NATION & WORLD
Saturday, December 7, 2013 THE NEW MEXICAN
A legAcy of hArmony Tributes to Mandela cut across social, ideological, racial, religious lines By Sudarsan Raghavan and Michael Birnbaum
The Washington Post
JOHANNESBURG — They came by the hundreds, late into Friday night. They parked their cars blocks away and walked through the darkness, some carrying candles, some flowers. They were men, women and children, black, white and brown, Christians, Muslims and Jews, gays and lesbians, and they all walked until they converged in front of the house of the man mourned by the whole world. They came to pay tribute and to thank him. “My life would not be what it is if it wasn’t for having a leader such as Nelson Mandela,” said Angela Mhlanga,
head of a financial division at a bank, who came to the house in the upscale Johannesburg suburb of Houghton with her two children. “He chose peace over war. He created a legacy where our children, black, white or yellow, can live in harmony. I told my children that we wouldn’t have a country such as this one if it weren’t for him.” The death of Mandela, 95, spurred the rarest of outpourings Friday — nearly universal and unanimous — as South African President Jacob Zuma announced a national week of mourning before a state funeral is held Dec. 15. It was the start of a fitting farewell to the anti-apartheid icon, who rose from prisoner to president. Flags across several continents fell to half-staff early Friday, and South Africans poured into the streets at daybreak to pay tribute to a liberator whose life spanned nearly a century and whose dignity and peacemaking served as a model across the world. Mandela’s face appeared on newspaper
front pages from Berlin to Beirut, often with just a few somber words and the years of his life: 1918 to 2013. In Soweto, the township near Johannesburg that was the scene of some of the worst apartheid-era strife, black and white South Africans joined hands in mourning. Crowds also congregated in a popular mall in Sandton, where a huge statue of Mandela stands in a square named after him. Mourners placed bouquets notes near the statue. South Africans also gathered in Pretoria, the seat of government, to remember him. But it was outside Mandela’s house in Houghton, where he died with his family around him, that perhaps the most boisterous appreciation unfolded. Crowds waved South African flags and placards emblazoned with his portrait. They sang the national anthem and liberation songs. In one corner of the intersection, an expanse of candles, flowers and photographs mushroomed. It was part mourning, part celebration, a send-off unlike any this
Mourners sing and dance to celebrate the life of Nelson Mandela in the street outside his old house in Soweto, Johannesburg, South Africa, on Friday. BEN CURTIS THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
nation — perhaps any — has seen. Zuma said Friday that a memorial service will be held Tuesday at FNB Stadium in Johannesburg. Mandela’s body will lie in state in Pretoria from Wednesday through next Friday, and two days later he will be buried in Qunu, his rural birthplace. “We collectively claim him as the father of our nation,” retired Anglican bishop Desmond Tutu, a close friend of Mandela’s and a fellow fighter against apartheid, told reporters in Cape Town. “What’s going to happen
Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON — A surprisingly robust gain in new jobs last month helped drop the unemployment rate to a five-year low, fueling optimism about the nation’s economic recovery and raising the prospect that the government may finally start to ease a key stimulus effort this month. In its report Friday, the Labor Department said that the nation’s employers added 203,000 non-farm jobs in November and that a large part of them were higher-paying positions. The unemployment rate fell to 7 percent, the lowest since November 2008. “It’s not just the quantity of the jobs but the quality,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial. “These are higher-wage jobs, and a shift from a reliance on leisure and hospitality and retail gains we had seen in recent months.” Big increases in manufacturing and construction gave experts hope that the labor market was starting to produce enough solid jobs to fuel stronger economic growth and lead the Federal Reserve to pull back on its monthly purchases of $85 billion in bonds. The economy has averaged more than 200,000 net new
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jobs a month for the past four months. That’s the sustained level that central bank officials have said they wanted to see before starting to reduce the monthly bond purchases, part of their effort to spur the recovery from the Great Recession. Despite fears that the Fed’s easy-money policies might start ending, investors cheered the upbeat labor market news, the biggest in a series of positive economic reports recently. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 198.69 points, or 1.3 percent, to close at 16,020.20. Wall Street is “waking up to the fact that good news really is good news,” said Alan Whitman, managing director at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management in Pasadena, Calif. “It means the economy is able to carry itself on its own, and that’s really what we want.” Construction companies added 17,000 jobs in November, up 42 percent from the previous month, as the housing market rebound created more demand. And the nation’s factories added 27,000 workers, the most in 20 months and 69 percent more than in October. Layoffs, meanwhile, have been dropping. Roy Paulson has seen business at his Paulson Manufacturing Corp. in Temecula, Calif., pick up this year domestically and abroad.
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“We were planning for layoffs in October, November, December because that’s what we traditionally do, but we didn’t have layoffs,” he said. The company, which makes safety products such as face shields for industrial use, first responders and the military, normally would be down to 110 workers at this time of year. But there are 150 workers keeping the factory operating around the clock at times to fill rush orders. The improving economy has led Paulson to boost production despite concern about tax and spending policy in Washington. “I’m doing what I need to do. I’m not holding back on hiring,” Paulson said. Other employers remain worried, though, about whether there will be another partial government shutdown when a short-term federal spending bill expires on Jan. 15. “We’ve seen a ton of hesitancy by companies to invest in
to us now that our father has died?” Some analysts have worried for years about a splintering of South Africa in the wake of Mandela’s death, since the country is still riven with problems, but Mandela always scoffed at the notion that his country would face special challenges after his death. As mourners left Mandela’s house Friday night, some expressed a sense of foreboding about a future without Mandela. “I’m worried,” said Sharon Rosenberg, 52, a receptionist. “Will South Africa be the same?”
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U.S. jobless rate drops to 7%, lowest since 2008 By Jim Puzzanghera
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