Local residents are outraged, accusing the agencies of offending their culture and acting like vultures around a dying lion.

In Qunu, children are performing a traditional song and dance at a coming of age ceremony. Taking their photograph is Charlie Shoemaker, a freelance photographer from the US who sells his pictures to American and British publications through the Corbis Agency. He’s here because of the village’s famous inhabitant: Nelson Mandela.

“The reasons I’ve chosen to be in South Africa and kind of prepare and be here for when Mandela passes,” Shoemaker said, “are because it’ll be, you know, one of the largest global stories of our time and that means there’ll be a lot of work.”

Like Shoemaker, dozens of other western journalists have visited Qunu for the same reason, interviewing people in the community and photographing Mandela’s boyhood hangouts. Some media agencies even installed cameras in the house opposite Mandela’s, owned by the village Chieftainess. Residents like Joe Biko, which is not this man’s real name, said they weren’t told exactly what the cameras were for.

“When the equipment was first installed, before the 2010 World Cup, we were told there would be a fun park basically where residents could go and watch the soccer on big screens,” Biko said, “and they were surprised that there was no fun park. We were actually very surprised to hear they were media cameras now, as we didn’t know what exactly they were there for.”

Both Reuters and the Associated Press admitted to installing the cameras, and have since removed them. Meanwhile the police have launched a criminal investigation. And many locals like Biko are glad.

“I don’t like the fact people are capitalising on Mandela’s ill health, I don’t know about others in the village but I don’t like what was done by AP and Reuters. I don’t like or appreciate the installation of those cameras there,” Biko said.

Residents say aside from the media’s invasion of privacy, talking openly about death goes against the Sosa culture, in which children rarely attend funerals and some women are not even allowed to see dead bodies.

Western journalists like Charlie Shoemaker say they respect the local culture, but there’s also “the news.”

“I don’t think it’s disrespectful for publications to prepare the death of someone on Mandela’s scale,” Shoemaker said. “We can all agree Nelson Mandela is an important person, yes we can all agree, we all agree that when he passes it’ll be a big global piece, yes, so then why is it disrespectful for me to be here to tell that story?”

He said he would never go so far as bribing neighbours or hiding cameras and that his work is not problematic, so long as it remains respectful. But being respectful can mean different things for Western and African journalists, according to Siya Boya. She’s a local journalist with the Daily Dispatch. And while she admited she’s also preparing a supplement for Mandela’s death, she keeps it low key.

“I think the newspapers and the broadcasters are prepared, but we’re not saying it. We’re not putting it out there like, ‘oh I’m just preparing for when Nelson Mandela’s death, what are you doing today?’ you know, we don’t do that. It’s un-African, it is totally un-African to be treating death like that. The way western news agencies are pre-empting it is a bit too much for the South African community to pre-empt it so much, we know he’s gonna die, just like you or I are going to die, but just setting it up like that I don’t think is right,” Boya said.

Boya hopes the camera incident will in future force western media to treat death with the decorum and respect it commands in Mandela’s native Xhosa culture. Meanwhile journalists in both Africa and the west, in their respective styles, continue to plan for the day one of contemporary history’s most illustrious leaders ultimately passes away.

In South Africa many things divide along racial lines. That includes alcohol consumption.

Wine? That’s what white people drink; while black South Africans favor beer.

Or so the stereotype goes. But that might be starting to change.

At a wine bar in Sea Point, near downtown Cape Town, people sip wine in comfortable lounge chairs. The scent of the nearby Atlantic Ocean drifts in. But there’s something slightly unusual about this scene, at least by South African standards — most of the people at this wine bar are black.

“I’m just into my white wines, my Chenins, my Sauvingon Blancs especially — I find it so refreshing, so crisp,” said Latoya Marivate, a patron who came with a group of friends. “I like my Sauvignon Blancs nicely chilled on a hot sunny day.”

In South Africa, wine has long been seen as a white person’s drink. More than 95 percent of the country’s vineyards are white-owned.

Almost all the wine makers are white. And most people visiting the dozens of vineyards near Cape Town are white. But South Africa’s black middle class has been growing steadily since the end of Apartheid, and more blacks can now afford to buy wine.

Latoya Marivate said many of her black friends are embracing the culture.

“But now people are appreciating it more and are collecting wines and going to wine farms, just enjoying the experience of just wine and the lifestyle that it comes with,” Marivate said.

And she said part of what makes that possible is bars like this one, called Naked.

Andrew Chigorimbo is the owner and manager. He’s black, and said some of his customers feel more comfortable when they meet him.

Andrew Chigorimbo is the manager of Naked, a wine bar located in Cape Town, South Africa. He first developed a love of wine while studying at the University of Stellenbosch. (Photo: Anders Kelto)

He said that, in racially-divided Cape Town, the reverse can also true.

“The most negative response I have had is from white people. First of all, white people come in and a lot of people say, ‘Oh, can you call your boss?’ And you’re like, ‘well, I chose all the wines, I’m the boss.’ And they cannot understand it,” Chigorimbo said.

