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The best poetry of 2013
The best nature books of 2013
The best sports books of 2013
Nelson Mandela: how apartheid regime's court tried to destroy the ANC
Julie Bishop plays down tensions after meeting China's foreign minister
The search for a family divided by the iron curtain
Jobseekers' site spammed with CVs by activists
Stan Tracey: passion and vigour for jazz right to the last note
Manhattan is awash with actors waiting tables: from the archive, 7 December 1983
World Trade Organisation confirms long-awaited deal
Chuck Hagel reassures Gulf nations Iran deal will not stop flow of US arms
Kakadu traditional owners sound alarm over spill of radioactive material
North Korea deports US veteran Merrill Newman
Same-sex couples make history with Canberra weddings
Tony Abbott says flags will fly at half- mast for Nelson Mandela memorial
Optimism gains upper hand in Brazil as draw for World Cup 2014 is made
Christopher Pyne's Gonski formula: the loaded debate on school funding
Graça Machel on Mandela: 'I learned to separate the man from the myth'
Nelson and Winnie Mandela's marriage ended, but the bond was never broken
Nelson Mandela: pictures of the day - updates
Martin Rowson on the overshadowing of the autumn statement – cartoon
Stranded Florida Everglades whales likely escaped back to sea
Thank you. You chose to care | @guardianletters
Leading the fight against apartheid | @guardianletters

The best poetry of 2013

Posted: 07 Dec 2013 01:00 AM PST

From Fleur Adcock's Glass Wings to Train Songs edited by Sean O'Brien and Don Paterson, Adam Newey rounds up the best poetry of the year

The poetic year was sharply punctuated by the death of Seamus Heaney at the end of August. It's hard to think of any poet more determined to stay true to the topologies of language, culture and identity, and in particular to the bogs, mists and mizzling rain of the land that grew him, and his loss is incalculable. The coming years, no doubt, will see the publication of unfinished work, along with the scholarly editions, biographies and academic tomes that inevitably mark the translation from living poet to canonical great.

From last words to first books. The wellspring of poetry doesn't run dry, and two debuts in particular bear this out. Emily Berry's Dear Boy (Faber) fizzes with verbal inventiveness and fantastical, darkly comic storytelling; while Fiona Moore's pamphlet The Only Reason for Time (HappenStance Press) is full of elegant, gently piercing observations that build to a compelling portrait of love and loss and the overcoming of grief.

Still with new voices, Dear World & Everyone in It: New Poetry in the UK edited by Nathan Hamilton (Bloodaxe) is an excellent anthology of work by 60 young poets, some already very familiar names, some less so. Refusing to adopt the traditional role of editor as de haut en bas authority, Hamilton has achieved something that feels not unlike a crowdsourced anthology. Quality, inevitably, varies, but so, thankfully, do the themes, concerns and poetic strategies employed. There is much terrific work here and, as a snapshot of young, contemporary poetry in Britain, there's nothing better.

Somewhat further up the age range, three of my own favourite poets published collections this year. I love Robin Robertson's work for its austere beauty and the seriousness and intensity with which he realises his vision. Hill of Doors (Picador) is a companion piece to his superb The Wrecking Light (2010): it portrays human conciousness caught between animal impulse and divine aspiration, trapped in a thuggishly material world that is oblivious to higher concerns.

Christopher Reid's work, by contrast, I love for its wry and always well-mannered outsider's take on contemporary mores. With Six Bad Poets (Faber), he has produced another narrative sequence, along the lines of 2009's The Song of Lunch, and one that allows him to indulge his ventriloquistic panache. He clearly has great fun satirising the casually cruel, pettily incestuous world of poetry in which self-absorption is the keynote.

And a new volume from Maurice Riordan is always an occasion for celebration. The Water Stealer (Faber), published in the year he turns 60, is only Riordan's fourth full-length collection – this is a poet who refuses to over-publish – and the care and dedication he devotes to his craft pay off here. Inventive and mischievous as ever, and with a real assuredness of tone, The Water Stealer must be a strong contender for this year's TS Eliot prize.

As, no doubt, will be Dannie Abse's Speak, Old Parrot (Hutchinson), a spirited collection published as the poet turns 90. Inevitably, old age and an acute awareness of the passing of time and growing bodily infirmity make up a large part of it. But his humour most certainly isn't dimmed, with some boisterously bawdy versions of the 14th-century Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym. Sinéad Morrissey is another TS Eliot shortlistee with Parallax (Carcanet), which fascinates with its interest in the processes of art, in what the artwork conceals as much as what it reveals. As the title suggests, this is a book about perception as deception.

Two further collections and an anthology are particularly deserving of note. Sleeping Keys by Jean Sprackland (Jonathan Cape) deals in the flux of life, in change, decay and rebirth for a book of elegant poems of domestic life. In Glass Wings (Bloodaxe), Fleur Adcock is as clear-eyed as always in a collection that ranges widely over lost worlds, family histories and memories of childhood, but always maintains the art of seemingly artless observation. And Train Songs, edited by Sean O'Brien and Don Paterson (Faber), is a joy. The reader might take issue with the editors' claim that the railway is "as close as earthly things get to perfection" – as indeed do many of the poets and songwriters on board – but there are plenty of nostalgic pleasures to be had here.

Finally, a thoughtful and thought-provoking book about how we read and project our own concerns, especially political ones, on to texts. Poetry and Privacy: Questioning Public Interpretations of Contemporary British and Irish Poetry by John Redmond (Seren) is a salubrious corrective to those critics and academics for whom over-interpretation is a way of life. At which point, it seems best to say no more.

Adam Newey

The best nature books of 2013

Posted: 07 Dec 2013 12:45 AM PST

From Patrick Barkham's encounters with badgers to a revolutionary look at birdlife, Stephen Moss picks the best nature books of the year

The way we view nature changes over time, and this is reflected in the way books about the natural world also change their emphasis, content and style. Each year, the diversity of volumes continues to astonish and delight, and the 2013 vintage is no exception.

Controversy is at the forefront of many of our encounters with nature. Badgerlands, by the Guardian's own Patrick Barkham (Granta) helps us through the moral maze of our complex relationship with badgers, in a highly personal book written with the style you would expect from the author of the wonderful The Butterfly Isles.

Another Guardian writer, George Monbiot, also courts controversy with Feral (Allen Lane), a fascinating examination of our relationship with landscape and nature over time, with a clarion call for the "rewilding" of Britain. Readers will find plenty both to agree with and argue against, but, as always, Monbiot makes his case with passion and intellectual rigour. I particularly liked the term "sheepwrecked" to describe the devastating effect of overgrazing by sheep on his beloved Welsh uplands.

