Ma Tambo died the day before yesterday. I can't say I knew her, although we met sort of, but she sounds like on of the old school. Apparently she was well known in diplomatic circles, yet at the same time she would work as a nurse, without special recognition and the same slogging hours as the other nurses.The first true post in this blog was to do with a woman very like her.Rosa Parks.
Adelaide 'Ma' Tambo was similar. Her husband Oliver was President of the ANC in exile, and he retained the post even after Mandela was released and they returned to SOuth Africa. She took an early stance against the corruption and tyranny of Winnie after returning, leading a walkout of women from the Women's ANC group. But by all accounts she was herself a very strong, even domineering, figure. I suspect that she had a bigger influence on the anti-apartheid movement than any of us know.
I danced alongside Oliver Tambo and Jesse Jackson, and I guess the woman I vaguely remember being there was probably Ma Tambo.
Obviously my being there was a bit of a mistake, the result of being alone on a demo and being the only white boy in the middle of 3000 ANC & SWAPO comrades toy-toying up Oxford Street. Probably somewhere there is a photo of the fact, because there were lots of camera flashes as I stood there in the front row. Doubtless the journos were snapping in case I turned out to be the son of someone well-known.
The news today has been leading with the IPCC report on Climate Change (or, as they call it in the US 'Global Warming'). The report is being trailed as a harbinger of doom; yet personally I found it rather an inadequate compromise.
In trying to attain credibility, it seems to have sacrificed any theory, perhaps even integrity. Temperature rises are forecast with a range that is essentially meaningless. The sea level rises are equally flakey - deliberately excluding any Greenland or Antarctica glacier melts by all accounts - despite forecasting temperature rises up to 4 degrees.
There are though, some positive signs. That this is finally news, that there finally appears to be some consensus on action, that even the bosses of energy corps and Wal-Mart in the US seem to be getting round to the understanding. Of course they have to some day if they want to survive, let alone old Hubbert's Peak threatening to wipe out their business and their system.
There will only be one story in the coming years. Iraq and the other resource wars have to be recognised as parts of that story. There is only this: how we treat the world we live upon, and how that world treats us.
The last few days, perhaps irrationally, I feel a tad more optimistic, that we may finally act together.
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