Human Rights Day 2013

In leading up to Human Rights Day on December 10^th, recent news seems to mask any progress: UN-authorized French troops intervene in CAR in response to the latter’s spiraling bloodshed; the revelation that the NSA collects 5 billions phone records daily from Americans and non-Americans alike; and the Libyan parliament passed legislation recognizing Islamic law as the centerpiece of its country’s laws and institutions. Not exactly leaps forward in protecting the rights to life, privacy and personal liberty, respectively.

Because we don’t regularly hear about human rights triumphs or human rights defenders of celebrity-like status, most of us miss a crucial progression: human rights situations across the globe have improved—in some cases dramatically so—over the past several decades, and those suffering human rights abuses, and their advocates, have never been louder or better organized.

Madiba Mandela: A Father To a Legacy

By guest contributor Allyson Clancy

Madiba: the name of the isiXhosa clan that Nelson Mandela belongs to.  The clan dates back to the 18^th century, and the name was originally given to a Thembu Chief.

Rolihlahla: Mandela’s birth name. The literal translation means, “pulling a branch of a tree,” but the phrase is interpreted to mean troublemaker.

Tata: isiXhosa for father.[1]

Nelson Mandela, the first black president of South Africa and one of the most influential leaders of his time, is known by all three of the names above. From the central Transkei region where he was born to the coastal city, Cape Town in the southwestern part of the country where he proclaimed his freedom after imprisonment, to the capital Pretoria where he currently lives at the age of 94, his name has been immortalized as his legacy lives on.