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EU getting ‘profoundly mixed messages’ from Ukrainian Pres. Yanukovych, says Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt
By Mick Krever, CNN
The European Union is getting “profoundly mixed messages” from the Ukrainian government about whether it will sign a free trade deal, Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Monday.
“We have a deal with President Yanukovych; we negotiated for several years…and it’s ready for signature,” he said. “But there seems to be a profound policy muddle in Kiev.”
President Viktor Yanukovych, Bildt said, is saying one thing one day and something else the next.
“From our point of view, the policy is clear,” he said. “If they want to sign, we will sign. We can do it tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, three days from now.”
It’s been nearly a month since Yanukovych ditched the free trade deal; since then, tens of thousands of Ukrainians have protested the decision, pushing for closer integration with Europe.
“They are evidently under very severe pressure, primarily from Russia,” Bildt said, referring to Ukrainian leaders. “That, I think, is the underlying reason for what we are now seeing.”
South Africa: Proving ground for greatness
By Lucky Gold, CNN
South Africans will be able to visit Nelson Mandela’s coffin at the seat of government in Pretoria for a final farewell until the end of this week.
Now imagine a world where three of the greatest leaders of the 20th century first came to light in South Africa.
By now, we know the saga of Nelson Mandela – from activist to prisoner to president to national treasure.
And yet 120 years ago, a young Indian lawyer named Mohandas Gandhi was riding on a train to Pretoria when he first felt the sting of racial injustice – forced to leave the first class compartment he'd paid for and thrown off the train.
It was a life-changing moment.
France did not anticipate ‘distribution of machetes’ in Central African Republic, CNN’s Elbagir reports
By Mick Krever, CNN
CNN’s Nima Elbagir gave a dramatic account Wednesday from the capital of the Central African Republic, Bangui, of the violence and chaos engulfing that country.
“We travelled down that road from Bossangoa to Bangui and we saw some pretty brazen militia roadblocks along the way,” Elbagir told Christiane Amanpour.
“We were in an U.N. convoy guarded by African peacekeepers and we had to stop like everyone else for the militiamen to open those roadblocks and let us through.”
The country descended into civil war in March when a Muslim rebellion known as “Seleka” overthrew the president, with the C.A.R’s Christian majority saying they became the targets of banditry. Now vigilante Christian groups have joined the fight, targeting Muslims.
France, the former colonial power, has deployed 1,600 personnel to the country to support African Union troops, after a vote last week in the U.N. Security Council authorizing military intervention.
South Africa apartheid hearings were a ‘pressure valve,’ says lawyer
By Mick Krever, CNN
Nelson Mandela’s death has forced South Africa to reflect once again on its ugly past, and what it took to move beyond it.
A key part of that process, after the fall of apartheid, was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which held hearings for more than two years on the horrors of the policy.
It was “a pressure valve, a safety valve, at a moment in our country where you couldn't turn away,” Paul van Zyl, a human rights lawyer who was executive secretary of the Commission, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday.
“You couldn't sweep the past under a carpet; you had to give people a chance to tell their stories.”
But those hearings, he said, were not – and could not have been – like the Nuremberg trials after World War II that convicted individual Nazis of the most heinous crimes.
“We didn't have the vanquishments of the Germans after World War II,” he said. “We had a negotiated settlement.”
South Africans mourn and celebrate Mandela’s life
In Johannesburg’s massive soccer stadium, outside Mandela’s home, and across South Africa, people are coming together to mourn and celebrate the life of Nelson Mandela.
Khehla Shebane, former CEO of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, joins Christiane Amanpour to talk about the mood, and Mandela’s legacy.
Click above to see their conversation.
Idris Elba on playing Mandela: I wanted to do an ‘interpretation’ not an ‘impression’
By Mick Krever, CNN
When Idris Elba was cast as Nelson Mandela, he decided he was not going to try to do an impersonation of the revered South African president.
“It’s a big ask for the audience to watch myself play Mandela,” Elba told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday. “I don’t look anything like Mandela; I’m considerably younger than the older Mandela.”
“So it was important that I didn’t do an impersonation of any actor, or Mandela himself, but sort of an interpretation.”