At a vineyard thirty miles east of Cape Town, Erna Witbooi walked through rows of vines. She’s a 28-year-old scientist at the University of Stellenbosch. Plastic sheets are stretched across several rows of grapes.

“Here we’ve got the Cabernet Sauvignon, and these are actually one of the new ultraviolet sheets that we are installed,” Witbooi said. “It is basically excluding all UV light.

Viticulture — the science of growing grapes — is a major field of research in South Africa. But as a black woman, Witbooi is an anomaly in her field. In fact, she said she’s the only black academic in viticulture in the entire country.

She holds a lecturing position at the University of Stellenbosch, presents at international conferences, and publishes regularly in science journals. But despite all that, she said some colleagues still view her skeptically.

“Where I would be the speaker at a workshop, for instance, and they will sort of just look at you in a sort of weird way,” Witbooi said.

She said awkward moments like that are common in viticulture, which still feels like a white man’s world. But rather than being discouraged, she said she sees incidents like that as motivation.

“I do have days that it actually just goes really, really bad and I do get that feelings of no I don’t belong here, but then I just give myself a little kick under my butt and I just tell myself, well somebody has to be the pioneer,” Witbooi said.

She said her mission now is to recruit more black students — especially women — to the field. A few of her current students are interested. And she hopes many more will follow.

Back in Sea Point, the wine bar Naked is buzzing. Manager Andrew Chigorimbo said many of his black customers still buy wine for the wrong reasons.

“Those are the people who walk in here, they do not know what wine it is, they don’t care, just say I want the most expensive wine and I want to drink it,” Chigorimbo said. “I know for a fact that that person does not know anything about wine, they just want to show that they got the money and they can do it.”

But he said, as time passes, more are beginning to appreciate wine — not just the status that comes with it.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman, this is The World. In South Africa today the United States denied it’s trying to delay a new global climate deal until the year 2020. Some delegates at the UN climate talks underway this week in Durban think otherwise. They claim the US wants to delay the start of a legally binding treaty to cut greenhouse gas pollution because of political pressures at home. But chief US negotiator Todd Stern told reporters that the US supports a new European proposal for a global deal. That proposal was revealed just today, providing an unexpected glimmer of hope for substantial progress at this year’s climate summit. Whatever the outcome in Durban though it’s almost certain to be far short of what’s needed to meet the challenge posed by climate change over the next few decades. The process of trying to negotiate a new global treaty on greenhouse gases has nearly ground to a halt in the last few years. And that’s lead many observers to call for a different approach. Kelly Sims Gallagher is an associate professor of energy at environmental policy at the Fletcher School at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. Kelly, has the UN process hit a wall in your opinion?

Kelly Sims Gallagher: I believe it has. It’s not that the United Nations process is fundamentally flawed, it’s that there isn’t any room or latitude within these negotiations for breakthrough ideas, for crossing issues, for…

Werman: So what do you see as promising alternatives?

Gallagher: In my view the United States and China need to have a different approach to these negotiations. The two countries need to step outside of the climate change issue and find a way to bridge their differences. And after they do that they can then bring a deal back to this negotiating forum.

Werman: Are you saying that these two huge greenhouse gas emitters should come up with some grand bargain that embraces a lot of environmental issues?

Gallagher: I’m saying that the two countries probably need to devise a grand bargain, but I think they probably need to look outside the environment in terms of tradeoffs to strike a deal.

Werman: And what about a little country like the Maldives? You know, that wouldn’t be part of that process, but are seriously affected and will be so in the next few years with sea rise?

Gallagher: I think it’s in their interest because fundamentally they need to get these two behemoth emitters to agree to emissions reductions. And that’s not happening in the UNFCCC process. The essence of the dilemma that we just repeatedly come up against is that the US and China won’t both agree to enter into an agreement.

Werman: What about just forgetting about trying to strike deals for binding emissions cuts and just pushing ahead on things like new adaptive energy technologies and market innovations that would help move the world away from fossil fuels?

Gallagher: Well, I’d argue that’s what we’ve been doing, but it’s clearly not enough because emissions are still rising and in fact, there was the biggest jump ever in annual emissions last year.

Werman: You know we ran a story on the show this week that was just hair raising in terms of ice melt and sea rise. After hearing that a lot of our listeners must be flabbergasted that global representatives can’t seem to get it together in Durban. Is it worth talking about who’s to blame for the failure of the UN climate process so far?

Gallagher: Well, it’s very hard not to point towards the United States because from 1992 and the original framework convention on climate change, the United States has failed to meet all of the commitments that it agreed to in these past treaties. And I don’t think anybody trusts at this point that the United States will actually achieve its 17% reduction that President Obama committed to in Copenhagen because there’s been no policy enacted to actually achieve that goal.

Werman: Well, the talks in Durban aren’t over yet, but tomorrow they will be. Do you hold out any hope for significant progress in the next 24 hours?

Gallagher: No.

Werman: Kelly Sims Gallagher, associate professor of energy and environmental policy at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, thanks a lot.