For a more gentle examination of our complex relationship with landscape, we turn to Tim Dee, whose Four Fields (Jonathan Cape) takes a close look at four very different grasslands across the globe. It's thoughtful and, as always with Dee, beautifully written. Detail is the watchword in Conor Mark Jameson's Looking for the Goshawk (Bloomsbury), which reveals the hidden secrets of this mysterious raptor, known as "the phantom of the forest".

Secrets are also revealed in The Guga Stone, by Donald S Murray, illustrated by Douglas Robertson (Luath Press). Subtitled "Lies, Legends and Lunacies from St Kilda", this is a wonderfully eclectic collection of poems and prose by a gifted Scottish writer. He exposes the many myths about our remotest island group with humour and irreverence, and a touching affection for an incredible place and its people.

Remote Scottish locations are the theme of Drawn to the Edge, by John Threlfall (Langford Press), an artist based on the Solway Coast, whose paintings bring this neglected part of Britain to life. For those who enjoy wildlife art, I can recommend The Natural Eye (Red Hare Publishing), a collection of stunning artwork by the members of the Society of Wildlife Artists, which this year celebrates its 50th anniversary.

One of the founders of the SWLA, Robert Gillmor, has once again produced wonderfully vibrant dust jackets for another trio of New Naturalists (Collins). Bird Populations, by Ian Newton; Terns, by David Cabot and Vegetation of Britain and Ireland, by Michael Proctor, are each packed with scholarship.

Twenty-one years after they began, Lynx Edicions have finally completed their epic 17-part Handbook of the Birds of the World, with a special volume covering the many new species that have been recently discovered. As an added treat, they have included some of the best photographs ever taken of our global birdlife. Each book is a library in itself – the publishers deserve praise for maintaining such high standards throughout the series.

A less uplifting but equally valuable book is Lost Animals: Extinction and the Photographic Record, by the world-renowned expert on extinct birds Errol Fuller (Bloomsbury). This brings together extraordinary photographs of now-extinct species of birds and mammals, including the Tasmanian wolf, Eskimo curlew and passenger pigeon – the centenary of whose demise we mark next year.

For those who prefer to go out and watch wildlife, there are two groundbreaking new field guides. Harrap's Wild Flowers, by Simon Harrap (Bloomsbury, £16.99), is a wonderfully comprehensive yet concise guide to identifying almost 1,000 species of wild flowers, trees and shrubs in Britain and Ireland, illustrated with more than 2,000 photographs.

Photographs are also a strong feature in a revolutionary new bird book. Crossley ID Guide: Britain and Ireland, by Richard Crossley and Dominic Couzens (Princeton, £16.95) uses a photomontage technique to help you identify birds in every plumage and at every angle. Purists may be unconvinced, but this certainly makes you look at birds in a different way.

Birds and People, by Mark Cocker and David Tipling (Jonathan Cape), could easily have been a shoo-in for my nature book of the year. Following his wonderful Birds Britannica, Cocker has gone one step further in documenting the cultural associations between birds and human beings throughout the world. A fascinating read, beautifully illustrated with photographs by Tipling.

But even this was eclipsed by what may turn out to be the most important UK wildlife book of the century so far. The British Trust for Ornithology's Bird Atlas 2007-11: The Breeding and Wintering Birds of Britain and Ireland contains almost 20m records submitted by tens of thousands of volunteer observers, presented in one comprehensive and visually arresting volume. By showing how our bird populations are faring at a time of unprecedented change, this crucial book will serve as both a warning and inspiration to anyone who cares deeply about Britain's birdlife.

Stephen Moss

The best sports books of 2013

Posted: 07 Dec 2013 12:30 AM PST

From Roger Kahn's gripping insights into baseball to Sid Lowe's Fear and Loathing in La Liga, Richard Williams rounds up the best sports books of the year

The best sports book of 2013, and perhaps the best of all time, was first published in 1971 in the United States, where it sold more than 3m copies and has never been out of print. Now Roger Kahn's The Boys of Summer appears in a new British edition (Aurum Press), and should be read even by those whose ignorance of baseball is so profound – as mine was when I first read it about 30 years ago – that they are unaware of the difference between a slider and a curveball.

I was hooked, as early as the second page of this richly textured book, by Kahn's assessment of his ostensible subject: the Brooklyn Dodgers of the early 1950s. "Their skills lifted everyman's spirit," he writes, "and their defeat joined with everyman's existence." That comes from his introduction, titled "Lines on the Transpontine Madness", and it is a good indication of what is to come as the author looks back, after 20 years, on the team he covered as a young reporter for the New York Herald Tribune. He searches out heroes such as Duke Snider, Carl Furillo, Preacher Roe, Roy Campanella and, of course, the great Jackie Robinson – the first black professional to make his way from the Negro leagues into major league baseball – to learn about their afterlives, while reflecting on the meaning of their achievements.

"These Dodgers are no more special than, say, the Boston Red Sox of 1948," an editor tells him when he divulges his plan to revisit the players and coaches with whom he once shared his life. "You only think they're special because you covered them. They're only special to you." How wrong editors can be is evident in every page of this elegy for an institution still mourned in Brooklyn, where their historic home, Ebbets Field, was razed soon after the franchise moved to Los Angeles in 1957.

It's a story containing much widescreen glory and several smaller-scale tragedies, told with insight and compassion. Robinson died from a heart attack, aged 53, shortly after the book's first publication, having told Kahn about the descent of his elder son, Jackie Jr, into crime and heroin addiction, while the story of the 50-year-old Campanella, the catcher of the 1955 World Series champions who was left paralysed from the shoulders down after a car accident, is worth the price alone.

When The Boys of Summer first appeared, it looked as though books from British sports writers would never meet the exalted standards set by their American counterparts. The creation of the William Hill sports book of the year award encouraged a raising of sights, and the 25th edition of the prize has just been won by the horse racing journalist Jamie Reid for Doped (Racing Post), a reconstruction of the series of crimes committed in the early 1960s by a group of colourful characters who drugged horses to make them lose races. Bill Roper, a London bookmaker, and his beautiful Swiss mistress, Micheline Lugeon, were at the centre of the web, and the book's cast of characters – from the Duke of Norfolk and Sir Gordon Richards to the gangsters Albert Dimes and Jack Spot – is vast and varied; a lively account is slowed only by the occasional need to refer to a three-page dramatis personae. Occasionally, too, Reid forgets that some of his readers will be nonplussed by betting jargon. "His success in attracting the custom of high rollers," he writes of Roper, "lay in his skill in getting the total amount on to a decent average without depressing the market." Even a true‑crime thriller occasionally needs a footnote or two.

