South Africa's Mbeki confers awards on heroes, dead and alive

0 Comments | AFP, April, 2005

PRETORIA (AFP) — South African President Thabo Mbeki bestowed national honours on independence heroes including India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Indonesia's founding president Sukarno as well as a university where many African liberation leaders had studied.

The awards, presented twice yearly, go to South Africans and foreigners for outstanding service to their country.

"Because of their and others' efforts, we are able to live and develop in a world of freedom, without the fetters of oppression or exclusion," Mbeki said at the ceremony.

"These distinguished members of our national orders are the guardians of ubuntu (humanity), handmaidens of our liberty and defender of a shared human destiny," Mbeki said Tuesday.

"They stand as...