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Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Highlights From Memorial Service for Mandela

As our colleagues Lydia Polgreen, Nicholas Kulish and Alan Cowell reported on Tuesday from South Africa, leaders from all over the world joined tens of thousands of people in a Soweto soccer stadium to pay tribute to Nelson Mandela.

Here are some of the highlights from the memorial service, including notable moments, selfies, tweets, images and videos being shared around the world.

President Obama’s speech was greeted with wild enthusiasm and frequent applause as he recalled Mr. Mandela, referring to him by his clan name, Madiba.

It took a man like Madiba to free not just the prisoner, but the jailer as well to show that you must trust others so that they may trust you; to teach that reconciliation is not a matter of ignoring a cruel past, but a means of confronting it with inclusion and generosity and truth. He changed laws, but he also changed hearts.

For the people of South Africa, for those he inspired around the globe, Madiba’s passing is rightly a time of mourning, and a time to celebrate a heroic life. But I believe it should also prompt in each of us a time for self-reflection. With honesty, regardless of our station or our circumstance, we must ask: How well have I applied his lessons in my own life? It’s a question I ask myself, as a man and as a president

Unlike Mr. Obama, South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma, was met with loud boos and jeers when he approached the lectern, prompting the memorial’s organizers to turn up the volume on the music.

In his speech, Mr. Zuma said that Mr. Mandela was “one of a kind.”

But with presidential elections coming in 2014, Mr. Zuma also noted that Mr. Mandela’s party was not about one leader, and he emphasized that Mr. Mandela recognized that his achievements were a result of working together with the African National Congress. “Mandela believed in collective leadership,” Mr. Zuma said.

President Jacob Zuma addressing the crowd at the Nelson Mandela memorial, via SABCDigital/YouTube.

The crowd’s reaction to South Africa’s president prompted Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu to urge members of the audience to quiet down. “I want to show the world we can come out here and celebrate the life of an icon, you must show the world that we are disciplined. I want to hear a pin drop,” said Mr. Tutu, who went on to describe the importance of Mr. Mandela to the country and the world.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu addressing the crowd at the service for Nelson Mandela, via SABC.

One of the most discussed moments online Tuesday, as my colleague Christine Hauser reported, followed images of President Obama shaking hands with Raúl Castro, president of Cuba and brother of Fidel Castro.

Video of President Obama shaking hands with Raúl Castro

Lydia Polgreen, the South Africa bureau chief for The Times, posted on Twitter that the speech of Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, went over well.

Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, addressing the crowd.

Driving rain meant that not all of the soccer stadium’s 95,000 seats were filled. But the crowd included people from all over the world paying homage to the man who brought peace and an end to apartheid.

Beyond the speeches, the rain and the handshake, online discussion focused on selfies that people took at the memorial service. So much so that a recently deactivated Tumblr blog dedicated to criticizing people who took selfies at funerals came back to life on Tuesday with a photo of President Obama and David Cameron, the prime minister of Britain, posing for a camera phone picture with Denmark’s prime minister, Helle Thorning Schmidt.

The first lady Michelle Obama did not join in as she continued to look at the world leaders paying tribute to Mr. Mandela.

On his Instagram account, former President George W. Bush shared a photo from his view in the stands that included Laura Bush, the former first lady, and the Clintons.

Mr. Bush also shared his version of a selfie with Bono.



Leaders of Israel and Iran Praise Mandela, From a Safe Distance

South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma, was greeted with boos when he was introduced at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela on Tuesday.

As boos rained down on South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma, during the memorial service for Nelson Mandela on Tuesday, and American conservatives reacted with fury over President Obama’s handshake with President Raúl Castro of Cuba, it was not hard to imagine sighs of relief being breathed by top officials in Israel and Iran who decided that they were too busy, ill, or frugal to make the trip themselves.

Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen showing Secretary of State John Kerry a photograph of President Obama shaking hands with President Raúl Castro of Cuba on Tuesday.

In Israel, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu first said that he would attend the ceremony, but then canceled, saying he could not justify the expense, and President Shimon Peres also declined to travel, citing a recent flu, there was speculation that both men may have wanted to avoid the possibility of an unruly reception, or awkward questions, over Israel’s security cooperation with South Africa’s apartheid government during Mr. Mandela’s long imprisonment.