Some of the most satisfying sports writing is also social history, and Robert Winder's history of Wisden's Cricketers' Almanack, The Little Wonder (Bloomsbury), inevitably reflects changes in British society since the founding of John Wisden's annual in 1864. Irresistible to anyone with a row of the primrose volumes on his or her shelves, it will also entertain those with a less profound devotion to the game.

Winder's graceful and measured prose is entirely suited to his topic. Of the editions listing the deaths of cricketers in the first world war – such as that of Second Lieutenant John Howell, who starred with the bat for Repton against Uppingham at Lord's on the day war was declared, and later died at Ypres – he writes: "It may not be easy for a modern reader, a century after these events, to accept Wisden's unabashed affection for the public-school ideal without an ironic shrug. But if the class-bound system of English education can now be held up for inspection (not least for indoctrinating a generation of well-born boys with the deference required to fight such a war) then the young men it produced must be seen not only as privileged beneficiaries but as victims."

In one of the year's best football books, Sid Lowe's Fear and Loathing in La Liga (Yellow Jersey), an extremely well-informed and usefully myth-busting portrait of the long rivalry between Barcelona and Real Madrid, the immortal Alfredo di Stéfano – the nomination of many good judges for the greatest player of all time – pays Stanley Matthews the ultimate tribute: "Now he could play." Jon Henderson's fine biography of Matthews, The Wizard (Yellow Jersey), catches the magic that made the man in the No 7 shirt a figure of worldwide renown; if his only significant decoration, secured 60 years ago, was a single FA Cup winners' medal, then at least it was presented after a match that would become known by his name.

The Wizard also contains interesting war-related material, this time from 1945, when Matthews and his England teammate Stan Mortensen were charged with selling black-market coffee while in Brussels to play in a morale-boosting match for a Combined Services XI against Belgium. They admitted the offence, but the accusation was quietly dropped, probably for reasons of public relations, and the matter took 60 years to come to light.

When another player came along to take Matthews's place atop the pantheon of British football, it was a man with a very different public image. Duncan Hamilton's Immortal (Century, £20) is the umpteenth but undoubtedly the most satisfying life of George Best, "approved" by his family and gentler than the portrait given by Gordon Burn seven years ago in the bleak Best and Edwards but more rounded (and better written) than those authorised during the player's lifetime.

There's a lovely, double-edged story that I hadn't heard before, of a day when Best, long into his retirement, was in Leeds and encountered the near-derelict figure of Albert Johanneson, the black South African who had endured racist abuse across England while playing for Leeds United in the 1960s. Best, seeing the damage caused by Johanneson's addiction to drink and drugs, took his fellow winger to a good hotel for a meal and a long chat, having persuaded the staff to serve a man who was clearly living on the streets. While they talked, Best was missing an appearance with Jimmy Greaves at one of the city's theatres – the reason he was in the city in the first place.

Richard Williams

Nelson Mandela: how apartheid regime's court tried to destroy the ANC

Posted: 07 Dec 2013 12:00 AM PST

Mandela's biographer covered the historic Rivonia trial in 1963-64 for the Observer. This is his dispatch from the courtroom on 1 March 1964

The Rivonia trial, in which Nelson Mandela and nine other leaders are charged with attempting to overthrow the state by violent means, has reached the end of its first phase. The prosecution has produced its last witness and early next week the trial will adjourn for weeks, before the defence produces its case.

This is the most important trial in the stormy history of the African opposition. The state has produced a massive collection of documents, most of them collected eight months ago, when the police raided the remote Lilliesleaf farm in Rivonia, outside Johannesburg, and captured most of the accused.

Every day the 10 men have been led in from Pretoria jail, handcuffed and surrounded by police, into the ornate Palace of Justice in the middle of the city. The palace is thick with police and spectators are watched for a sign of a smile or a wink: the audience has dwindled to a handful.

The prosecution's evidence

The accused have listened, over the last three months, to the evidence of 174 witnesses and the recital of 500 documents. They look remarkably calm and undeterred. Mandela, in apparent good health, exchanges occasional comment with his neighbour Walter Sisulu. Black, white and Indian sit together in a row.

With tireless enthusiasm and dramatic gestures Dr Percy Yutar, the eager prosecutor, has unfolded the evidence for his opening indictment, which claims that the accused were plotting a war of liberation against the government, to be assisted by an invasion of foreign troops. The state has spread its net widely. Its evidence includes three secret witnesses, Mr X, Mr Y and Mr Z, who claimed to have been working for the liberation movement and gave details of training in explosives and guerrilla warfare.

A home-grown affair

A taxi driver described how he had ferried 260 recruits across the Bechuanaland border. Another witness explained his journey to Ethiopia for training. But what Dr Yutar describes as "the cornerstone" of the case is a document found at Lilliesleaf farm, outlining the secret Operation Mayibuye (Operation Comeback).

The document explains the necessity of violence and outlines a scheme of revolution in which four groups of 30 men each were to be landed by sea. They would then be joined by an internal force of 7,000 guerrillas. The combined force would begin a "massive onslaught on selected targets".

But the prosecution has not managed to sustain one important part of the indictment – that the accused were part of an international communist conspiracy, rooted abroad. In fact, the evidence has suggested that, although members of the communist party were involved, the revolutionary plan was essentially a home-grown affair; and that military and financial support was to come largely from other African states.

The trial has been properly conducted. Much of the evidence was obtained after relentless interrogation of captured men during 90-day detentions in solitary confinement, but the documentation has been thorough, including a diary kept by Mandela. The judge, Mr Justice Quartus de Wet, has been scrupulously fair.

The defence lawyers, led by Mr Bram Fischer and Mr Vernon Berrange, two of the most brilliant and courageous of the breed of leftwing Johannesburg barristers, are now going through the piles of documents and considering their tactics. From the defence cross-examination it seems likely that some important parts of the evidence may not be disputed. It is also probable that one or two of the accused will explain why they have taken their stand.

The charges, if proven, can carry the death sentence; therefore a real possibility exists that some of the accused, including Mandela, could be hanged.