He purposefully did not watch previous portrayals of Mandela, like Morgan Freeman’s performance in 2009’s “Invictus,” lest he be influenced by them.
Elba, most famous for his roles in the TV series “The Wire” and “Luther,” stars in “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom,” a biopic based on the autobiography.
It has set box office records in South Africa; it had its premiere in London last week on the very night Mandela died.
Indeed, Elba and a producer on the film, Anant Singh, were forced to announce Mandela’s passing to the audience just after the credits had rolled.
Francois Pienaar on seeing Mandela wearing his Springbok rugby jersey: ‘I bit my lip so hard. I wanted to cry.’
By Mick Krever, CNN
When former South African rugby captain Francois Pienaar was getting ready to attend Nelson Mandela’s memorial on Tuesday, his sons – godchildren to Mandela – told him there was only one thing he could wear: His team jacket.
“They said, ‘Dad, you’ve got to wear this,’” Pienaar told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour and Anderson Cooper. “Because if it wasn’t for Mister Mandela this emblem” – he pointed to the crest over his breast – “would not have survived.”
In 1995, Pienaar was the white captain of the Springboks, the national rugby team whose base of support had always been white South Africans.
Mandela publicly put his weight behind the team in their World Cup run. They would win that year, and when they did, Mandela – the black president – strode into the stadium full of white supporters wearing Pienaar’s #6 jersey.
The story was the subject of the 2009 movie “Invictus,” starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon.
“In the years of apartheid rugby was a hated sport,” Pienaar said. “Mr. Mandela, when he came out of prison, against the wishes of the ANC, actually said to them, ‘These are our boys. You know, they are playing for us. We have to embrace them.’”
Cameron: As example for leaders, Mandela has no parallel
By Mick Krever, CNN
Nelson Mandela set an example for leaders, his people, and the world that “doesn’t have a parallel,” British Prime Minister David Cameron told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour at the Johannesburg stadium where world leaders gathered to memorialize the late South African president.
“The people of South Africa – indeed all of Africa – in Mandela have an immense icon, who I think will be looking down at them in the future, and they’ll be looking up to him and hopefully emulating and treasuring his memory.”
It is, he said, “rather like in British politics.”
“When you have, you know, massive figures like Winston Churchill that have sat in the chair that you now sit in, it doesn’t mean sadly that you’re automatically like them, but it does mean that you’ve got heroes to try and live up to.”
Journalist brought horrors of apartheid to insulated white South Africans
By Mick Krever, CNN
When Nelson Mandela was still behind bars, the brutality of the apartheid regime was making its cruelty felt on the streets of South Africa.
Black anti-apartheid protesters had their whole community behind them; whites who joined the anti-apartheid movement were all-too often shunned by their friends, neighbors and family.
Max du Preez, a journalist, was one of the first to bring the stark realities of apartheid to the insulated white population. In 1988, he started the first Afrikaans newspaper to write about the government's official policy of violence and humiliation.
“There was a remarkable absence of understanding of what was really going on,” du Preez told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Monday.
“I was convinced if Afrikaans-speaking South Africans heard the full story of apartheid … that they would think again about the viability and the morality of apartheid.”
They had been sold a false story, he said, that apartheid was about separate but equal development of the races, and was not a “violent ideology.”
Ghana President John Dramani Mahama describes chance encounter with his icon, Nelson Mandela
By Mick Krever, CNN
Over the years, whenever Christiane Amanpour has asked heads of state – even the most oppressive – which world leader they most admire, the answer has almost invariably come back to Nelson Mandela.
“He is a great man, that one,” Zimbabwean strongman Robert Mugabe told her in 2009.
Even the world’s longest-serving leader – President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea in West Africa – told her that Mandela was the African leader he most admired.
Of course, it is not only strongmen who admire the conciliatory Mandela.
The president of the Ghana – whose country has enjoyed peaceful elections for more than two decades – was just five years old when Nelson Mandela was thrown into prison with a life sentence.
“Growing up as a young student in secondary school, Nelson Mandela was an icon for us,” President John Dramani Mahama told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Monday.
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