24 hours in pictures, 8 May 2025
Through the lens: The Citizen's Picture Editors select the best news photographs from South Africa and around the world.
Rafaella poses for a picture with her face painted in the colors of Ukraine at the Soviet War Memorial in the Tiergarten park to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of WWII in Europe, in Berlin, Germany, 08 May 2025. World War II ended by the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany on all fronts on 08 May 1945. Picture: EPA-EFE/CLEMENS BILAN
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The Citizen
4 days ago
- The Citizen
24 hours in pictures, 4 June 2025
24 hours in pictures, 4 June 2025 Through the lens: The Citizen's Picture Editors select the best news photographs from South Africa and around the world. This aerial photograph shows a stork with two chicks on a nest installed on a high voltage line mast in Bouee, western France, on June 3, 2025. (Photo by Loic VENANCE / AFP) Wiaan Mulder and Ryan Rickelton of South Africa pictured during a warm up match between South Africa and Zimbabwe ahead of the ICC World Test Championship Final 2025 on June 04, 2025 in Arundel, England. (Photo by Matthew Lewis-ICC/ICC via Getty Images) A train arrives at a station in Colombo on June 4, 2025. (Photo by Ishara S. KODIKARA / AFP) A person places electric candles at a vigil commemorating the Tiananmen Square protest, in Taipei, Taiwan, 04 June 2025. Many people were injured or killed during the protests in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989. Picture: EPA-EFE/RITCHIE B. TONGO The 'Simpecado' float of the Brotherhood of El Rocio of Seville-El Salvador departs Seville on its pilgrimage to the El Rocio hermitage, located in the village of Almonte, Spain, 04 June 2025. Approximately one million people from across Spain make the journey to pay homage to Our Lady of Rocio each year. Picture: EPA-EFE/RAUL CARO A woman wearing big sunglasses with inscriptions reading '1 Lee Jae-myung' watches the inauguration ceremony of South Korea's President Lee Jae-myung outside the National Assembly in Seoul on June 4, 2025. (Photo by Pedro Pardo / AFP) Police and community members look on at a body in the Zamimpilo informal settlemen, 4 June 2025. It is suspected that the victim was killed in crossfire, during a shootout between the police and suspects the day before. Picture: Nigel Sibanda/The Citizen Soldiers of the guard battalion are reflected in a bass horn during a welcome ceremony for Singapore President Tharman Shanmugaratnam (not pictured) with military honors at Bellevue Palace in Berlin, Germany, 04 June 2025. Picture: EPA-EFE/FILIP SINGER Community members march from Main Reef to the home of a 14-year-old Lukhona Fose in Durban Deep, Roodepoort, west of Johannesburg, 4 June 2025, after her mutilated body was found near her home. City of Johannesburg Speaker Nobuhle Mthembu visited Fose's family. Picture: Nigel Sibanda/The Citizen Pope Leo XIV waves from the popemobile as he arrives for his weekly General Audience in St. Peters Square, Vatican City, 04 June 2025. Picture: EPA-EFE/FABIO FRUSTACI People ferry cattle on a vehicle ahead of the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha in Karachi on June 3, 2025. (Photo by Rizwan TABASSUM / AFP) A man swims to cool off at Marina Beach on a hot summer day in Chennai on June 4, 2025. (Photo by R. Satish BABU / AFP) A follower in a prayer posture is photographed during a 'Long Life Offering Ceremony' for the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama (unseen), at the Tsuglagkhang temple at McLeod Ganj, in Dharamshala, India on June 04, 2025. Long Life Offering Ceremonies are conducted as a gesture of deep gratitude and heartfelt wishes for the continued health and longevity of the Dalai Lama. Typically held at the Main Tibetan Temple, these ceremonies include prayers, ritual offerings, and communal celebrations, reflecting devotion and reverence. Picture: Matrix Images / Sanjay Baid Aerial view of 'Interceptor 006' a giant fence to catch thousands of tons of plastic at Las Vacas River in Chinautla, Guatemala on June 3, 2025. The Dutch NGO The Ocean Cleanup, seeks to trap thousands of tons of plastic that each year flow into the Caribbean Sea at Las Vacas River, a tributary of Motagua River. (Photo by JOHAN ORDONEZ / AFP) French soldiers carry coffins during a burial ceremony of six French soldiers who died fighting for France in the World War I, in the National Necropolis of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette in Ablain-Saint-Nazaire, northern France on June 3, 2025. Six young French soldiers from the World War I, who died in 1914 and 1915 but whose bodies have been discovered in recent years, were buried on June 3, 2025, in the National Necropolis of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette (Pas-de-Calais), as witnessed by an AFP photographer. (Photo by Sameer Al-DOUMY / AFP) MORE: 24 hours in pictures, 3 June 2025
Mail & Guardian
7 days ago