If this were to happen, it would have very large repercussions. It would produce the first African martyrs. It would make the conscience of America and Britain – where Mandela enjoys great personal prestige – much more uncomfortable. And it would proclaim more clearly that South Africa is now in a state of war. But whatever the verdict, it is clear that the trial will be a landmark in the African political movement: for it is unlikely that Mandela will want to refute the charge that he has resorted to violent means.

Setback for resistance

The contrast with the treason trial which ended three years ago, and involved most of the Rivonia accused, is complete: for that marked the last stage of the non-violent movement.

The Rivonia trial, together with mass arrests in the Pan-African Congress and the exodus of political leaders, has produced a major setback for the African resistance. A few isolated acts of sabotage continue: electric pylons are still blown up, and the slogan APARTHEID MEANS WAR still appears.

A few days ago a policeman gave evidence at the trial that he had had no acts of sabotage in his district in the East Rand since last July. The next day there was an explosion in his district on the East Rand railway line. The African National Congress is certainly not dead.

But the individual African leadership, prominent for the last 10 years, is now in effect incapacitated inside the republic. The new situation, generated by the trial, the Sabotage bill, and the ruthless 90-day detentions, has produced a far more desperate challenge.

It is still too early to have a very clear picture of the new leadership that is emerging out of despair. It does not, astonishingly, seem noticeably anti-white, but it will certainly be less sophisticated, less moderate and much more secretive than its predecessors.

It … seems now inevitable that the terrorism of the police will be met by counter-terrorism. But it is unlikely outsiders will know anything about the new movement – until it strikes.

Julie Bishop plays down tensions after meeting China's foreign minister

Posted: 06 Dec 2013 11:58 PM PST

Bishop says little time was taken up discussing the air defence zone that has caused angry words between the two countries

The search for a family divided by the iron curtain

Posted: 06 Dec 2013 11:45 PM PST

Jenny Hudson hears about Bob Bishton's moving quest to reunite his family who were divided for decades by love and politics

Bob Bishton knelt at the grave and placed the letter where it couldn't be missed. On it were written a few lines in three languages, and they were left in the hope that his mother's long-lost family would see it and get in touch. His journey had brought him 1,210 miles from Birmingham to Pula, a city on the Adriatic coast. He'd known little about his mother's family – he'd never met anyone from the old country. He only knew their names. All his life he'd had questions but few answers, just hints and snippets about another, perhaps more exotic, upbringing, from his mother, Emilia, an Italian exile in Birmingham since the second world war.

Emilia met his father, Ted, a British army driver, in 1945 when he was stationed on the Istrian peninsula. She was a cook in the officer's mess; he was delivering supplies to the kitchen.

Ted and Emilia were a sociable couple and loved to entertain friends and neighbours. Bob remembers his mother spending all day making her own pasta for huge convivial Italian dinners, rolling out the dough on the kitchen table. So popular were these evenings – as was Emilia's cooking – that Bob says people would be sitting on the stairs to eat.

He has many warm memories of growing up in Birmingham with his parents. But whenever conversation strayed into details about his mother's family in Italy, a barrier went up. "I remember hearing Mum and Dad talking about whether she would be allowed to go back. Mum said, 'They will never let me.' Then they switched to Italian – which they did when they didn't want me to hear what was said."

So Bob, 63, only picked up fragments about his mother's early life. She was born on the outskirts of Pula, on the Istrian peninsula, at that time part of Italy. Both her parents were dead by the time Emilia was 17 and she was very close to her six older siblings.

The end of the second world war brought complications to Istria: after the Italian surrender it was embroiled in conflict between Nazi forces and Yugoslav partisans. One brother, Romano, was killed – for Emilia, it was always too painful to talk about.

Once the Allies took control of the area in 1945, Emilia started working as a cook on the army base and that's when she met her husband to be. "Dad had been in Italy for about a year so he spoke some Italian when he met Mum," says Bob. "He just adored her and felt the same all their lives."

The couple married near Venice, in 1947. Bob has a photograph of the pretty Italian and her handsome British husband walking along the waterfront. It's a joyous image. But the reality of Italy at the time was not happy. The devastation was such that rather than waiting for her husband to be demobbed, Emilia travelled across Europe alone to join Ted's family in Birmingham. She took only a few clothes, her marriage certificate and a statement from the Pula authorities, giving her permission to leave.

Emilia had little English but, by chance, her new father-in-law had close Italian friends and could speak the language. "It must have been a big comfort," says Bob. "Joe helped Mum to learn English and they always had a strong bond. But the whole family welcomed her with open arms."

Two months later, Ted got out of the army and joined her in the Midlands. Emilia had found a job as a cleaner on the Birmingham buses. Ted returned to driving, on building sites.

The couple settled down into a happy domestic life and were thrilled when Bob was born in 1950. But behind Emilia's beautiful smile, there was sadness. One of Bob's early memories is standing in the post office while Emilia bought airmail envelopes and notepaper. She wrote hundreds of letters to the family she missed so desperately, hoping one day to hear back. She couldn't go to Pula because international borders had been redrawn in 1947 – the city had been renamed Pola and was in communist Yugoslavia.

Six times Emilia applied for a visa and six times she was refused – the application was not looked on favourably because she'd left of her own accord to live in England.

"I'd sometimes overhear a conversation or see her distressed and know it was to do with not being able to go and see her brothers and sisters," says Bob. "I didn't fully understand, but I knew it caused Mum a lot of pain. Over time, you avoid talking about it."

Emilia never received a single reply from the hundreds of letters she wrote to her family. Nor did she ever know if any of her letters even reached them. She died in 1979, long before the iron curtain came down and travel restrictions were lifted. She'd been without contact with them for three decades.

"I'm Birmingham born and bred but knowing so little about Mum's background and family, it always felt as if a piece of my life was missing," says Bob.

He retired early to look after his wife, Anita, who has multiple sclerosis, and when she was offered a week's respite care, it was time to act. Initial inquiries at the Croatian embassy – Pula is now in Croatia – yielded nothing. The Catholic church couldn't help either. So Bob booked a flight and set off on his quest in person with Pete Belk, a friend and neighbour, for company. "I didn't have high hopes. I imagined my family had fled to Italy after the war and it would be impossible to trace them. I just wanted to see where Mum came from."

All Bob had to go on was an address – the old family home – his mother's birth certificate and the names of her siblings. The street number was 63 and, with the help of a taxi driver, Bob found 61, 62 and 64. There was no number 63; just an empty plot. But a neighbour directed them to the cemetery. Among hundreds of graves, they found the Italian section – and a headstone with a familiar name on it. "I saw the name Niegovan. All the names were in Croatian, but recognisable as the names of my uncles and aunts," says Bob.

