Free Republic

Former Congressman Mel Reynolds breaks his silence after being deported from Zimbabwe. He says he’s now in hiding. Eyewitness News reached the former Congressman by phone in South Africa. That’s where he says he has been in “hiding” since his flight out of Zimbabwe a little more than a week ago. Mel Reynolds spent 2 years and 10 months in Congress. Last month, he was in a Zimbabwean jail for six days. […] Reynolds says he will begin publicly revealing information he claims to have about people illegally doing business with the Mugabe regime at a press conference in South...

SNIPPET: "Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg is among four people who have been arrested on suspicion of Syria-related terrorism offences, police have said. Mr Begg, 45, who was held by the US authorities for almost three years, was arrested earlier with two other men and a woman in the West Midlands. He was detained on suspicion of attending a terrorist training camp and facilitating terrorism overseas." SNIPPET: "Mr Begg was arrested in Hall Green in Birmingham. The other people arrested - a 36-year-old man from Shirley, a 44-year-old woman and her son, 20, both from Sparkhill - are being...

Moonbat demigod Nelson Mandela’s collectivist legacy continues to unfold in what was once a prosperous and relatively civilized country: The Economic Freedom Fighters have stuck to their guns for the nationalisation of mines and expropriation of land without compensation. Party leader Julius Malema on Saturday unveiled the organisation’s elections manifesto at Mehlareng Stadium in Tembisa, east of Johannesburg. “We want to do away with colonial patterns of ownership in South Africa,” he said. That means if a white person owns it, the government is going to take it, just like in Zimbabwe, which has been reduced to basket case status...

A professor from George Mason University ran a slide show of naked lesbians to accompany her presentation at the Modern Language Association (MLA) annual convention in Chicago this year. Although South Africa legalized gay marriage in 2006, there have been “assaults on black lesbians since then,” according to Rachel Ann Lewis. She did not provide details on those assaults. Lewis, according to her GMU page, “is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Women and Gender Studies Program at George Mason University.” “Prior to joining George Mason, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Transnational Sexualities in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality...

An ancient dinosaur nursery - the oldest nesting site ever found - has been unearthed in an excavation at a site in South Africa. The 190-million-year-old nesting site of the prosauropod dinosaur Massospondylus reveals significant clues about the evolution of complex reproductive behaviour in early dinosaurs. It discover clutches of eggs, many with embryos, as well as tiny dinosaur footprints, providing the oldest known evidence that the hatchlings remained at the nesting site long enough to at least double in size. “This research project, which has been ongoing since 2005 continues to produce groundbreaking results and excavations continue. First it...

who created Nelson Mandela memorial included a RABBIT inside his earA 30ft sculpture of Nelson Mandela has angered South African officials as the sculptors left a ‘signature’ on the artwork – a sculpted rabbit tucked inside one of the bronze ears. The bronze memorial, which was unveiled outside the government complex in Pretoria, after Mandela’s funeral on December 16, is billed as the largest statue of the South African leader in the world. Officials demand that the miniature rabbit is to be removed from the statue, claiming it mocks Mandela and his life’s work. The department of arts and culture...

A rabbit hidden in the newly erected Nelson Mandela statue at the Union Buildings had the department of arts and culture baffled, Beeld newspaper reported on Saturday. The sculptors of the nine metre bronze-plated statue, Andre Prinsloo and Ruhan Janse van Vuuren, secretly added the rabbit to the work, according to the report. The duo told the newspaper the rabbit was a "small trademark" of their work after the department did not allow them to engrave their signatures on the statue trousers. They said it also represented the tight deadline they were working under as rabbit in Afrikaans "haas" also...

RAZIL’S snap decision last month, after 10 years of deliberations, to choose the Saab Gripen jet fighter ahead of American and French competitors, is the first time a deal of this size has been done without involving superpowers or United Nations Security Council members. The deal, at the initial stage worth $4.5bn for 36 Gripen NGs, could open up the possibility for deliveries of 100 or more aircraft, and also widens access for South African defence and other technology exports, in particular among fellow Brics countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa). The market has suddenly moved from seeing a...

We’ve known for some time that Nelson Mandela was a member of the South African Communist Party. It was hard for fawning liberals to acknowledge the meaning of his membership, so they came up with a narrative explaining it. Their story went something like this: He only briefly joined to get the benefit of their organizational talent, and his membership was rather symbolic, and hardly meaningful. What is important is his steadfast commitment to non-violence, his adherence to political democracy, and the role he played after emerging from prison in the waning days of apartheid.