- Mail & Guardian
Apartheid, crimes against humanity: How the law remembers the past
Members of the Black Sash and Movement for Colonial Freedom and the Black march to South Africa House in London to deliver a memorandum to South African prime minister JG Strijdom. Photo: ulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis/Getty Images In May 1945, the world marked the end of World War II. This was a pivotal historical moment that reshaped the world order and profoundly influenced the development of international human rights frameworks. This was a period that acutely exposed the catastrophic consequences of unchecked state power, genocide and war crimes. The 80th anniversary offers a moment to reflect on how societies remember the past and how those memories shape the present and future. For South Africa, a country with its own complex history of injustice, this anniversary provides an opportunity to examine the role of law in shaping collective memory and advancing justice. Law is not just a mechanism for resolving disputes or enforcing rules; it is also a tool for remembering. Legal frameworks, court rulings and public policies often reflect how a society chooses to acknowledge its past. In South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) stands as a prime example of how the law can be used to confront historical injustices. The TRC sought to document the atrocities of apartheid, offering victims a platform to share their stories while promoting national healing. This year's anniversary is especially monumental as it marks both the end of World War II and the Nuremberg Trials, which were the first military tribunals set up a few months after the end of war. For the first time in history, military and political leaders were prosecuted. Prominent leaders of Nazi Germany were prosecuted for war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace. These trials set a long-lasting precedent globally that regardless of rank, political influence or even state authority, individuals can be held personally responsible and account for their role in gross human rights violations. Nuremberg's retributive approach to the violation of human rights laid the foundation for international criminal law as we know it today. It has embedded the concept of justice as a fundamental component of post-conflict recovery. The defining shift in historical legal frameworks — such as the formation of the United Nations, Geneva Conventions and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — were symbolic of the global reckoning that followed WWII. This shift in the role of law was also a demonstration of law as not just a mechanism to exert control but an instrument of memory. Beyond its adjudicative function, the law serves as a repository of collective moral judgment. The function of the law is not limited to passing judgments, it sets precedents, holding a determining power on what we as post-trauma nations choose to remember and what we are not only willing to forget but allow to happen. But the work of memory is ongoing. In South Africa, the TRC laid a foundation, but many argue that its promises of justice and reparations remain unfulfilled. The law must continue to evolve to address these gaps, ensuring that the past is not forgotten but serves as a guide for building a more equitable future. In 2021, the high court in Johannesburg made a ruling of paramount importance on the history of injustice. The ruling was about the From this perspective, the recent ruling marks a potentially groundbreaking shift in global justice. Not only does it re-open doors to truth-telling and accountability within contexts once thought closed, it also makes possible the idea of extending prosecutions to economic crimes that were direct beneficiaries of systematic racial oppression. Similar to post-war reparations in Germany, where victims of Nazi prosecutions were compensated and acknowledged, South Africa may reckon with the country's renewed calls of redress. Law is similar to history in that it is a narrative and repository of events that happened in the past. The inability or failure of the courts to uphold justice in the face of violations — whether because of procedural injustice, institutional inertia or politicised fear — then risks inaction and legal silence turning into national amnesia. The 80th anniversary of WWII reminds us that the past is never truly behind us. For South Africa, the law must serve as both a mirror and a map — reflecting the injustices of history while charting a path toward a more just and inclusive society. By learning from global and local experiences, South Africa can continue to use the law as a powerful tool for memory, accountability and transformation. Letlhogonolo Mokgoroane is a legal practitioner at the Johannesburg Society of Advocates and part-time in-house counsel at the Centre for Applied Legal Studies, University of the Witwatersrand. Tebelelo Lentsoane is a research and policy consultant and civic education practitioner.