Gallagher: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Read tweets about the climate talks

During Apartheid, black Africans couldn’t live in Cape Town and were relegated to areas like this township.

The residents of this township speak Xhosa. Xhosa is spoken in several parts of South Africa and clicks are a special feature of this native language.

The name of the township in Xhosa means “Our Pride.”

South African singer Miriam Makeba singing the “Click Song” in Xhosa

The Gugulethu Tenors

The answer to the Geo Quiz is Gugulethu.

It is a place where kids grow up listening to hip-hop or house music.

But Anders Kelto found four young men called “The Gugulethu Tenors” who took a different path and have become South Africa’s newest musical sensations.

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Emperor Penguins adults with chicks. (Photo: Michael Van Woert, NOAA NESDIS, ORA)

The day after this year’s UN climate summit ends this Friday, a research team is scheduled to fly into a remote corner of Antarctica for a visit to the Pine Island Glacier. It’s the biggest ice shelf in western Antarctica. And it’s moving—fast.

“This is the fastest glacier in Antarctica,” says Robert Bindschadler of NASA, the expedition’s leader. “It’s going 4,000 meters a year, which converts to just over one foot every hour. So this ice is ripping along.”

Bindschadler says the reason the ice is moving so fast is because unusually warm ocean water is seeping in miles under the glacier’s forward edge, melting it from below.

“In the case of Pine Island, we think that it’s melting at over a 100 meters per year right at the upstream end of the ice shelf. And you think the ice shelf by that amount, the glacier speeds up by many tens of a percent.”

Scientists compare what’s happening to the glacier to popping the cork on a champagne bottle. But in this case, what’s being held back is frozen water.

And it’s not just one glacier. There are signs of sudden, rapid melting across Antarctica, where all the corks on all the glaciers and ice sheets are holding back enough water to raise global sea levels more than 200 feet.

The faster that ice melts, the faster the world’s coastlines will be inundated. The problem is, no one saw this coming.

“It’s caught us all very much off guard,” says Bindschadler. “These are not the ice sheets that I was being taught when I was in graduate school. They are changing at magnitudes and at rates that were thought impossible just 15 years ago.”

That rapid melting is challenging assumptions on how much global warming will cause sea levels to rise this century.

The last major report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, in 2007, suggested a worst-case scenario of less than two feet of rise by 2100. But Virginia Burkett with the US Geological Survey, a lead author on the report, says there was a big caveat.

“The last IPCC report included sea level projections that were based primarily on thermal expansion,” of the water as it warms up, Burkett says. “And of course sea level is rising because of the combination of thermal expansion of sea water and ice sheet decline.”

The problem was that the science on ice sheet decline, or melting polar ice, just wasn’t good enough at the time, so the IPCC decided to leave it out of their final projections.

And even though the report’s fine print clearly stated that ice loss could accelerate substantially, that number of less than two feet has become a kind of default prediction for sea level rise.

Fast forward five years and scientists like Bindschadler and Burkett are now projecting a high-end scenario of about six feet of rising sea levels by the end of the century. Three times the 2007 projection.

That’s enough to make crowded coastal cities like Mumbai unlivable, and displace more than a 100 million people worldwide.
But some scientists say even a prediction of six feet may be too conservative.

Harold Wanless, chair of the Geology Department at the University of Miami, says all the projections by the IPCC and other scientific organizations are based on a gradual rise of sea level. But, Wanless says, “that’s not how it worked in the past.”

Scientists like Wanless are studying sediments from past warming periods to find clues as to how quickly sea levels changed. And what they’ve found is the stuff of Hollywood movies—rapid pulses in the 20-foot range, and on a time scale that could be not centuries, but decades.

“That’s in the line of possibility,” Wanless says.

And he warns that it’s time to start thinking about relocating things that countries don’t want to lose.

“Everything from national archives and our world seed banks, some of which are at much too low elevation. Military bases, things we wouldn’t want disrupted. And our nuclear power plants. Why are we even looking at the coast for those?”

Wanless believes the ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland have already passed their tipping point for runaway melting. The only question for him is how fast it will happen.

Most climate scientists don’t go that far. They say they still don’t understand the complex dynamics of ice melt enough to predict with confidence a 20-foot rise by the end of the century. But few are ruling it out.

Penn State Climatologist and IPCC co-author Richard Alley says a good analogy of the risk is driving a car.

The best scenario, Alley says, is that there’s no traffic. On the other hand, you might get a lot of traffic, or “you might get run over by a drunk driver.”

The drunk driver represents that rapid pulse of sea level rise.

Alley says even though the chances of him being hit are slim, he still bought a car with all the added safety features, just in case.

“If society dealt with risks of climate change the way I deal with drunk drivers,” Alley says, “it’s possible that we would be trying to slow down a little bit so that we could learn more before we get hit by something.”

What’s happening instead is more like stepping on the accelerator. As climate negotiators from the US, China and nearly every other country on earth met this week to again try to find elusive common ground on emissions cuts, new reports confirmed that global emissions of the heat-trapping gas carbon dioxide reached record levels last year.