South Africa's president Jacob Zuma has told how he used to practise witchcraft against white people. Speaking in his native Zulu language at a pre-election rally in the country's rural north, he told a crowd of his voodoo past. 'I used to practise witchcraft around here, bewitching the Boers during apartheid', Zuma reportedly said.

A new species of crustacean has been named in honour of Nelson Mandela. The squat lobster is related to hermit crabs and now has the Latin name Munidopsis mandelai in honour of the South African revolutionary. The sea creature was discovered in a relatively unexplored area of the Southwest Indian Ocean Ridge, off the coast of South Africa, in 2011.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa — With the death of Nelson Mandela, the political party and broad coalition he helped to bind together are coming apart at the seams. The African National Congress remains in power, holding nearly two-thirds of the seats in Parliament, but it is losing popularity even among its staunchest supporters. To many South Africans, the ANC looks less and less like a party of legendary anti-apartheid leaders and more like a grouping of crony capitalists and dispensers of patronage.

Cape Town (AFP) - The tribal royal house in South Africa of which Nelson Mandela was a member on Sunday expressed concern at "instability" in the icon's family and urged calm as his estate is settled. The AbaThembu royal family called the meeting in Qunu where Mandela was buried on December 15 and "shared their concern" amid reports of internal strife and warring over his estate. ... The meeting also backed Mandela's grandson Mandla as head of the family, dismissing as "disrespectful" his ex-wife Winnie Madikizela-Mandela's naming of his surviving daughter Makaziwe in the position.

... The point about Nelson Mandela is that he was equally willing to go along with both the Stalinist and the lizard-skin-shoe school of economic thought. When Stalinism was the fashion, he was not opposed to it. Nor did he appear to mind much when the lizard-skin-shoe brigade became predominant. He was fortunate that, due to historical circumstances, the second prevailed and prevented him from passing into history as a failed socialist despot. He would have become the latter only after the conclusion of a hideous racial war, but having been head of a guerrilla organization, he had no very...

PRETORIA, South Africa (NNPA) – President Obama and former presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush flew to South Africa to pay their respects to Nelson Mandela, the country’s first democratically elected president who died on Dec. 5 at the age of 95. At the height of South Africa’s campaign against the warrior for majority rule in South Africa, the U.S. government’s behavior was far from respectful as it supported a regime that oppressed more than 90 percent of its people. Under South Africa’s rigid racial segregation system known as apartheid, Whites were only 5 to 10 percent...

The South African public broadcaster has been warned not to report on calls for Jacob Zuma to step down as president, according to campaign groups. A spokesman from the country’s Right2Know group said the interference “makes a mockery of the principle of freedom of expression”. The claim, which is denied by the South African Broadcasting Corporation, was reported by Right2Know and fellow campaign group SOS Coalition. …

Ventersdorp, South Africa — On the edge of this rural town, poor blacks have been moving into a line of new tin shacks across the road from an affluent white enclave. Now, the whites are taking action. “For Sale” signs are posted on many of their large brick houses. “The white people are running away,” said Sara Letsie, who moved into her shack two months ago. “They don’t want to be our neighbors.”

The horror stories about life in South Africa under apartheid are endless, of course, and the fall of that morally repugnant political system is universally hailed as a triumph. But two decades after the white-led government relinquished power, and especially in the afterglow of worldwide praise for the nation’s former president Nelson Mandela after his passing at age 95, an objective look at South Africa today is very disturbing. In fact, even among the harshest critics of apartheid and racial oppression, there is an acknowledgement that in many ways the “rainbow nation,” under African National Congress and South African Communist...

Benjamin Netanyahu Under Fire for Not Bowing Down to Mythical Idol Nelson Mandela By Julio Severo The mainstream international media were chocked when Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres said they would not be attending the funeral of Nelson Mandela in South Africa, citing costs and health reasons. Benjamin Netanyahu In contrast, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas did not miss the funeral. Why so much fuss about it? Russian President Vladimir Putin decided not to attend it, and he has not received the widespread criticism Netanyahu did. For Putin, who was an active leader in the infamous...

Poor Michelle Obama. She can't even blink the wrong way without the lightning fast flash of a camera catching her every expression and turning it into the next big invisible controversy. By now you've probably seen the pictures (and memes) of FLOTUS glancing over at President Obama while he chats with Danish prime minister Helle Thorning Schmidt at Nelson Mandela's memorial service. In another widely circulated photo, Mrs. Obama is staring into the distance as the president, Thorning Schmidt and British Prime Minister David Cameron take a selfie. Moments after the photos were released #MichelleObama was trending on Twitter with...