There were fresh flowers on the grave, too. Someone else had been there – and recently. "It felt surreal because it was the first physical evidence of my family. It didn't hit me emotionally straight away.

"When I got home, I went straight to the cemetery where Mum and Dad are buried. I touched the lettering on Mum's name and whispered, 'I've found them, Mum.'"

Bob had to go back to care for Anita. But he had a plan. He would return to Pula with a note in English, Italian and Croatian and leave it at the grave in the hope that the person who had laid the flowers would get in touch.

In Birmingham, a Croatian barber helped translate his appeal. The note explained that Bob was Emilia Niegovan's son and gave contact details. A year after his first visit, Bob took the note to the grave – again there were fresh flowers and his spirits soared.

Ten days later, a letter with a Croatian postmark arrived at Bob and Anita's. "Bob picked it up but his hands were shaking so much that he couldn't open it," says Anita. "I said – 'Love, you've found your family.'"

It was from the granddaughter of one of Bob's aunts, Wanda Quagliato, who lives in Australia, but was visiting Pula. She enclosed contact details, including a phone number for Bob's cousin Walter, who lives in Pula and speaks fluent English. "We were laughing and crying – it was beyond anything we could have imagined or hoped for," says Anita.

Bob rang Walter that day. It was a warm and easy conversation, sharing their amazement at finding each other.

Bob went back to Pula to meet them. "As I arrived at the airport, I could see them waiting for me – Walter, Wanda and Walter's daughter, Paola. I knew instantly they were my family. We look very alike and the bond was instant. We all opened our arms and hugged each other."

Before his search, Bob had never been to that part of the world. Now, surrounded by his relatives, he felt wholly, surprisingly at home. As they got to know each other, they felt able to ask the more difficult questions, the ones unanswered for so long. "They asked if Mum had been happy. I said yes – Dad's family embraced her and took great care of her throughout her life. Then they asked why she had never written or come back. I said she'd written hundreds of letters and kept trying to go home but could not get a visa at that difficult time during the communist rule. Our reunion was too late for Mum but now, at least, her family know that she never, ever forgot them."

Jobseekers' site spammed with CVs by activists

Posted: 06 Dec 2013 11:00 PM PST

Jobseekers can bypass the unpopular Universal Jobmatch site with a browser plugin that automatically sends their email to multiple advertisers. Cyber civil disobedience is here. By Alex Hern

Alex Hern

Stan Tracey: passion and vigour for jazz right to the last note

Posted: 06 Dec 2013 11:00 PM PST

Britain's master jazz pianist, who has died aged 86, sounded as fresh and vital in his latest work as he did 50 years ago

Not all jazz musicians make it to their ninth decade, and of those who do, few can claim that the freshness and substance of their last work matched that of their first. But with The Flying Pig, Stan Tracey – whose death at the age of 86 was announced yesterday – showed only a couple of months ago that the years had done nothing to dim his qualities. The last album to be released during his lifetime is likely to figure in anybody's considered assessment of his finest contributions to the recorded history of jazz.

Tracey was in the habit of choosing interesting themes for his compositions, and this group of pieces turned out to have been inspired by the experiences of his father as a teenage soldier with the East Kent regiment on the battlefields of Flanders during the first world war. Tracey's father was wounded and then captured, surviving imprisonment to return to his family upon the end of hostilities. Played by a fine quintet, the tunes are all given titles referring to soldiers' sayings: the Flying Pig itself was a type of gun used by the British.

It's a hard-bop record, harking back to the late 1950s and early 1960s, yet it sounds as fresh as tomorrow. You could play it next to any of the finest Blue Note albums by Horace Silver or Art Blakey and not feel that it suffered by comparison. And the leader's piano-playing sounds, to say the least, like that of a much younger man, prompting the soloists and keeping the rhythm section up to the mark.

If it lacks anything, it is the sort of single masterpiece that he produced early in his career with Starless and Bible Black, the track from his reimagining in music of Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood, recorded in 1965 with Bobby Wellins on tenor saxophone, Jeff Clyne on double bass and Jackie Dougan at the drums. Here is one of the great ballad performances in the whole of recorded jazz, one of those pieces in which, although everything but the skeleton of the tune is improvised, each note seems to have been weighed and measured to perfection.

Reading on mobile? Listen to Starless and Bible Black here

The last time I saw Tracey, at the Bull's Head in Barnes a year or so ago, leading with Andy Cleyndert on bass and his son Clark on drums, he played a version of I Cover the Waterfront, a much abused standard, that I'll never forget. Through the evening he sounded just as vigorous, just as intent on making every note seem new-minted, as he had when I first heard him in person 50 years earlier. Having worked his way through his early influences, he spent that half-century as one of the British jazz's genuinely original voices. His passing, like those of his contemporaries Tubby Hayes, Phil Seamen and Ronnie Scott, removes a landmark.

Richard Williams

Manhattan is awash with actors waiting tables: from the archive, 7 December 1983

Posted: 06 Dec 2013 11:00 PM PST

Experience Preferred … But Not Essential is a film that is being much discussed over the smarter tables of Manhattan. It is talked of as a classic about another age, on a level almost of Upstairs Downstairs. It is set in a North Wales seaside resort in 1962; its sense of history, to the New Yorker, dwells in the fact that its heroine is, temporarily, a waitress.

The waitress is almost an extinct creature here now. This is the age of the virtuoso waiter. A woman is what has to be hired occasionally, the also ran for slacker lunchtimes or as a desperate measure while Andrew/Steven/Peter or John are finishing their off-off-Broadway showcase runs, beer commercials or soap shots.

Given the delectability of all those slender, young, Nautilus-raised male waiterettes, with whom Manhattan is now stocked eyebrow to plucked eyebrow, who would want even the pertest, cutest girls serving at table? The keyword is service. Women do serve, there is, alas, no way of escaping that cultural, biological image. Young men are involved in something far grander than the lowly scribbling of orders and bearing of plates. Almost all are actors, singers, dancers waiting for discovery; the restaurant table is but another theatre in the round.

The most convincing exponents of this art are to be found at the new restaurant opened in Columbus Avenue's DDL Foodshow. Dino de Laurentiis, the famed movie producer, and owner of this food extravaganza, culled the finest waiters from his Columbus competitors. Each one is more lithe with more presence than the last; this is the sound stage of their dreams. DDL is the new Schwabs drugstore; each waiter is today's Lana Turner awaiting discovery. Any one of these lovable, tousle-haired fellows might be destined to be Kevin Kline, the blond Viking type to be William Hurt. Everyone wants to be on Broadway while dishing out the strip steak, double rare.

