they're all carted off to prison camp. Flowery dresses and lipstick that should have been in a museum; not being allowed in the main bar and having to listen to this complete fruitbat explain how she carried a picture of her dead son in his coffin with her at all times after he'd been killed in a car crash.

And when we stayed at a resort in the mountains, the Afrikanner guests never talked to any of the non-Afrikanner visitors, at all. The cocktail lounge would be quiet as a mouse in the evening – fortunately, we discovered the sports bar by the second night, which was where some of the staff and all the European guests socialised.

Lessons I learned while there on how to shock/horrify Afrikaaners:

1) be female and wear football shirts;

2) be female and drink beer;

3) be female and insist on getting a round in when it's your turn, and then actually going to the bar.

Sounds very "White Mischief".

That bowling club was very much so – just not quite as upper class. But then, for a lot of the people who went out there from the UK, it was the chance to have a standard of living that they could not have dreamed of here, with swimming pools and servants/staff.

Plus there were quite a few old colonials around who moved south as the assorted liberation struggles had seen their ideal world die out.

Greta Scacchi back in the day.
Mmmm!
Yes please.

If I'd been asked to name who would pick that angle, it would have been WIZEB

Good to see Bono at the memorial service today.
He's a very important person.

[urlhttp://thebackbencher.co.uk/3-things-you-didnt-want-to-know-about-nelson-mandela/[/url

Cameron proves that simply being a statesman is no guarantee of statesmanlike behaviour, by photobombing Obama and the Danish PM's (Kinnock's daughter in law) selfie at Mandela's memorial service.

Compares pretty well with any UK PM or US President over the last 200 years then. They have all signed off on far more deaths of civilians, cosied up to more ruthless dictators and sold arms to anyone who'd front up the price (often in the form of UK/US loans).

Phoney Tony looked a bit lonely sat in that stadium.

It's the least he deserved.
An excellent seating arrangement I thought.
Blair out on a limb.
How appropriate.

The black ANC is every bit as racist as the white regime it replaced, and with the increasing exodus of the white intelligentsia, you have to wonder if the future South Africa will spire down into the tribal violence and economic implosion as seen in Zimbabwe.

If Putin's absence is any indication, then I doubt there will be any assistance coming from Russia, which just leaves China as their only hope.

Good Luck with that one!

At least we've democracised Iraq and made it a much safer place than it was under Saddam......................

[urlhttp://iraq2013.rt.com/[/url

At least there is something right in the world

Mr Mandela expressed his disdain and fears about the invasion to Tone.
Looking at the disaster that has occurred in that country this year I'd say he wasn't far off.

I'm not sure that the former head of the armed wing of the ANC is really in any position to add his his two pence worth of faux outrage, when it comes to moral judgments.

No, I think they were more likely to be bitching about their respective wives. It was Winnie Mandela who said it all: "with our boxes of matches and rubber tyres we will liberate this Nation" I'm surprised she found the time, as Desmond Tutu was heard to remark "that she'd been banged more times than a taxi door" whilst Nelson was lanquishing in prison.

And as for Cherie Blair......what's not to like ,eh?

Now go ahead and tell me how many innocent deaths the ANC were responsible for fighting against apartheid in their [iown[/i country and then tell me roughly how many innocent deaths the US/UK allies were responsible for fighting a phantom war on terror in a foreign sovereign state?

He could also explain how to tackle a regime that shoots dead unarmed children protesting that they want a decent education.