Alley says the higher we crank up the planet’s thermostat, the higher the risk becomes that we’ll get hit by something nasty.

The UN climate change conference is in Durban, South Africa, from 28 November to 9 December 2011. (Photo: Cien)

International climate change negotiators are back at it his week in Durban, South Africa. Negotiators are scrambling to make significant progress in a process that seems to have fallen far behind the urgency of the the problem.

Anchor Marco Werman gets an update from the BBC’s environment correspondent, Richard Black.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman, this is The World, a coproduction of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston. International climate change negotiators are back at it this week in Durban, South Africa. Negotiators are scrambling to make significant progress in a process that seems to have fallen far behind the urgency of the problem. Just this week there’s a new report out confirming that global emissions of carbon dioxide jumped by the largest amount ever last year. Scientists warn that the rapid growth in greenhouse gas emissions is putting the earth on track to dangerous warming in the next few decades. But a global agreement to cut those emissions still seems a dim hope. The BBC’s environment correspondent, Richard Black, joins us from the UN climate change conference in Durban. It’s not news to the delegates there, Richard, that the earth’s surface continues to warm up and that greenhouse gas pollution is likely the biggest culprit. I’m wondering though how much of a jolt this new analysis gives the proceedings there in Durban to actually break the gridlock and reach an agreement on cutting emissions.

Richard Black: Well, you’re absolutely right, it certainly isn’t news and it’s worth remembering that virtually all of the governments here are also fully signed up to the intergovernmental panel on climate change, which is something that’s been sounding the alarm on this since 1997. So basically, we had the car crash in Copenhagen a couple of years ago when all those massive expectations of a big global deal just fell off the table with a resounding crash. So part of what this is about is trying to implement some of the much smaller bits that were agreed in principle last year at the summit in Mexico, and then look at what’s possible in the years ahead.

Werman: So what are the key sticking points right now? Does it still come down to the same kind of place we’ve been for the last few years, the inability of the US and China, which are by far the largest greenhouse polluters, to commit to substantial cuts in their emissions?

Black: Yeah, it’s interesting. You’ve got lots of these big countries that have subtly different positions, so there’s no doubt, for example, that the US is now being joined by Canada. Canada sees itself, it wants to parallel the US as closely as it can, so both of them are unwilling to do anything looking up to 2020. China has got its own system, a five year plan. And then we have India, which over the last couple of years has been rather conciliatory, but this year has a new environment minister who’s being very hard line in saying that as a major developing country they shouldn’t really have to do very much. You’ve got the small island states and some of the least developed countries that are very worried about climate impacts, and they’re pushing for a lot of progress as soon as possible. And they’re largely backed by the European Union, which also wants to get cracking on talks for a new deal as soon as possible. And as you can see, Marco, there are very different visions of what the future ought to hold.

Werman: Now, the goal ultimately is an agreement on greenhouse gas emissions, but you’re saying the conference participants are kind of going to focus on smaller goals. Give us an example or two of those smaller goals and how that might lead the conference ultimately to a big agreement.

Black: Okay, so sure, so the one in which there’s probably most likelihood of actually finalizing something here is what’s called technology transfer. In the United Nations climate convention it’s acknowledged that developed countries should help poorer countries to develop cleanly. So one of the ways of doing this obviously is to transfer clean technology from rich countries where [inaudible 3:15] has been developed into the poorer countries. But there are issues there for example, over intellectual property. So how do you get an agreement there which satisfies everyone and you can actually start doing something on the ground? So that’s the kind of smaller agreement that may well be finalized here.

Werman: But you know, the real thing is to kind of get back to the ideas of the Kyoto Protocol, and that protocol expires next year. It’s the only truly global treaty right now on greenhouse gases. What happens then?

Black: Well, that’s a very good question and this is one of the things that’s brought urgency to the talks in the last couple of years. The protocol itself doesn’t expire. What expires are the commitments that a number of developed countries have made under it to reduce the greenhouse gas emission. So there’s a little concern around, particularly in developing countries, that if the EU and the other countries inside the Kyoto Protocol don’t make new pledges inside that protocol which kick in pretty soon, is the protocol a shell with no meaningful content even though it continues to exist? That’s the concern.

Werman: So if the Kyoto Protocol does become a shell as you say, and there is no agreement coming out of Durban, I mean it looks like the results in Durban could potentially be pretty dismal. I mean what is the bare minimum you expect to come out of this round of talks?

Black: Anything is possible and when you analyze what negotiators have been putting into the public domain, obviously they don’t give away everything at this stage. They probably don’t give away everything until the final night. But it could be a complete car crash. Equally, you could emerge with all these technical things from last year being tied up and you could end up with agreement of how to go forward, another try if you like, in reaching a global treaty. Anything across that spectrum is possible at the moment.

Werman: We’ll be checking back in through the week at the UN Climate Change Conference in Durban. The BBC’s Richard Black speaking with us from Durban, thanks so much.