The real elite, meanwhile, is to be found waitering for the catering services: $12 an hour, no tips, but the best of clientele. Private parties, celebrity dinners and cocktails: nor is it unknown for he who tends bar to be invited to stay on afterwards as a guest… if he be cute enough, which he always is. Restaurant waiters are costumed as chorus boys; catering waiters in their tuxedos are understudies to the stars. This year, your turn; next year, mine.

World Trade Organisation confirms long-awaited deal

Posted: 06 Dec 2013 09:16 PM PST

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Chuck Hagel reassures Gulf nations Iran deal will not stop flow of US arms

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Posted: 06 Dec 2013 06:28 PM PST

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Same-sex couples make history with Canberra weddings

Posted: 06 Dec 2013 05:55 PM PST

More than 20 couples take advantage of ACT legislation before high court rules on validity of the law

Tony Abbott says flags will fly at half- mast for Nelson Mandela memorial

Posted: 06 Dec 2013 05:27 PM PST

Prime minister was criticised for not lowering official flags after news of Mandela's death broke on Friday

Optimism gains upper hand in Brazil as draw for World Cup 2014 is made

Posted: 06 Dec 2013 04:08 PM PST

Runup to tournament has been fraught – thanks to delays, cost over-runs and protests – but glory on pitch beckons once again

Brazil, host of next year's football World Cup, has been plagued by stadium delays, mass protests and cost over-runs in the runup to Friday's draw.

But that is all changing now the real business of football is in sight, and confidence is Brazil's new order of the day.

The upbeat mood in the country now is in sharp contrast to the grim mood on the streets six months ago.

Brazil were drawn in a group they should have little difficulty in qualifying from and national team coach Luiz Felipe Scolari expressed quiet satisfaction that his team's first opponents will be Croatia.

Pelé – Brazil's favourite son and the world's most famous footballer – shared the optimism, predicting victory in the final at the Maracanã.

The host nation have won the world cup a record five times – in 1958, 1962, 1970, 1994 and 2002.

They will also play Cameroon, who failed to qualify for the last Africa Cup of Nations, and Mexico, who have slumped somewhat since their largely youth team beat Brazil in the football final at the London Olympics last year.

The opening match of the tournament will take place on 12 June, presuming the Itaquera stadium in São Paulo – site of a recent crane collapse – is finished by then.

Scolari said he was pleased at the draw. "It's always best to have an opening game against a European team because they need some time to adapt to Brazil," he said.

"I think we'll get better as we go along. This first game will be between two balanced teams, but we live here, we play here, so for us it is better."

Aldo Rebelo, Brazil's sports minister, said he was also confident the national team were strong enough to progress.

"It's a balanced group, with difficult games. But if the team play as they usually do, Brazil will move to the round of 16 of the tournament," he told the Guardian. "Brazil will get to the final for sure."

The World Cup draw took place in the city of Salvador in northeast Brazil.

For most of the footballing dignitaries at the event, it appeared to be a day for talking up the home nation's chances. Brazil's Ronaldo and Zinedine Zidane of France both declared Brazil the favourites in 2014.

Pelé predicted that Brazil would banish the most traumatic moment in the country's World Cup history – defeat in the 1950 final at the Maracanã – by returning next year to lift the trophy for the sixth time.

"There's something that doesn't leave my memory – my dad crying after the [1950] cup," he said.

"I saw my dad and his friends and they were crying and this was before TV, they were listening to the radio, and I thought, oh no, Brazil lost the World Cup. But Brazil won't cry next year, we will win."

During the draw ceremony, there were reminders of that traumatic moment in 1950. Grainy black and white footage showed Uruguay lifting the trophy.

The scorer of the winning goal, Alcides Ghiggia – now 86 – joined Geoff Hurst, Zidane and others in drawing the balls.

Mostly, however, the ceremony was designed to reinforce images the hosts would like to project through the tournament.

Videos and live performances highlighted the country's extraordinary natural beauty (with images from the Amazon in the north to the Iguaçu waterfalls in the south), its culture (songs by rapper Emicida and samba singer Alcione) and phenomenal success in the World Cup.

Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff said the tournament will have a special significance in what she called the home of football.

"This will be the Cup of Cups, an event that no one will forget," she said. "We have a history of success in football. This is the land of Pelé, the greatest player of all time.

"This the land of Ronaldo, the biggest scorer in World Cup histories. We are full of football geniuses."

Ronaldo cut a corpulent figure as he appeared on stage as a member of the local organising committee. He said it was far tougher to organise the World Cup than to win it.

Unsurprisingly, there was no appearance by Romario, another of Brazil's former World Cup winning strikers who is now better known as a politician who is fiercely critical of what he sees as wasteful public spending on the tournament.

In his first tweet after the ceremony, Romario wrote: "The stadiums are collapsing and yet people are thinking that the 'Brazilian way' will resolve everything. Need I say more."

Despite the confidence of the organisers, this sentiment is widely shared in Brazil, where many feel the billions spent on new stadiums could have been better used to improve dire public services.

This was a major reason for the mass protests earlier this year, which overshadowed the Confederations Cup. A repeat of those demonstrations is a major concern for Fifa, world football's governing body.

Cutting short a moment of silence for Nelson Mandela to quote some of the South African statesman's words, Fifa president Sepp Blatter made a thinly veiled appeal for Brazilians to put the protests behind them.

"I appeal to the population of Brazil, the 200 million people, through this World Cup please come together," he said.

Jonathan Watts

Christopher Pyne's Gonski formula: the loaded debate on school funding

Posted: 06 Dec 2013 03:36 PM PST

States will not be required to contribute – but minister assumes they will because they are responsible to their electorates

Daniel Hurst

Graça Machel on Mandela: 'I learned to separate the man from the myth'

Posted: 06 Dec 2013 02:59 PM PST

Former first lady was Nelson Mandela's champion and companion right up to his death

Many South Africans will say they have lost their tata, as in father. But amid the outpouring of emotion here and around the world, it is easy to forget that there is a woman mourning her husband. Graça Machel married Nelson Mandela on his 80th birthday on 18 July 1998, providing an unexpected romantic epilogue to an epic life. She was to be his champion and companion in his twilight years and first witness to his inexorable decline.

