Winnie Mandela barred from Canada

[David__77]

Source: CNN

OTTAWA, Canada (Reuters) -- Canada has denied a visa to South African anti-apartheid leader Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, who was to be the keynote speaker at a fund-raising gala in Toronto on Tuesday, featuring an opera about her life.

Madikizela-Mandela, the ex-wife of former South African President Nelson Mandela, had packed her bags and was about to set out for the airport when the Canadian embassy notified her that she would not be allowed to enter the country, organizers of the Toronto event said.

"No reason was given," said Carole Adrianns, event director for MusicaNoir, an organization that raises awareness about Africa through cultural projects. "The Mandela family was very, very confident that they were getting the visa," she said.

...

The 73-year-old Madikizela-Mandela, who rose to heroine status as a fearsome opponent of South Africa's apartheid regime, became a controversial figure because of her 1991 conviction in the death of a 14-year-old activist.

She also had a public falling-out with her husband after he formed a new government in 1995. They were divorced a year later.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/06/05/mandela.canada.reut/index.html

---

Canada under the Conservative government is now banning anti-apartheid heroes from entering the country?

[ingac70]

1. Lots of countries deny visas to convicts....;.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/africa/04/24/mandela.trial/index.html

If she had a clean record, I would question it, but alas, she does not.

[Tempest]

6. And yet they let Bush in

When he was banned because of his DUI convictions.

[Solo_in_MD]

7. Diplomatic passport trumps a lot of bad stuff, Winnie does not have that status

[Tempest]

9. The law is the law

And Canada choose to ignore it in one case and not in another.

If a law is not going to be followed uniformly, it shouldn't exist.

[Solo_in_MD]

10. Actually it is the law...

In the US a holder of diplomatic status is not subject to entry restrictions unless they have been personally declared PNG (persona non grata). Its the same just about everywhere, an it is the law.

[northzax]

11. same for everywhere

which is why the US cannot deny access, on a diplomatic mission, to people like Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro, if they are going to the UN. Welcome to yet another Geneva Convention. even countries that we do not have relations with (like Cuba) have diplomats in DC and New York, they are just forbidden to leave those areas (I believe the UN mission is restricted to the Island of Manhattan, but it might be the five boroughs, and the Cuban Interests Section in DC is restricted to remaining inside the beltway.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. A 'hero' convicted in the death of an activist

'Controversial' hardly begins to describe her.

In 1991, Ms. Mandela - the divorced wife of South Africa's first post-apartheid president, Nelson Mandela - was convicted of kidnapping and being an accessory to assault in connection with the death of 14-year-old James Seipei, known as Stompie Moeketsi. Her six-year jail sentence was reduced to a fine on appeal.

In 2004, she was convicted of fraud and given a suspended sentence after an appeal court ruled her crime was not committed for personal gain. Just prior to her sentencing, she resigned her parliamentary seat and all leadership positions with South Africa's ruling African National Congress.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070606.MANDELA06/TPStory/TPInternational/Africa/

[maddezmom]

3. another article

~snip~

The setting was a spartan community hall in a working class eastern suburb of Johannesburg. The occasion was the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearing into the reign of terror waged by Mrs Mandela and her Mandela United Football Club, whose true role was not to play soccer but to render the black township of Soweto ungovernable.

At least 16 people, probably more, all of them black, were murdered by the Football Club. Some were even younger than Stompie. Finkie Msomi, for example, was just 13 when she was burned to a cinder in an AK-47 and petrol bomb attack by the Football Club on her aunt’s Soweto house. Neighbours told the aunt that Winnie Mandela watched from a car as the house burned. If Finkie had lived, she would now be 27 and enjoying the welcome fruits of the new, post-Apartheid South Africa.

What was Finkie’s sin? None. Her aunt’s? Resisting Winnie Mandela’s demand that her sons join the Football Club and help it spread mayhem.

That’s how it was in those days when the release from prison of Nelson Mandela was on the horizon; when freedom for South Africa’s black majority beckoned but was not yet secure; and when Winnie Mandela was completing her transition from Mother of the Nation to Mugger of the Nation.

My own book and hour-long BBC Television documentary on Mrs Mandela, in which she was accused of beating and murdering Stompie with her own hands, had helped force the TRC’s hand into putting Mandela on the stand

more: http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=569&id=791422003

[Sapphocrat]

4. She's also an advocate of...

..."necklacing" (immobilizing a victim by forcing a gasoline-filled rubber tire over his chest and arms and setting it ablaze), and she really, really, really hates queers. (All of which you'll probably find in the articles cited above, and if not, it's all out there via Google.)

