Opinion Monday, December 23, 2013
www.guardianonline.co.nz
Funeral representation
POLL Online poll Q: Who is the Mid Canterbury Person of the year? Judith Lilley, Salvation Army Foodbank manager Christine Lawn, Paraplegic sky diver solo Finau Fakapelea, Ashburton College head girl Neil Pluck, Rakaia Community Association Jon Dampney, Heartland rugby player of the year Linda George, Coldstream nurse Jade Temapara, gardening lobbyist Darren Ritchie, Mt Hutt College young business talent Diane Rawlinson, citizens association Angus McKay, re-elected mayor
Nick Lindo
EYE ON POLITICS
D
id PM Key really “drop the ball” and/ or “miss the bus”- as the late Neville Chamberlain once claimed Adolf Hitler to have done - over his choice of personnel to accompany him to South Africa for Nelson Mandela’s funeral? His “failure” to invite antiapartheid activists John Minto and Trevor Richards to accompany him to the Republic flared quickly into the controversy of the hour. Now, with the Great Man safely returned to the land of his ancestors and the mourners equally safely repatriated to their countries of origin, a less febrile - albeit now purely academic - consideration of the issue can be thoughtfully debated. From the start, it seems to have been a question of whether the New Zealand delegation should have comprised the Prime Minister, current leaders and two former holders of High Office, all in a purely national representative role or should there have been a distinctly “political” element including some for whom it was claimed had greatly assisted Mr Mandela’s long fight for racial equality in South Africa leading finally and gloriously to his becoming the first black president of the “Rainbow Republic.” In that regard, the happenings at the Waikato/Springbok rugby match at Rugby Park, Hamilton in 1981 loom large. That the vehemence of the protesters led to the abandonment of the game is seen in some quarters as a “watershed” in the battle to end apartheid and as such marks “the beginning of the end” of that pernicious doctrine. Arrogant or realistic? However we assess the subsequent official demise of racial division in South Africa, it has to be said that despite the Herculean achievements of “Madiba”, as he was also known, that division remains wide in many parts of South Africa. The vi-
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The casket of Nelson Mandela stands on cow skins during his funeral service in Qunu, South Africa, earlier this month.
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sion is still incomplete. The opposition to the 1981 Springbok tour of this country may well have contributed to the world-wide feeling of repugnance towards the policy of apartheid - and Mr Mandela acknowledged his appreciation - but in reality it was but another step along the long road of New Zealand opposition to it. To have singled out so-called deserving individual opponents would have been both invidious and inappropriate and, in its way, open-ended. No, at such a sombre and mostly formal international gathering of mourning and recognition, a nation’s lead-
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ers of the day should be the ones to represent their nation. Ours did just that, particularly Messrs Key, Cunliffe and Sharples. Len Brown. Elsewhere, it has not been a good week for Mayor Len Brown of “Super City” Auckland; “Super City” perhaps but not “Super Mayor”. His off course shenanigans and their financial ramifications, that a $100,000 investigation have now laid bare - if you’ll pardon the expression - have led inevitably to strident calls for his resignation. He cannot be sacked but the put-upon taxpayers of our largest city don’t fancy having
a laughing stock mayor for the next three years the butt of every kind of nod, nod, wink, wink and sly innuendo . . . and we can’t really blame them. After all, our comparable officials are models of probity and decorum. So ends 2013 with, as ever, controversy and contention and, I’m glad to say, the promise of much more to come in 2014! With an election in the offing, we political pundits are more or less drooling at the prospect. Before all that, Christmas and New Year. I wish you all very well for both.
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