Irish tributes flood in for Nelson Mandela

Music
06 Dec 13

Nelson Mandela, the former prisoner who became South African president, and a symbol for the struggle against inequality, passed away on Thursday evening at the age of 95. He had been battling a recurring lung infection.

Unsurprisingly, in the aftermath of the sad news, tributes have been flooding in from around the world. Our own Taoiseach Enda Kenny said: "I offer my deepest sympathies, on behalf of the Irish Government and people, to his family, to his friends and supporters, and to the Government and the people of South Africa.
“The name Mandela stirred our conscience and our hearts. It became synonymous with the pursuit of dignity and freedom across the globe." Kenny noted the way he had changed not only South African life, but humanity in general.

President Michael D. Higgins commented: "Nelson Mandela is one of history’s greatest leaders; a man whose unprecedented courage and dedication broke down the cruel barriers of apartheid in South Africa and led the nation into a new and democratic age."

The world of music, too, has been quick to honour the man known as 'Mandiba', the name of the Thembu clan to which he belonged.

U2 had recently contributed new song 'Original Love' to the biopic, Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom and today Bono has penned an essay on the late revolutionary.

"'As an activist I have pretty much been doing what Nelson Mandela tells me since I was a teenager," the singer writes. "He has been a forceful presence in my life going back to 1979, when U2 made its first anti-apartheid effort.
''Over the years we became friends. I, like everyone else, was mesmerised by his deft manoeuvring as leader of South Africa.
''It certainly fell to Mandela to be great. His role in the movement against extreme poverty was critical. He worked for a deeper debt cancellation, for a doubling of international assistance across sub-Saharan Africa, for trade and private investment and transparency to fight corruption.
''Without his leadership, would the world over the past decade have increased the number of people on AIDS medication to 9.7 million and decreased child deaths by 2.7 million a year? Without Mandela, would Africa be experiencing its best decade of growth and poverty reduction? His indispensability can't be proved with math and metrics, but I know what I believe...''
The Time piece, entitled 'The Man Who Could Not Cry', can be read in full here.

Another Irish musician who took great inspiration from Mandela is Bob Geldof.
The Boomtown Rats frontman has written about the "weird emptiness" that occurs during a moment like this. "That is where we now stand with Nelson Mandela’s death. History stops, kneels and bows its head. His like is rare in all of human history."
Geldof goes on to say how "privileged" he feels to have known him personally.
"Unbelievably for me – the irreverent boy from Dun Laoghaire — I did know this giant. Possibly, he was a friend. I think so. The world will go to the funeral but I don’t want to. I will stay at home here and look at my pictures of Madiba: with the children; or the band; or making me listen to something that I should know and something that was always worth listening to.
"He was a complete man. He adored children. They played around him. He’d scoop them up, plonk them on his knee, make them laugh. He’d be in heaven and they’d be shouting and laughing with him. I have pictures of that with my kids. Can you imagine!"

As ever, more reactions have been arriving on Twitter. Here's a sample: