President Cyril Ramaphosa paid an emotional tribute to United States civil rights leader Jesse Jackson Senior at a funeral service in Chicago on Saturday, hailing him as a steadfast ally of South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle and “one of our own”.

The service, held at the Rainbow PUSH Coalition headquarters, was attended by the Jackson family, the PUSH Rainbow Coalition, members of the US civil rights movement and other American and international dignitaries.

Jackson died on 17 February at the age of 84.

Ramaphosa said South Africans regarded Jackson as one of their own because of the role he played in supporting the country during some of its darkest years under apartheid.

“We are here to join you as you say farewell to a man who carried the message of hope from the streets of Chicago to the streets of Johannesburg,” Ramaphosa said.

“Today we are also here, as South Africans, to claim Reverend Jesse Jackson as one of our own. We lay claim on him today because he laid claim on us first,” he said.

Ramaphosa said Jackson had stood with South Africans when many others remained silent, using his voice to condemn apartheid and back the struggle for freedom.

“Belonging is not determined by the soil on which you were born. Belonging is determined by the soil on which you choose to join the fight against an evil, racist and oppressive system,” he said.

Jackson, a towering figure in the American civil rights movement, was a vocal advocate for international pressure and sanctions against South Africa’s apartheid government. He also led marches in the United States calling for the release of political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela.

Ramaphosa recalled Jackson’s visit to South Africa in 1979, when he drew large crowds in Soweto and declared that change was inevitable.

“He looked at a people he had never met and said: their pain is my pain. Their chains are my chains. Their struggle for freedom is my struggle,” Ramaphosa said.

The president said Jackson’s famous call to “Keep hope alive” became a source of inspiration for many South Africans fighting for freedom.

Ramaphosa also highlighted Jackson’s role in anti-apartheid activism beyond South Africa, including marches in the United States and Britain alongside leaders such as Oliver Tambo.

Jackson witnessed several defining moments in South Africa’s transition to democracy, including Mandela’s release from prison in 1990 and his inauguration as the country’s first democratically elected president in 1994.

Ramaphosa said Jackson’s life embodied the shared struggle for justice and equality, linking the fight against racial discrimination in the United States with the fight against apartheid in South Africa.

“The life of Reverend Jesse Jackson reminds us that the struggle for justice is never the work of a single lifetime. It is a long and noble journey carried forward across generations,” Ramaphosa said.

He said South Africa had honoured Jackson with the Order of the Companions of O.R. Tambo for his contribution to the country’s liberation.

Addressing Jackson’s family, Ramaphosa expressed South Africa’s gratitude for Jackson’s support.

“We are here not only in mourning, but in gratitude deep, abiding gratitude. When South Africa needed a friend in the corridors of power, Jesse Jackson was that friend,” he said.

Ramaphosa ended his tribute by saying Jackson’s legacy would endure through the values he championed: justice, dignity, equality and hope.

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Zohran Mamdani, the newly sworn-in mayor of New York City, made history on 1 January when he delivered his inaugural address on the steps of City Hall.

At just 34 years old, Mamdani is the city’s youngest mayor in generations and its first Muslim mayor.

His speech, which emphasised unity and bold governance, included a striking reference to South Africa’s former President Nelson Mandela and the Freedom Charter, resonating far beyond the United States.

ANC Secretary General Fikile Mbalula highlighted the moment and said: “New York City’s New Mayor made reference to our leader, President Madiba, and the Freedom Charter, in his Inauguration Speech as a basis to answer the question, who the City he now leads, belongs to (all who live in it). What a moment in history and an affirmation of the collective wisdom of our people, whose blood, sweat, and tears was the ink which wrote the Freedom Charter.”

Mamdani was born in Uganda to a family of Indian origin before moving to the U.S.

His political rise has been marked by progressive policies and expanding universal childcare.

During his inauguration, Mamdani declared that his administration would govern “expansively and audaciously,” refusing to lower expectations.

“We may not always succeed, but never will we be accused of lacking the courage to try,” he said.

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Nokwe, who was buried next to his wife Vuyiswa Malangabi-Nokwe at Westpark Cemetery in Johannesburg on Saturday, was the first black advocate to be admitted to the Johannesburg Bar.

He passed away while in exile in Lusaka in 1978 at the age of 50. His mortal remains were only repatriated to South Africa last year.

“We are confirming our belief in his conviction that the law is to be used not merely to secure courtroom victories, but to achieve profound, lasting change,” Ramaphosa said.

During his eulogy at a Special Provincial Official Funeral Service at the Walter Sisulu Hall in Randburg, Ramaphosa said it was a homecoming long overdue of a hero who had been exiled by a cruel regime and denied the chance to witness the democracy he helped build.

“Duma Nokwe: leader, brother, comrade in arms, Mkhonto, welcome home. We inter you at your final resting place alongside your beloved wife, Mrs Vuyiswa Malangabi-Nokwe. Today is not as we would have wished it to be — we would have wanted to receive you home in life,” Ramaphosa said.

The president spoke passionately about Nokwe’s courage, integrity and intellect, praising him as a brilliant legal mind and committed servant of the people.

He said Nokwe was more than a political figure.

“He believed in the power of law as a shield for the vulnerable, as an instrument of change.”

Born into an apartheid system designed to marginalise and dehumanise, Nokwe defied expectations.

Though banned, jailed and harassed, he continued to use his legal expertise to defend political prisoners and challenge the injustices of the state.

His role during the 1960 treason trial, as both defendant and defence counsel alongside former president Nelson Mandela, remains one of the most iconic acts of defiance in legal history.

“Of the trial, Madiba wrote: ‘Our case was far more than a trial of legal issues between the Crown and a group of people charged with breaking the law. It was a trial of strength, a test of power of a moral idea versus an immoral one’,” Ramaphosa said.