Black: My pleasure.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Protesters in front of the Khayelitsha Magistrate Court in Cape Town, South Africa in support of the memory of Zoliswa Nkonyana (pictured). (Photo: Anders Kelto)

Five years later, her murder trial drags on. Gay rights groups complain that the court hasn’t given the case priority. In October, four young men were found guilty of the murder, but the sentencing has been postponed. Angy Peter, a legal advocate for the Nkonyana family, said the court’s handling of the case confirms people’s fears about hate crimes.

“If you are a lesbian in this country and you get killed, it gonna spend like five years waiting for a result and you don’t even know what those results will be,” she said.

In terms of gay rights, South Africa is among the most progressive countries in the world. The constitution explicitly bans discrimination based on sexual orientation. It’s one of just ten countries in the world — and the only one in Africa — to recognize same-sex marriages. Gay couples are allowed to adopt. But those legal protections don’t necessarily translate into tolerance on the ground. Gays and lesbians say they face discrimination in the justice system.

“One would be dishonest if one were to argue that there is no homophobia in South Africa,” said Tlali Tlali, a spokesman for the South African Justice Department. “There is homophobia in South Africa.”

Last year, gay rights groups filed a complaint about his department’s handling of hate crimes against gays and lesbians. Tlali said the agency took this complaint very seriously. It launched a national task force that includes officials from six government agencies, as well as leaders of the LGBT community. The task force is pressing the courts to expedite hate crime cases and exploring legislation that would toughen punishments. It’s also requiring police officers, prosecutors, and judges to undergo sensitivity training. According to Tlali, the message to authorities is clear.

“It really doesn’t matter what the sexual orientation of the victim is. You need to treat this particular individual with the necessary levels of professionalism, with the necessary courtesy, so that they must feel the government is there for everybody, regardless of race, color, creed – including sexual orientation. That is what South Africa is about,” Tlali said.

But he concedes that they’re fighting a difficult battle. He said it’s one thing to tell someone how to act — it’s another to change the way they think.

At a small bar in Khayelitsha, house music blares from the speakers, as a group of young people swigs beer at a table. One woman, who asked to be identified by her first name, Amanda, said she came here because it’s a gay-friendly bar, which isn’t always the case in Cape Town’s poor black townships. Amanda said people at other bars often harass her for being a lesbian.

“They even say that it’s un-African, being a woman, loving another woman. It’s not possible, they say.”

Another woman at the bar, who asked to be called Sarah, said police officers are the worst offenders. A few months ago, one of her friends was the victim of what’s sometimes called “corrective rape” – a violent act aimed at “curing” lesbians and turning them straight. It’s an alarmingly common crime in South Africa, and according to Sarah, going to the police is a waste of time.

“If you go to the police station to lay a charge as a lesbian, first question they will ask you, why are you lesbian? They don’t listen to what you came to do. They ask you why are you lesbian. Why are you sleeping with other girls?”

Sarah said it’s great that the government is requiring sensitivity training, but she questions how effective those programs will be.

“Even if they do the workshops and whatever, if the people they are hiring don’t want to change, they won’t change.”

Prosecutors are expected to argue for a longer sentence in the murder of Zoliswa Nkonyana, because the killing was motivated by the victim’s sexual orientation. If they do, it will be the first time the state’s attorneys have made this argument. The sentencing is scheduled for December 19th.

"Robert Mugabe" and "Saddam Hussein" in Nando's commercial (Photo: NandosADS/YouTube)

A new tv ad from the South Africa-based chicken restaurant chain, Nando’s, is prompting laughs and raising some eye brows. The ad features look-a-likes for a slew of tyrants from Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe to the late Muammar Gaddafi of Libya.

Anchor Marco Werman speaks with Gia Nicolaides, a reporter based in Johannesburg, about reaction to the ad.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman, this is The World. There’s a new ad for the South Africa based chicken restaurant chain, Nando’s. And it’s funny in a dark kind of way. It opens on a Robert Mugabe look-a-like. The Zimbabwean leader is reminiscing. We see scenes of Mugabe sharing good times with tyrants of the past — Libya’s Muamar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein of Iraq, South African’s P.W. Botha and Uganda’s Idi Amin. But they’re all gone now. Mugabe sits alone at a Christmas dinner table.

Ad narrator: This time of year no one should have to eat alone, so get a Nando’s six pack meal for six.

Werman: Gia Nicolaides is a news reporter for Eyewitness News in South Africa. She’s based in Johannesburg and has been reporting on local reaction to this ad. Gia, what are you hearing?

Gia Nicolaides: Well, the funny thing is, Marco, that I’ve just been walking through some office buildings and some restaurants around Johannesburg, and more than actually people having an immediate reaction to it, it’s people showing this Nando’s ad on their cellphones to their colleagues and their friends. And many of them just believe that this is the vintage ad from Nando’s and based that they’ve seen in the past 10 years and it really has gone viral.

Werman: Well, it’s very entertaining, but is it selling chicken?