I wouldn't want her in my country, either.

[David__77]

12. A lot of innocent people were killed in the armed struggle.

I can't think of an armed struggle in which innocents were not killed to some degree. That's why pacifists object to armed struggle under all circumstances.

I happen to think that the armed struggle in South Africa was just and correct despite the errors and indeed the crimes that were committed in its name.

Current President Thabo Mbeki was leader of the ANC's military arm, Umkhonto we Sizwe. According to wikipedia:

Units of ANC exiles had MK camps in the "frontline" states neighboring South Africa, most prominently Angola where MK was allied to the MPLA government, and fought alongside Angolan and Cuban troops at the critical engagement in Cuito Cuanavale. MK troops were also allied with ZAPU (rival to Robert Mugabe's ZANU) in then-Rhodesia, with FRELIMO in Mozambique, and with SWAPO in Namibia.

Landmark events in MK's military activity inside South Africa consisted of actions designed to intimidate the ruling power. In 1983, the Church Street bomb was detonated in Pretoria near the SA Air Force Headquarters, resulting in 19 fatalities and 217 persons injured, some of whom were military, and many were civilians. During the next 10 years, a series of bombings occurred in South Africa, conducted mainly by the military wing of the African National Congress.

In the Amanzimtoti bomb on the Natal South Coast in 1985, five people were killed and 40 were injured. A bomb was detonated in a bar on the Durban beach-front in 1986, killing three persons and injuring 69. In 1987, an explosion outside a Johannesburg court killed three people and injured 10; a court in Newcastle had been attacked in a similar way the previous year, injuring 24. In 1987, a bomb exploded at a military command centre in Johannesburg, killing one person and injuring 68 military or civilian personnel.

The bombing campaign continued with attacks on a series of soft targets, including a bank in Roodepoort in 1988, which four were killed and 18 injured. Also in 1988, in a bomb detonation outside a magistrate’s court killed three. At the Ellis Park rugby stadium in Johannesburg, a car bomb, killed two and injured 37. A multitude of bombs in “Wimpy Bar” fast food outlets and supermarkets occurred during the late 1980s, killing and wounding many people. In most of these events the victims were civilians, and of all races. Several other bombings occurred, with smaller numbers of casualties. Along with these mainly urban bombings, there was a campaign, from 1985 to 1987, in the rural areas of the Northern and Eastern Transvaal, aimed at the farming and rural communities. There were about 23 deaths.<3>.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umkhonto_we_Sizwe

This is the armed struggle that Nelson Mandela refused to condemn and upheld during his entire 27 years in prison. Even when released, he did not condemn it, nor did he ever condemn "necklacing," or other methods of killing suspected informers and spies.

[Sapphocrat]

13. Nobody's saying the anti-apartheid movement itself was a bad thing.

There's just a huge difference between an "armed struggle" and death by torture (and singling out gay people for beatings and murder -- which, as far as I can tell, had nothing to do with the anti-apartheid movement; that was just Winnie indulging her extreme homophobia).

And don't make too many assumptions about pacifists; I'm an armed pacifist, who does not "object to armed struggle under all circumstances." Emphasis on "all."

[FarrenH]

14. Winnie Mandela's crimes came after the ANC was unbanned

She was at war in a time of peace. Against children. The ANC had been unbanned and all parties were at the table. She was once deserving of admiration but hubris got the better of her.

The ANC largely restricted themselves to military and security-police targets during the struggle. Necklacing was not a formal part of the armed struggle, but the practice of some outraged township dwellers in dealing with collaborators with the security police who behaved like the gestapo.

Winnie's involvement in torture and murder cannot be excused.

[LeftishBrit]

19. Agreed

She isn't being banned because of her anti-apartheid activities; she is being banned because of her conviction, and her record for violence - violence *against other black South Africans*.

[LostinVA]

18. Oh brother

[LostinVA]

5. I don't blame Canada at all

Having the surname of "Mandela" doesn't make you a decent person, that's for sure.

[Solo_in_MD]

8. Canada is quite strict. I've seen people turned seriously questioned and some turned away

for 25 year old bust, not even convictions etc.

[bicentennial_baby]

15. Good for Canada!

:applause:

[Vidar]

16. Nelson is a hero; Winnie is a killer. Good for Canada.

[shenmue]

17. Hasn't she already paid her debt to society?

Any feelings that she didn't do enough, or something, ought to be placed at the foot of the court system in South Africa. I can't imagine what Canada thinks it is accomplishing with this gesture.

[LostinVA]

20. I don't think murderers and torturers CAN repay their debt to society

She's lucky she's not in prison right now.