eNCA
10-05-2025
- eNCA
Margot Friedlaender, Germany's voice of Holocaust remembrance
NEW YORK - German Holocaust survivor Margot Friedlaender, who has died at the age of 103, won plaudits at home and abroad for her tireless efforts to foster reconciliation and understanding. Born and raised in Berlin, Friedlaender's family were among the hundreds of thousands of Jews killed by the Nazis at Auschwitz over the course of World War II. Friedlander herself was interned at the camp in Theresienstadt in the modern-day Czech Republic, but survived the end of the war and emigrated to the United States. The death of her husband, Adolf Friedlaender, and a memoir writing course at a community centre in New York propelled her back to her hometown. Friedlander's prodigal return to Germany, where she dedicated herself to sharing her story with young people, made her one of the most prominent witnesses to the horrors of Adolf Hitler's regime. For her work promoting historical memory, she was given awards and showered by praise from political leaders from both sides of the Atlantic. "Perhaps the generation now that hears me in schools will say something to their children. I have no idea how far that will go," Friedlaender told German broadcaster ARD in 2021. Friedlaender preached for mutual empathy as an antidote to the world's evils. "Don't look at what separates you. Look at what unites you. Be human. Be reasonable," she said in 2024. - 'Try to make your life' - Born Margot Bendheim in 1921 to a family of button makers, young Margot had trained as a fashion illustrator. The family had lived through Hitler's rise to power and witnessed the Kristallnacht pogroms against Jewish businesses in 1938 but remained in Berlin. Friedlaender was 21 in 1943 when the Nazi secret police, the Gestapo, came for her 17-year-old brother Ralph. Arriving home, Friedlaender spotted a stranger by the entrance to their building. The young girl covered her Jewish Star of David, passed the man and knocked on a neighbour's door. Soon after, she learnt that her brother had been taken and her mother, Auguste Bendheim, had turned herself in to the police to be by her son. She left Friedlaender a note: "Try to make your life." The invocation would stay with Friedlaender, as would the amber necklace left to her by her mother. Auguste Bendheim and brother Ralph were deported to Auschwitz and killed. Friedlaender's father, she would learn much later, was also murdered in the gas chambers at the camp. Friedlaender lived for more than a year in the underground, dying her hair red, submitting to nasal surgery to appear less Jewish. The people who protected her "risked everything to share a bed or their food with me", she told the Hamburger Abendblatt in 2010. Eventually, she was stopped and asked for her papers. Friedlaender confessed to her Jewish identity and was deported to Theresienstadt. - 'Stay careful' - At the concentration camp, she found Adolf Friedlaender, who she had known through the Jewish community in Berlin. After the Red Army liberated the camp in 1945, he asked her to marry him. A year later, the couple emigrated to the United States and settled in the New York borough of Queens. Adolf worked for Jewish organisations in the city, while Margot worked as a seamstress and a travel agent. AFP | JOHN MACDOUGALL In 1997, Adolf passed away and Friedlaender began taking classes at the 92nd Street Y, where he had worked, including a memoir writing course. At the centre, she met the German producer Thomas Halaczinsky, who, on hearing her recollections, wanted to return with Friedlaender to Berlin to film a documentary. Friedlaender returned to Germany in 2003 for the first time since she left, a step her husband had never been willing to contemplate. The resulting documentary was released in 2004 and her autobiography, whose title reused her mother's words, was published in 2008. In 2010 at the age of 88, Friedlaender decided to move permanently to Berlin and recovered her German citizenship. "I only got back what belonged to me," she said at the time. After her improbable return home, Friedlaender became a voice of moral authority in a country still trying to make amends for the atrocities of the Nazis. AFP | John MACDOUGALL Friedlaender was garlanded with awards, including Germany's federal order of merit, and graced the cover of the German edition of fashion magazine Vogue in 2024. On a visit to Berlin, then US President Joe Biden emotionally told the survivor of the Holocaust he was "actually honoured to be in your presence". In Germany, she dedicated herself to speaking to young people, touring schools and answering questions on her life. "I don't want to know what people's parents or grandparents did," Friedlaender told German weekly Die Zeit around her centenary. "I concentrate on telling them: stay careful, watch that something like that never happens again. Not for me, but for yourselves." Her last public engagement was just a few days before her death, at Berlin city hall, to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. "Be human! That is what I ask you to do: be human!," she said.