Nicolaides: It is I think at the end of the day because right at the end you see a glum looking Robert Mugabe sitting alone and he’s at the table with the tag line, “At this time of the year no one should have to eat alone.” And of course, it’s chicken, and honestly, everyone eats chicken unless you’re vegetarian. So it basically is a popular brand, a popular food and this just really hits home I think with every South African because it was so controversial, yet at the same time it poked fun at very serious issues.

Werman: It’s hard to imagine a fast food chain in the United States running such an ad, you know, with this kind of humorous political content. I mean it fits in more with I guess kind of British coy ad humor than the American tendency to show you a product and explain why you should buy it. Are these types of ads common in South Africa or does Nando’s really stand out for pushing buttons?

Nicolaides: Nando’s definitely stands out for pushing buttons. Everyone talks about the latest Nando’s ad and this one I think really kind of looks at a global political issue or issues, and I think that is the first time they’ve done that to quite that extreme.

Werman: There was this Nando’s ad where there’s a blind woman with her guide dog, and the guide dog intentionally leads her into a pole, knocks her unconscious and then proceeds to eat the chicken that she just bought at Nando’s. Now, the South African Advertising Standards Authority called for the ad to be withdrawn. Is there any kind of outcry with the last dictator standing ad?

Nicolaides: There doesn’t seem to be any outcry at this stage. I think the South African population and consumers have really enjoyed this one, but at the same time it’s poking fun as I said before, at rather serious issues and I think what they really tried to do is express what other people think, but won’t necessarily say. And it takes a lot of guts, but at the same time I think it’s really what South Africa enjoys.

Werman: And finally, Gia, what is in a Nando’s six pack people and is it any good?

Nicolaides: I’m definitely going to go and try it because it looks like a big enough meal to feed my entire family and I know that their chicken is good. And that’s really it because we know that they ads are good, but so is their food.

Werman: All right, listeners can see the entertaining last dictator standing commercial at theworld.org. Gia Nicolaides, a news reporter with Eyewitness News in Johannesburg, South Africa, very good to speak with you. Thanks a lot.

Nicolaides: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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Marco Werman: Journalists in South Africa are feeling like it just got harder to do their jobs. Yesterday South Africa’s Parliament passed a Protection of Information Act. The measure would make it easier for the government to protect secrets and punish those who unearth them. Critics say the bill would also make it easy to hide government corruption. Jonathan Shapiro, known by his pen name of Zapiro, is a satirist cartoonist and a former anti-apartheid activist. He says the bill reminds many South Africans of the draconian laws of the apartheid era.

Jonathon Shapiro: It’s being referred to by most activists and by a lot of civil society and by the media as The Secrecy Bill because although it is officially The Protection of Information Bill, many of us see it as doing exactly the opposite. It’s not protecting information for the good of the public, which is the way the ANC is spinning it. It’s really protecting the government and the ANC and potential wrongdoers in official situations from scrutiny because there’s no public interest defense clause, so you cannot claim, if you have information in your possession or if you publish it, you can’t claim it is in the public good, even if it clearly is. And the second thing is, massively punitive fines and even big jail terms for disclosing state secrets.

Werman: Now you’ve been cartooning and lampooning about this proposed law for months now. Tell us about one of the cartoons that’s really stinging.

Shapiro: Well, the two that I’ve just done over the past two days are really about what we’re calling Black Tuesday. It’s a day that refers to an apartheid era day called Black Wednesday. But the bill got passed on a Tuesday, and so we call it Black Tuesday. And the cartoon I’ve done is, the word “democracy”. it’s being painted out, being blacked out by Jacob Zumer, representing the ANC, and representing government and he’s got a can of paint, of secrecy. It’s a very simple cartoon but he’s blacking out the word democracy. Just sort of whistling while he does it. And then today’s cartoon was taking that even further and almost everything is blacked out and he just said, “Hmm, missed a spot” and he’s now about to black out even the signature and the date and everything.

Werman: Mm. Mm.

Shapiro: But there is one other one that I did a while back, which is much more controversial, and that is where you have the figure of Lady Justice lying on the ground, looking very, in a very bad state, and in fact, her clothes are torn and clearly it looks as if she may have been raped. And that is the inference in the cartoon. And she is saying to another figure, Lady Press Freedom, with her torch, in fact Free Speech, who’s being held by a person representing the ANC and looks as if she’s about to be raped by Jacob Zumer. Lady Justice is saying, “Fight sister, fight.” In other words, don’t let what happened to me happen to you, because we have had ravages on the justice system and on press freedom by the ANC, which is the very organization that brought in the freedoms that we have.

Werman: As a cartoonist, could this so call Secrecy Law actually affect the way you work?

Shapiro: I don’t see that the Secrecy Bill, or the Secrecy Act and when it becomes a law, it’ll be called an Act. I don’t see that as being specifically targeting people like cartoonist, satirists, and commentators. It effectively messes up the whole of society because we won’t know. The people at the sharp end of this are the investigative journalists, the whistleblowers, the editors, and people in the general public who need to get secrets out. So not so much the commentators, but they have another initiative called the Media Appeals Tribunal. That’s happening very soon as well and that will affect both information and criticism. And that will certainly affect cartoonists and satirists. So it’s kind of a two pronged attack on free speech. That really is reminiscent of draconian apartheid era laws.

