[KALKI]

Lockerbie trial

President Mandela took a particular interest in helping to resolve the long-running dispute between Gaddafi's Libya, on the one hand, and the United States and Britain on the other, over bringing to trial the two Libyans who were indicted in November 1991 and accused of sabotaging Pan Am Flight 103, which crashed at the Scottish town of Lockerbie on 21 December 1988, with the loss of 270 lives.

As early as 1992, Mandela informally approached President George Bush with a proposal to have the two indicted Libyans tried in a third country. Bush reacted favourably to the proposal, as did President Mitterrand of France and King Juan Carlos of Spain. In November 1994 – six months after his election as president – Mandela formally proposed that South Africa should be the venue for the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial.




However, British Prime Minister, John Major, flatly rejected the idea saying the British government did not have confidence in foreign courts[24]. A further three years elapsed until Mandela's offer was repeated to Major's successor, Tony Blair, when the president visited London in July 1997. Later the same year, at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) at Edinburgh in October 1997, Mandela warned:

"No one nation should be complainant, prosecutor and judge."

President Mandela negotiated with Muammar Gaddafi the hand-over of two accused Libyans to stand trialA compromise solution was then agreed for a trial to be held at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, governed by Scots law, and President Mandela began negotiations with Colonel Gaddafi for the handover of the two accused (Megrahi and Fhimah) in April 1999.[25] At the end of their nine-month trial, the verdict was announced on 31 January 2001. Fhimah was acquitted but Megrahi was convicted and sentenced to 27 years in a Scottish jail. Megrahi's initial appeal was turned down in March 2002, and former president Mandela went to visit him in Barlinnie prison on 10 June 2002.

"Megrahi is all alone", Mandela told a packed press conference in the prison's visitors room. "He has nobody he can talk to. It is psychological persecution that a man must stay for the length of his long sentence all alone. It would be fair if he were transferred to a Muslim country — and there are Muslim countries which are trusted by the West. It will make it easier for his family to visit him if he is in a place like the kingdom of Morocco, Tunisia or Egypt."

Megrahi was subsequently moved to Greenock jail and is no longer in solitary confinement. On June 28, 2007, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission concluded its three-year review of Megrahi's conviction and, believing that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred, referred the case to the Court of Criminal Appeal for a second appeal.



Marriage and family
Mandela has been married three times, has fathered six children, has twenty grandchildren, and a growing number of great-grandchildren. His grandson is Chief Mandla Mandela.


First marriage
Mandela's first marriage was to Evelyn Ntoko Mase who, like Mandela, was also from what later became the Transkei area of South Africa, although they actually met in Johannesburg. The couple had two sons, Madiba Thembekile (Thembi) (born 1946) and Makgatho (born 1950), and two daughters, both named Makaziwe (known as Maki; born 1947 and 1953). Their first daughter died aged nine months, and they named their second daughter in her honor. The couple broke up in 1957 after 13 years, divorcing under the multiple strains of his constant absences, devotion to revolutionary agitation, and the fact she was a Jehovah's Witness, a religion which requires political neutrality. Thembi was killed in a car crash in 1969 at the age of 25, while Mandela was imprisoned on Robben Island. All their children were educated at the Waterford Kamhlaba. Evelyn Mase died in 2004.


Second marriage
Mandela's second wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, also came from the Transkei area, although they, too, met in Johannesburg, where she was the city's first black social worker. They had two daughters, Zenani (Zeni), born 4 February 1958, and Zindziswa (Zindzi), born 1960. Later, Winnie would be deeply torn by family discord which mirrored the country's political strife; while her husband was serving a life sentence on the Robben Island prison, her father became the agriculture minister in the Transkei. The marriage ended in separation (April 1992) and divorce (March 1996), fuelled by political estrangement.

Mandela still languished in prison when his daughter Zenani was married to Prince Thumbumuzi Dlamini in 1973, elder brother of King Mswati III of Swaziland. As a member by marriage of a reigning foreign dynasty, she was able to visit her father during his South African imprisonment while other family members were denied access. The Dlamini couple live and run a business in Boston. One of their sons, Prince Cedza Dlamini (born 1976), educated in the United States, has followed in his grandfather's footsteps as an international advocate for human rights and humanitarian aid. Thumbumuzi and Mswati's sister, Princess Mantfombi Dlamini, is the chief consort to King Goodwill Zwelithini of KwaZulu-Natal, who "reigns but does not rule" over South Africa's largest ethnic group under the auspices of South Africa's government. One of Queen Mantfombi's sons is expected to eventually succeed Goodwill as monarch of the Zulus, whose Inkatha Party leader, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, was the rival of Mandela during much of his presidency.


Third marriage
Mandela himself was re-married in 1998, on his 80th birthday, to Graça Machel née Simbine, widow of Samora Machel, the former Mozambican president and ANC ally killed in an air crash 12 years earlier. The wedding followed months of international negotiations to set the unprecedented bride-price remitted to her clan, which were conducted on Mandela's behalf by his traditional sovereign, King Buyelekhaya Zwelibanzi Dalindyebo, born 1964. Ironically, it was this paramount chief's grandfather, the Regent Jongintaba, whose selection of a bride for him prompted Mandela to flee to Johannesburg as a young man.

Mandela still maintains a home at Qunu in the realm of his royal nephew (second cousin thrice-removed in Western reckoning), whose university expenses he defrayed and whose privy councillor he remains.