05 June 2007

Canadian Press somehow loses...

The criminal record of Saint Winnie Mandela...
TORONTO -- The former wife of anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela will not be the guest speaker at a gala fundraiser tonight in Toronto after organizers say she was denied a visa by the Canadian government. Canadian immigration authorities could not be reached for comment.
That's ok... I have the skinny right here...
Madikizela-Mandela was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment in 1991 for kidnapping and assaulting a 14-year-old boy, Stompie Moeketsi, who was found dead near her Soweto home with his head caved in and his throat cut.
In an unprecedented and widely mocked appeal-court judgment at the time, her jail sentence then was reduced to a 15,000 rand fine (worth £3,000 at that time).
Her alibi, which Chief Justice Michael Corbett said persuaded him to suspend her jail sentence, was subsequently proved to be a lie at a 1997 hearing of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Her two co-accused went to prison.
So maybe the next time you get anything from CTV or the Canadian Press, you could ask yourself, "What else aren't they telling me?" 

That's funny, the BBC had it.
In 1991 she was convicted of kidnapping and being an accessory to murder
Hmmm... only in Canada, you say. 

UPDATE:   CTV has now included Winnie's woes 

 The article now includes a light touch about Winnie's criminal past... and a bonus... apparently Stephane Dion is okay with a little kidnapping and murder.
"It's an embarrassment to be in a situation like that when the Department of Foreign Affairs is unable to explain to us what is happening,'' Dion said.
"There have been problems in the past, but to prevent her from coming in the country, it is something that they need to justify,'' Dion said.
LAST WORD: But it's all about the art
An opera, The Passion of Winnie (Part 1), created by South African expatriates Warren Wilensky, a filmmaker, and Bongani Ndodana-Breen, a composer and MusicaNoir's artistic director, debuts Friday as part of Toronto's Luminato arts festival.
The opera's narrative includes Ms. Mandela's controversial endorsement of the practice of necklacing — filling car tires with gasoline, putting them around the necks of police informers and setting them alight but stops in 1986 before the death of Stompie Moeketsi, a supposed informer.
Ms. Mandela was accused by her bodyguard of ordering him to kidnap and kill the teenager.