Nelson Mandela doing his visit to Ireland in July 1990.
After ten days of national mourning South Africa finally laid to rest its first post apartheid black president, Nelson Mandela. The ceremony took place in the town of Qunu and 'in keeping with tradition, Mandela was laid to rest in the afternoon, when the sun is at its highest.'
All 11 of the former Dunnes Stores workers, whose strike of almost three years moved the Irish government to ban South African produce in the 1980s were in attendance … Their strike was one of the longest in trade union history in Ireland and only ended when the government agreed to ban the import of South African fruit and vegetables until the apartheid regime was over.
Democratic South Africa is in the midst of ten days of mourning for its first president Nelson Mandela. The former Robben Island prisoner will be buried in the village of Qunu in the Eastern Cape, where he was born.
At a Johannesburg memorial service on Tuesday 'Irish President Michael D. Higgins and his wife Sabina attended ... as did Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness, the North's deputy first minister, and former Irish President Mary Robinson.'
Nelson Mandela during his visit to Ireland in July 1990
The late Nelson Mandela who is to be buried near Soweto tomorrow emerged, during his days as a political prisoner in Robben Island, as the public face of a global anti-Apartheid campaign.
Nelson Mandela, the first black president of South Africa who died on Thursday, once spoke in the Irish parliament. He arrived in Ireland in July 1990 not long after he had been released from Robben Island where he had served 27 years a political prisoner of the white minority Apartheid regime.
Mr Mandela died at 95 years of age. His health had been frail for some time.
Nelson Mandela addresses Irish parliament in 1990.
The publication of the Smithwick Report's findings in respect of the deaths of two RUC officers in 1989 at the hands of the IRA has led to a storm of acrimony. Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams has come in for much criticism for his comments on Newstalk. Opponents have accused him of virtually having blamed both men for their own deaths.
The RUC men, both unarmed, died shortly afer crossing a border on their return from a meeting with with counterparts in An Garda Siochana at Dundalk Garda station. The Smithwick Report has concluded that on the balance of probability collusion between a Garda mole and the IRA led to the killings.
Breen and Buchanan were the two most high ranking police officers to have died during the North's conflict which produced over 3000 deaths. The term 'collusion' is normally reserved to describe aspects of the relationship between British state security forces and loyalist detah squads. One notable case was the solicitor Pat Finucnae who died after collusion between his UDA killers and senior members of the RUC.
Despite Smithwick concluding that there was an element of Garda collusion, the Garda Siochana paid a heavy price as a consequence of the Northern conflict. A number of garda lost their lives in shooting and gun attacks carried out by armed republivan groups. In 1975, for example, Garda Michael Reynolds was gunned down as he sought to pursue people in the immediate wake of an armed robbery.
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Pope Francis shows no sign of abating in his stated determination to introduce reform in the Catholic Church. In his encyclical "Evangelii Gaudium" the Argentinian pontiff described unfettered capitalism as "a new tyranny".
While this is is almost certain to set him on a collision course with the more conservative elements perhaps even more challenging to the power of tradition is his statement:
I prefer a Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security.
Pope John Paul II during his visit to Ireland in 1979