He said Nokwe was a mentor to young black lawyers, and today his legacy lived on with the Duma Nokwe Group, the advocates’ chambers.

Earlier this week, Ramaphosa announced that the government had posthumously conferred senior counsel (silk) status on Nokwe as a symbolic correction of the injustice that denied him such recognition in his lifetime.

The president also paid tribute to “Mama Tiny” Nokwe, praising her as “a fearless woman who led from the front and from the home”.

A Fort Hare graduate and lifelong activist, she was an early challenger of patriarchal norms, notably organising student protests against sexist curfews.

She continued her activism in exile, joining the ANC Women’s League and helping raise the next generation under difficult conditions.

In a statement, the ANC described the couple as “two of our most distinguished revolutionaries”, whose lives embodied humility, sacrifice and revolutionary morality.

“Together, the Nokwes gave us more than speeches or slogans. They gave us living lessons in integrity, service and sacrifice. They reminded us that intellectual rigour and working-class humility are not mutually exclusive, but mutually necessary,” the party said.

Nokwe, once the youngest ANC secretary general, was a teacher, organiser, strategist and Pan-Africanist.

From Soweto to Lusaka, and from the UN to Radio Freedom, his voice carried the call for justice and international solidarity.

As ANC director of international affairs in exile, he helped build the global alliances that pressured apartheid into retreat.

Ramaphosa called on the nation to embrace the values that Nokwe championed, namely courage, empathy, justice and non-racialism.

“We will never renege on the promise of equality, justice and freedom for all,” he said.

“We owe this to the spirit and legacy of the great Duma Nokwe… a revolutionary, a servant of the people, a man of unwavering principle.”

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South Africa’s first education minister in democratic South Africa, Prof. Sibusiso Bengu, has died. He was 90.

According to a statement issued by his family on Tuesday, Bengu passed away peacefully in his sleep at home on Monday.

“We will fondly remember him as a dear husband, father, uncle, grandfather, an educator, former Minister of Education and Ambassador amongst others,” his family said.

Bengu, who was born in Kranskop in May 1934, dedicated his life to education and the public service. He began his career as a teacher in 1952, and 17 years later he founded the Dlangezwa High School in what was then known as Natal. He was the principal until 1976.

After completing a PHD in Political Science at the University of Geneva, Bengu was appointed as a professor at the University of Zululand in 1977. Four years later he became the first black Vice-Chancellor of the University of Fort Hare.

From 1994 to 1997, Bengu served as education minister under Nelson Mandela.

While his first political home was the Inkatha Freedom Party, where he was the secretary-general, ideological differences between him and the late IFP leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi that the party should become a democratic, mass-based organisation, led to his departure.

He later aligned with the African National Congress, becoming a trusted ally of Oliver Tambo.

The former government minister introduced Curriculum 2005, a proposal for transforming the approach of school education in South Africa.

But the plan was received negatively and criticised by teachers as well as opposition parties, which led to it being reviewed.

After the 1999 election, Bengu was named the ambassador to Germany, a position he served until his retirement from politics in 2003.

He received an honorary degree from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in 2009.

Bengu’s family said that funeral arrangements would be communicated in due course and asked for their privacy to be respected at this difficult time.

He is survived by his wife Funeka, four daughters and a son.

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“Find your strength in love,” Whitney Houston sings near the end of a new live album, “The Concert for a New South Africa (Durban).” She spends a full minute delivering those five syllables.

The song is “Greatest Love of All.” At the start of the final line, Houston darts from note to note. On the word “strength,” her amazing alto blooms, climbs and adds vibrato. When she reaches the word “love,” she playfully skips through several notes and lets the last one linger, the power of its beauty matching the message.

Houston was some singer, and that’s reaffirmed by “The Concert for a New South Africa (Durban).” Sadly, the album also shows how the pop diva’s incomparable talent was misspent before she died in 2012 at the age of 48.

The album will be out Friday, following the limited theatrical release of a film commemorating the 30th anniversary of Houston’s three 1994 concerts in South Africa — in Durban, Johannesburg and Cape Town. They celebrated a newly unified nation following apartheid and the election of Nelson Mandela as president.

This album captures the first, held in Durban on Nov. 8, 1994. It is also Houston’s first ever live concert album.

“Never have I felt so much love,” Houston tells the stadium crowd. Ten of the digital album’s 21 songs (there are 24 tracks total, including an intro and three versions of the same song, which include the live track, a previously unreleased studio recording and a remix) feature titles with the word “love” or some variation, and huge hits are sprinkled throughout the set. They include “I Will Always Love You,” “How Will I Know” and “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me),” all fun to hear in such a festive setting.

Alas, the scale of the event only amplifies Houston’s tendency to over-sing. Her delivery seems intended for the top row of the stadium, which is understandable but exhausting when listening through earbuds. Maybe you had to be there.

The vocal theatrics are often a mismatch for inferior material, and Houston wrings lyrics as if to trying to remove the suds. Compounding the excess are her large supporting cast’s dated, overcooked arrangements, which range from sappy synths to hair-band guitar solos, although there are quality contributions from the horns and backing vocalists.

The second half of the show achieves moments of grace. Houston dials it down on “Love Is,” a lovely ballad that also appears on the album in a previously unreleased studio recording from 1990 and a remix. Houston delivers her persuasive reading of “Greatest Love of All,” and a bouncy “Touch the World” meets the occasion.

The best stretch comes when Houston takes the audience to megachurch. “Jesus Loves Me” becomes a children’s song for all ages as she displays an uncharacteristic soulfulness in the tradition of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin.

That’s followed by “Amazing Grace,” and when Houston twists the word “wretch” with violent vulnerability, the lyric sounds as heartfelt as anything she ever sang.

AP

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