As Larry Derfner reported on the Israeli news blog +972, a well-connected columnist for the Tel Aviv daily Yediot Ahronot, Eitan Haber, reminded his readers on Monday that “Israel in the ’70s and ’80s was a full, enthusiastic partner of the apartheid regime. Until this day, millions of South African citizens have not forgotten nor forgiven Israel’s role.” Given that, Mr. Haber wrote:

The cancellation of Netanyahu’s flight to the ceremony shouldn’t have surprised anyone. The leader has not yet been born who will knowingly step into a boiling pot of hatred and contempt. Netanyahu, if he were to go to the funeral, could attract headlines in the world media - negative ones. It’s a great honor to stand at a funeral alongside the presidents of the United States and other countries, next to kings, prime ministers, princes and the who’s who of the world. But it’s a very small honor indeed to have hundreds of TV cameras aimed at you when you are rejected, ostracized, disgraced.

Instead of speaking at the memorial, Mr. Netanyahu expressed his admiration in a YouTube message saluting Mr. Mandela as “one of the stellar figures of our age,” who “never became proud or haughty.”

Remarks by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the death of Nelson Mandela.

Although health concerns for Mr. Peres, who is 90, are hard to dismiss, Mr. Derfner was not alone in suggesting that the president’s decision not to travel could have been related to renewed scrutiny of his central role in forging Israel’s military alliance with the white-minority rulers of South Africa.

On Sunday, the NBC News correspondent Robert Windrem reported:

In the 1970s, while Mandela was languishing in a damp prison cell on Robben Island, Peres was making deals with South Africa’s apartheid regime, according to interviews and documents gathered by NBC News, a recent documentary and a book based on Israeli and South African government documents. With the help of an Israeli operative now famed as the Hollywood mogul behind “Pretty Woman” and “Fight Club,” Peres traded missiles for money and the uranium needed for atomic bombs.

The fascinating history of the military cooperation between the two countries was brought back into the spotlight in 2010 with the publication of Sasha Polakow-Suransky’s book “The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa.” The author, who was an editor at Foreign Affairs at the time, later joined The New York Times, where he now works on the international opinion pages.

After his book was published, Mr. Polakow-Suransky described the documentary evidence he had uncovered showing that Mr. Peres was deeply involved in cultivating the relationship in an interview with Amy Goodman and at a New America Foundation forum.

Like Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Peres elected to pay tribute to Mr. Mandela online, in his case on Facebook, and stay home. Israel’s delegation to the memorial was led by the Parliament speaker and a West Bank settler, Yuli Edelstein, who was himself a political prisoner in the 1980s, before his emigration from the Soviet Union. After the ceremony, Mr. Edelstein posted a photograph of himself speaking with former President Jimmy Carter, a staunch opponent of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, which he has compared to South African apartheid.

For Iranians, meanwhile, almost as soon as news of the ceremony broke, anticipation started again over the possibility of a handshake between the presidents of Iran and the United States.

Given that President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif are engaged in a delicate balancing act at home â€" trying to pursue talks with the international community over Iran’s nuclear program without giving ammunition to hard-line conservatives who would like to sabotage the negotiations â€" perhaps neither man wanted to run the risk of encountering Mr. Obama’s outstretched hand this week.

Perhaps, too, they recalled the controversy after the funeral of Pope John Paul II, when Israel’s president at the time, Moshe Katsav, insisted that he had shaken hands with Iran’s president then, Mohammad Khatami. After Mr. Katsav’s account of the greeting was reported in Israel, Mr. Khatami was quoted in Iran’s state media strongly denying that he had engaged in “any meeting with a personality from the Zionist regime.”

In the end, they too offered online condolences and dispatched a delegation led by a lower-ranking official.



Show Us Your Scenes From Mandela’s Farewell

Prayers for Nelson Mandela at Heavenly Gate, a small church in Diepsloot, outside Johannesburg on Sunday.Todd Heisler/The New York Times Prayers for Nelson Mandela at Heavenly Gate, a small church in Diepsloot, outside Johannesburg on Sunday.

Tens of thousands of South African citizens and scores of foreign dignitaries are celebrating Nelson Mandela in his native country this week.

As we cover this extraordinary week, we want see the events through your eyes.

Are you paying tribute to the life of Mr. Mandela in South Africa or witnessing the events there? Did you travel from your home to attend the schedule of ceremonies? Will you travel to Pretoria or Qunu to pay your respects?

Show us your images depicting how people in South Africa are remembering their national hero. Upload your photos - scenes, portraits, details - using the form below, which connects to Instagram and other photo-sharing platforms. We will publish a selection of images on nytimes.com this week.

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Show Us Your Scenes From Mandela’s Farewell

Prayers for Nelson Mandela at Heavenly Gate, a small church in Diepsloot, outside Johannesburg on Sunday.Todd Heisler/The New York Times Prayers for Nelson Mandela at Heavenly Gate, a small church in Diepsloot, outside Johannesburg on Sunday.