Werman: Mm. You now, the impression in the United States is that the African National Congress, I think, widely is still the party of the rainbow nation and Nelson Mandela. Does the ANC unanimously support these laws and, if so, what has the ANC become then.

Shapiro: Well, I first want to challenge that perception that people have. For those of us who were part of the movement and who have spent many years fighting for what the movement and what the ANC fighting for, and supporting the ANC, many of us are enormously disillusioned. The people who fought and spent time in jail, I personally was detained without trial. That means kept in solitary confinement and I was arrested a few times and all of that. Many people like myself, who are absolutely disgusted by the current ANC. It feels not like the movement that we fought for. So I just want to really challenge that. I would like people in the United States to realize just how disillusioned we are. We’re looking at it like what’s happening in Cairo, in Egypt. That’s just a faster process. But unless the ANC turns around, this is not the movement we fought for.

Werman: What will happen to this bill? Because it was passed by Parliament yesterday. What do you think the chances are that it’ll go through?

Shapiro: I think that the chances that it will go through initially are extremely good now, which is a great pity. But I believe that it will then be stopped by the Constitutional Court and sent back to the drawing board. And everybody is realizing the next stop now will be the court challenges and I think everyone’s queuing up to challenge this.

Werman: South African political cartoonist Zapiro speaking to us from Cape Town. Thank you so much for speaking.

Shapiro: Thanks for, Thank you.

Werman: You can see some of Zapiro’s cartoons on the threat to press freedom in South Africa. We have a slide show at theworld.org.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• Cartoonists from across South Africa are protesting their government’s new secrecy bill. Here’s a gallery of the cartoons they’ve created. The cartoon protest is hosted by Africartoons.
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• Zapiro’s website
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But Mandela is rarely far from people’s minds.

Heidi Holland, a journalist based in Johannesburg, met Mandela frequently after his release from prison in 1990. Now she gets regular updates on his health.

“He’s not sick,” she says, “he’s just fading away, as old men do.”

“And he had a tough life, you know, all that breaking of rocks in the quarries at Robben Island.”

Holland has heard the question many times: what’s going to happen to South Africa when Mandela passes away?

“And I used to say quite glibly, ‘well he’s been out of active politics for such a long time, it’s not going to make any difference.’ But I’ve changed my mind about that.”

Heidi Holland (Photo: Alex Gallafent)

Today Heidi Holland looks at the ruling African National Congress, the party of Nelson Mandela, and she sees it corrupted by greed, ambition and infighting: things, she says, Mandela would not have tolerated.

“And so I have this growing nostalgia even though he isn’t dead yet,” she continues. “You just wonder where the voices of integrity will come from.”

Nelson Mandela has been the subject of criticism over the years, not least for actions he took when his then-wife Winnie Mandela was in legal trouble.

But nothing has really threatened his stature as the father of modern South Africa, even though it’s been more than a decade since he left office.

Bigboy Muhlwa, a geography teacher in Johannesburg, says that Mandela’s “presence cannot really go away.”

For him and many others, Mandela remains the country’s moral center, even as he’s absent from public life. He’s still the guy you want to turn to when things are going bad.

“The idea of Mandela, it goes and comes back,” says Muhlwa, adding that it comes back when people are talking about the most important things in their lives.

Amina Cachalia hears the same question again and again: ‘What’s going to happen when Mandela’s no longer here?’

Cachalia is a veteran of the freedom struggle, and she’s been a close friend of Nelson Mandela for more than sixty years.

She says people ask the question “as if he’s keeping us together in a way. That’s how people feel.”

Cachalia is upset at the thought of losing her friend, but she says South Africans have to face reality: Mandela will die, and there’s still basic work to be done.

Equal political freedom hasn’t yet translated into equal economic opportunity. Many young people are unemployed and angry.

From afar, it could look like the achievement of Nelson Mandela has been squandered and degraded.

But that’s not how Graunt Kruger sees things.

“Are we seeing a degradation of the era of Mandela? Well, the era of Mandela has gone.”

Kruger works with black women entrepreneurs for one of South Africa’s major banks. He says all South Africans are ‘Mandela’s children’. But children grow up, and–as he points out–these ones have accomplished great things.

“The ANC, the South African government, South Africa as a country [all] grew leaps and bounds beyond Mandela and probably beyond what his wildest expectations even were.”

Amina Cachalia (Photo: Alex Gallafent)

Kruger says South Africa’s institutions have matured since Mandela stepped down. He believes the country is now well-placed to meet its current set of challenges.

Indeed, Kruger wonders if the focus on Mandela is more for people outside the country, as if South Africans themselves can’t afford to stop and get nostalgic: there’s too much to do.

But there are some, like veteran activist Amina Cachalia, who are adamant that South Africa mustn’t forget the lessons of Mandela and his generation.

“I think our leadership has to buck up” she says pointedly.