Machel is 27 years younger than Mandela but has known the pain of loss before. Her first husband, Mozambican president Samora Machel, died in a mysterious plane crash in 1986. She is the only woman in the world to have been first lady of two countries.

Born in Mozambique in 1945, she trained as a soldier in Frelimo, the liberation movement led by her first husband. She became the country's first education minister after independence from Portugal in 1975 and held the post for 14 years. It was the start of a long career dedicated to children and social causes. She once said: "It is the meaning of what my life has been since a youth – to try to fight for the dignity and the freedom of my own people."

Mandela met Machel briefly in Mozambique after his release from prison in 1990, later recalling her as "a very impressive woman and striking personality". She caught his eye again when she received an honorary doctorate in Cape Town in 1992. They got much better acquainted a year later when Mandela became a father figure to Samora Machel's six children, taking over on the death of his old friend Oliver Tambo.

Mandela's marriage to his second wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, had not survived his incarceration and they divorced in 1996. Soon there was no secret about the president's new relationship – he and Machel were seen holding hands on overseas trips and kissing during a state function in Zimbabwe.

"I cannot describe my joy and happiness to receive the love and warmth of such a humble but gracious and brilliant lady," Mandela wrote at the time. "It gives me unbelievable comfort and satisfaction to know that there [is] somebody somewhere in the universe on whom I can rely, especially on matters where my political comrades cannot provide me."

Speaking to a TV interviewer, he added: "I'm in love with a lovely lady. I don't regret the reverses and setbacks because late in my life I'm blooming like a flower because of the love and support she's given me."

In 1998, aged 80 and 52 respectively, they bought a house together and married. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who had previously complained about them living in sin, said at the wedding: "Graça has made a decent man out of him."

In a 2008 interview with CNN, Machel insisted the age gap had never been a problem. "He is simply a wonderful husband," she said. "We met in life at a time we were both settled. We were grown up, we were settled, we knew the value of a companion, of a partner. Because of that, we have enjoyed this relationship in a really special way.

"It's not like when you are still young, you are too demanding. No, no. We just accept each other as we are. And we enjoy every single day as if it is the last day. Because of that, it has been wonderful to have him as a husband."

Asked by CNN: "Do you look at him and go, 'I married Nelson Mandela?'" the former first lady replied: "At the beginning, yes. I already had this very deep involvement with him. It's … there was a sort of conflict between the man I loved and the myth. Particularly because people were saying things, and I couldn't figure out the two would go together.

"I know him as a human being, a person, and this myth surrounding him. The aura around him was a bit confusing, but then I learned to live with it, in terms of separating the two."

During Mandela's increasingly scarce public appearances following his retirement, Machel was usually at his side. She supported his frail arm as he tried to wave to crowds at the 2010 World Cup closing ceremony. While the rest of the world speculated over his health, she was forced to watch the dying of the light first-hand.

"I mean, this spirit and this sparkle, you see that somehow it's fading," she told eNews Channel Africa in 2009. "To see him ageing, it's something also which pains you. You understand and you know it has to happen."

A formidable personality, Machel appears to have been unfazed by Madikizela-Mandela remaining part of Mandela's life. In 2012 photographer Adrian Steirn spoke of them "laughing hysterically" together at his birthday party. It remains to be seen whether Machel will clash with Mandela's children and grandchildren over his legacy.

Twice married and twice widowed, she has never allowed herself to be defined by Samora Machel and Nelson Mandela.

She established the Foundation for Community Development in Mozambique, a UN independent expert on the impact of armed conflict on children and she was a founding member of The Elders - a group of eminent global figures promoting peace and human rights. She is fluent in French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and English, as well as her native Tonga.

David Smith

Nelson and Winnie Mandela's marriage ended, but the bond was never broken

Posted: 06 Dec 2013 02:00 PM PST

Madikizela-Mandela played a huge part in the fight against apartheid, but her actions leave a stain on her reputation

Their love affair ended more than 20 years ago yet the evidence of the past few weeks is that a fundamental bond was never severed.

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela could be seen almost daily visiting her former husband Nelson Mandela at the Mediclinic heart hospital in Pretoria. Although they divorced in 1996, observers might be forgiven for inferring that they remained the loves of each other's lives to the end.

Madikizela-Mandela continued to be a presence in Mandela's life in recent years despite his remarriage in 1998. Indeed, she was sometimes seen laughing and joking with her successor, Graça Machel. Never shy of the spotlight, she is likely to be a central figure in the days of mourning and preparation for the funeral.

At 76, Madikizela-Mandela is a giant of South African history, the subject of books, films and controversy.

She was born Nomzamo (Xhosa for "she who will go through trials") Winifred Madikizela in the rural Transkei, her childhood "a blistering inferno of racial hatred" in the words of British biographer Emma Gilbey. She moved to Johannesburg and became South Africa's first black female social worker.

It is easy to forget that Nelson and Winnie were once an impossibly good looking and glamorous couple, a township equivalent of Burton and Taylor or the Beckhams. She was 22 and standing at a bus stop in Soweto when he first saw her and charmed her, securing a lunch date the following week. But Mandela was married with three children and devoted to the struggle against apartheid.

"The next day I got a phone call," Madikizela-Mandela has recalled. "I would be picked up after work. Nelson, a fitness fanatic, was there in the car in gym attire. I was taken to the gym, to watch him sweat! That became the pattern of my life. One moment, I was watching him. Then he would dash off to meetings, with just time to drop me off at the hostel. Even at that stage, life with him was a life without him."

After a divorce from his first wife Evelyn, Mandela married Winnie in 1958. But soon he went underground and, in 1962, was put on trial. He would spend 27 years in prison, separated from his wife and their two daughters by the dividing glass screen of the visitor room.

Madikizela-Mandela carved her own name in struggle lore. She was regularly detained by the apartheid government. She was tortured, subjected to house arrest, kept under surveillance, held in solitary confinement for a year and banished to a remote town.

When she returned to Soweto she became a part of the ANC campaign against the regime. "We have no guns – we have only stones, boxes of matches and petrol," she told a township crowd. "Together, hand in hand, with our boxes of matches and our necklaces we shall liberate this country." Necklacing meant putting a petrol-soaked burning tyre around a perceived traitor's neck.

Most notoriously, she was accused of ordering the kidnapping of Stompie Seipei, 14, who was beaten and later had his throat slit. Madikizela-Mandela was acquitted of all but the kidnapping, but the incident remains the greatest stain on her legacy.