Tens of thousands of South African citizens and scores of foreign dignitaries are celebrating Nelson Mandela in his native country this week.

As we cover this extraordinary week, we want see the events through your eyes.

Are you paying tribute to the life of Mr. Mandela in South Africa or witnessing the events there? Did you travel from your home to attend the schedule of ceremonies? Will you travel to Pretoria or Qunu to pay your respects?

Show us your images depicting how people in South Africa are remembering their national hero. Upload your photos - scenes, portraits, details - using the form below, which connects to Instagram and other photo-sharing platforms. We will publish a selection of images on nytimes.com this week.

#interactiveFreeFormMain { padding: 10px; }

You have 100 words left.

Tell us about yourself:

Thank you for your submission.



The Distraction of a Handshake in South Africa

The Associated Press broadcast the handshake between Presidents Obama and Cuba’s President Castro at Nelson Mandela’s service in South Africa on Dec. 10.

Sometimes what happens on the sidelines of a main event attended by world leaders can steal a bit of the spotlight.

Such was the brief moment when President Obama shook hands with President Raúl Castro of Cuba while both men attended the memorial service for Nelson Mandela in South Africa on Tuesday. Reactions to the handshake, shared online, ranged from whether it meant the beginning of a thaw in relations between the United States and Cuba to fears the sideshow would hijack the main focus of the ceremony.

As my colleagues reported, the gesture is sure to be dissected for its symbolic and political significance. Mr. Castro is the brother of the longtime American adversary Fidel Castro, and while ties between the two countries have been less frosty of late, the Castro brothers remain divisive figures for many Americans, especially Cuban-Americans in Florida.

The moment was captured on live television, broadcast after 6 a.m. Eastern time in the United States. But the commentary sprang up and grew as it was replayed during the day long after the ceremony was over, and as photographs were shared widely online.

Getty’s Chip Somodevilla captured the image of the handshake, distributed by Getty Images News. A photograph taken by Reuters in which the two men appeared to also be exchanging words was also extensively cited.

Donald E. Collins, who has taught at University of Maryland-University College and written about race in the United States, conveyed some of the sentiment.

Politico’s Ben White injected a bit of sarcasm into the debate.

The last time an American president shook hands with a Cuban president was in 2000, when Bill Clinton and Fidel Castro clasped hands on the edges of a luncheon for a meeting of world leaders at the United Nations in New York City. The New York Times’s David E. Sanger reported on the handshake accompanied by small talk, providing one sentence of context that suggests not much might have changed in the past dozen years:

“But in relations with Cuba, even empty talk is brimming with symbolism.”

Contrary to the Clinton-Castro handshake, which took place away from the cameras and was confirmed days later by the White House, the handshake between Mr. Obama and Mr. Castro could not escape the scrutiny of live television. While many bemoaned the attention that would be diverted from Mr. Mandela, others wrote that the handshake was a gesture that the former South African leader would support.

A South African woman echoed that thought, using the term of endearment ‘Tata’ in the Xhosa language for Mr. Mandela.

Former President Jimmy Carter, who also attended the remembrance service, was optimistic.

Michael Shear of The New York Times, who was accompanying the president to South Africa, reported that White House officials declined to offer any explanation of the handshake or confirm that there had been a discussion about whether to offer one.

The gesture seemed to have been ignored in Cuba, at least officially. Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs just posted the text of Mr. Castro’s speech. The blogger Yoani Sanchez posted on her Twitter account @yoanifromcuba that the handshake was not broadcast.

But the gesture was of special interest for Cuban exiles in the United States, and news organizations in Florida naturally took note. The Miami New Times curated a collection of reactions, while referring to a post on babalu, a Cuban exiles blog, that said Mr. Obama gave “credence and recognition to a vile and bloody dictatorial regime responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of innocent people.”

Marc A. Caputo, a political writer for The Miami Herald, wrote:

Most didn’t hear the speech broadcast in the U.S. this morning. They won’t read it. And there’s a far better chance they’ll see the photo or video of the handshake. Twitter is abuzz. The partisans have donned their armor of lazy talking points, hoisted their tired 140-character standards of dysfunction.

A few have noted the president “bowed” to Castro. It’s a function of the president being so much taller than the little dictator, and being decorous at an event on the world stage. It just didn’t look like an act of obeisance.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about the handshake. But we should talk about the speech as well.

Follow Christine Hauser on Twitter @christineNYT.



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