“The examples have been set for them. The struggle’s been won in a way, and yet there’s a great struggle ahead for us.”

It may be impossible to live up the standards set by Nelson Mandela. But Cachalia says South Africans must try.

Alex Gallafent traveled to South Africa with assistance from the International Reporting Project.

Now-sacked ANC Youth Leader Julius Malema is a frequent subject of Zapiro, South Africa’s most famous satirist.

Here’s a slideshow of Zapiro cartoons about Malema going back to 2008.

Produced by The World’s Carol Hills.

Zapiro cartoons courtesy of www.zapiro.com

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On live TV, the ANC announced it was suspending Malema for five years after finding him guilty of sowing division in the party and of bringing the 99-year-old liberation movement into disrepute.

Marco Werman gets more from South African journalist, Milton Nkosi, who’s covering the story.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a coproduction of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston. Today, in South Africa on live TV the ruling African National Congress fired its controversial Youth leader, Julius Malema. African National Congress: The acts of misconduct for which the respondent has been found guilty are very serious and have damaged the integrity of the ANC and South Africa’s international reputation.

Werman: The ANC’s disciplinary committee kicked Malema out of the party for five years. It was a stunning turn of events for a young man who fashioned himself the heir to Nelson Mandela’s legacy. The BBC’s Milton Nkosi is in Johannesburg. Milton, what was your reaction when you heard the announcement today?

Milton Nkosi: I was surprised because I actually for some odd reason ever thought that the ANC could go that far.

Werman: A lot of our listeners don’t know much about Julius Malema. What adjective would you use to describe him, Milton?

Nkosi: I could go along as rebel rouser, very forthright, and actually intelligent, but pushed the boundaries absolutely to the limits. Julius Malema comes from a very poor background in the northern part of South Africa in a small province called Limpopo. He joined the African National Congress when he was only 9 years old, fighting apartheid. So he knows nothing else. The problem is he’s fighting for this economy’s liberation to try and liberate the millions of poor black South Africans. But Julius Malema has a double life. He lives the life of a millionaire. He lives in the poshest part of Johannesburg. He drives some of the poshest cars and he is often seen in the best champagne parties in town. And that is what has made him to look like a shady character in that sense.

Werman: How was he able to defend that kind of lifestyle?

Nkosi: Well, he hasn’t been able to defend it because over and above what has been done today, being suspended from the party, he’s also under investigation by the equivalent of the FBI here, they are called the Hawks. And they’re investigating him for influence in government contracts. Not only that, he’s only being investigated by the Inland Revenue Services. And that is where Malema is. So, he’s going to have to account for his lifestyle and his meager salary as the president of the Youth League in the ANC.

Werman: Malema had serious political ambitions. If he hadn’t become so controversial how far could he have gone?

Nkosi: He could have gone right up to the top, but of course, he went astray be shooting from the hip as it were.

Werman: How old is Malema?

Nkosi: Malema is 30 years old.

Werman: 30 years old and he’s been the ANC youth leader for a while. What exactly is the official role of the ANC Youth leader and how influential is the Youth League still?

Nkosi: Well, the ANC Youth League is actually the preparatory school for ANC leaders. That is traditionally how it is seen within the organization and therefore, most people who are in senior positions now in the ANC came through the ranks of the ANC Youth League.

Werman: Does Julius Malema still have a lot of supporters in South Africa? I mean do you think the country has heard the last of him?

Nkosi: No, the country hasn’t heard the last of Julius Malema. However, it is very hard in current South African political landscape to be a force to be reckoned with outside the African National Congress, unless of course, you go to the official opposition, which is a very small party compared to the ANC. So Malema will appeal this process, so this is still gonna go on for a while. It will be to’ing and fro’ing, but very hard to see how he can come back on that leadership tree after what we had today.

Werman: The BBC’s Milton Nkosi in Johannesburg, South Africa. And for more about Julius Malema, including a slideshow of political cartoons about him, come to theworld.org.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Zapiro cartoons courtesy of www.zapiro.com

The World’s Alex Gallafent profiles Zahara in her new home, Johannesburg, as she reflects on a meteoric rise that has taken everyone by surprise, not least herself.

And she tells the story of how she recently performed a private concert for one of her heroes: Nelson Mandela.

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It’s about 60 miles inland from South Africa’s Indian Ocean coastline and a half hour’s drive from the city of Pietermaritzburg.

The reserve attracts all kinds of visitors, including some who tour it on their mountain bikes.

“The game reserve’s got rolling hills and landscapes, it’s not very steep but its got lots of fast fun riding, you know there’s lots of fantastic single track which is made by the animals through the grasslands and savannahs,” says Max Cluer who runs a South African sports media company. “You sort of come through areas and come onto these savannahs and see zebra and antelope grazing with giraffe in the background so it certainly is a fantastic playground for mountain bikers”.

Well, this is what can happen when the wildlife crosses your path:

The game reserve where this happened is the Albert Falls Game Reserve in KwaZulu Natal Province in South Africa. Anchor Marco Werman speaks with Max Cluer about the very popular video.