On 11 February 1990, she was at her husband's side when he walked free from prison, making inevitable their victory over apartheid. But the marriage was dead and it was widely reported that she was having an affair with lawyer Dali Mpofu. In 1992, Mandela announced South Africa's most famous love story was over.

Still an ANC MP and living in Soweto, Madikizela-Mandela has since continued to divide opinions but has never been banished from the former president's home. She once recalled: "I had so little time to love him. And that love has survived all these years of separation … perhaps if I'd had time to know him better I might have found a lot of faults, but I only had time to love him and long for him all the time."

David Smith

Nelson Mandela: pictures of the day - updates

Posted: 06 Dec 2013 01:57 PM PST

The Guardian's photo team brings you reaction from around the world following the death of Nelson Mandela

• Follow events in our news blog

Joanna Ruck

Martin Rowson on the overshadowing of the autumn statement – cartoon

Posted: 06 Dec 2013 01:48 PM PST

George Osborne's announcements all but invisible after death of Nelson Mandela

Martin Rowson

Stranded Florida Everglades whales likely escaped back to sea

Posted: 06 Dec 2013 01:28 PM PST

Eleven of 51 stranded whales die but wildlife officials say it's 'encouraging' that the rest of the mammals can't be found

Richard Luscombe

Thank you. You chose to care | @guardianletters

Posted: 06 Dec 2013 01:00 PM PST

In July 1990, following his release from prison, Nelson Mandela had flown into Britain to begin vital negotiations with the Thatcher government about South Africa's future. The Foreign Office imposed a ban on him speaking publicly on any political matter so as not to prejudice those talks. However, he was allowed to make his first public appearance in Britain at a birthday celebration at Wembley stadium organised to honour him by the Anti-Apartheid Movement. After an ecstatic 20-minute standing and stamping ovation he quietened the 30,000 crowd with that big smile and those long outstretched arms and said: "Thank you. You chose to care."
Chris Trude
London

• I was one of many who never bought any South African goods from the time Mandela was imprisoned when I was a teenager, to the time he walked free. During those long bitter years when he was called a terrorist, I'm so glad we kept the faith.
Olivia Byard
Witney, Oxfordshire

• Mention should be made of the South African embassy picket line that City of London Anti-Apartheid maintained for 49 months, 24 hours a day, until Mandela was released. The only day missed was that of the poll tax riot, when we were prevented by the police.
Ken Baldry
London

• In 1981, Glasgow was the first in the world to award Mandela the Freedom of the City, while Thatcher's people in London were calling him a terrorist. So how should we vote in 2014? It doesn't help that the most moving tribute to Mandela I have heard was by Gordon Brown.
Douglas Richardson
Edinburgh

Leading the fight against apartheid | @guardianletters

Posted: 06 Dec 2013 01:00 PM PST

At the news of Nelson Mandela's death there must be many who feel the need to express a sense of shame for the part our country played in sustaining the apartheid regime in South Africa. From the 1960s onwards the messages that the anti-apartheid movement was bringing us – about our huge investments in the apartheid system, about our sale of weapons to South Africa that were being used to suppress and kill its citizens – were met with indifference or scorn by the Tory establishment and its allies in the press. By the 1980s apartheid was reviled throughout the world, but it was Tory Britain, along with the US, that continued to sustain the white minority regime and repeatedly vetoed UN resolutions that called for economic sanctions on South Africa. Had it not done so there would have been an earlier end to apartheid and Mandela's incarceration.

What lessons have been learned? We still invest in, and sell arms to, countries that trample on human rights. Many die-hard Tories still believe that the presence of an impoverished, easily exploited underclass is good for business. Is our present government ready to learn anything from history and from a man who dedicated his life to peace, justice and equality?
Dr Trevor Hyde
Matlock, Derbyshire

• Apartheid was politically and socially despicable, but its leaders had the moral strength and conviction to keep Nelson Mandela alive in jail, deliberately leaving open the option for him to come out and lead his country one day.

In his interview on al-Jazeera in November 2011, the last apartheid prime minister and co-Nobel prize recipient FW de Klerk said: "sanctions played a part; it kept us on our toes … but the most important driving force which forced us to do what we did was conscience and ethical conviction … Once we said to ourselves, that separate development, as we preferred to call apartheid, has failed to bring justice to the overwhelming majority of South Africans, we abandoned the concept of separateness and substituted the concept of togetherness in a new vision for South Africa. And the main concept was that it was good to do justice for all."

Had Mandela been an opposition leader elsewhere in Africa, there would have been no justice and he would have almost certainly been disappeared or murdered like Tom Mboya and Robert Ouku of Kenya; former African Union secretary general Dialo Telli of Guinea; emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia; chief Moshood Abiola of Nigeria; and former chief justice Ben Kiwanuka and former president Freddie Mutesa of my native Uganda to mention but a few. Many African leaders who will be flocking to South Africa for Mandela's funeral are presiding over virtual apartheid systems in their countries where there is one law that protects the thieving president and his family and cronies; and another that victimises those who do not agree with the government.
Sam Akaki
London

• It is shameful that as we are honouring the death of Nelson Mandela we still struggle to get the true story of the defeat of apartheid heard. There is no mention of the defeat of racist South Africa by the combined forces of Angola and Cuba at the battle of Cuito Cuanavale. It was this milestone event that finally brought the apartheid regime to the negotiating table and led to Mandela's release, yet it has been so wiped from history that I would not be surprised if your journalists were unaware of it, let alone schoolchildren. Without wanting to belittle the contributions of people in Britain, we are led to believe that pressure from a pop concert was the reason the apartheid regime surrendered.

A quote from Mandela himself: "Cuito Cuanavale was the turning point for the liberation of our continent – and of my people – from the scourge of apartheid."

Truth and reconciliation means telling the truth as well as reconciling with former enemies. So let us forgive Thatcher and Reagan, but let us honour those who died so that South Africans can be free.
George Lazou
London

• Let us not allow Mandela to be co-opted by the establishment. Today, the same wielders of power act in ways anathema to Mandela's principles and support for the oppressed of the world, whether in Palestine or in South Africa itself. The only true way to remember this remarkable man is to carry on his fight for peace with justice.
Roshan Pedder
West Molesey, Surrey

• I remember and salute the thousands of men and women who also fought alongside Mandela and died in the struggle when they were in their 20s. Don't forget them. They never saw justice, or reconciliation, just a shallow grave. They didn't get a chance to forgive like Mandela and Tutu did.
Marco Ciglia
London