by Donna Bryson

JOHANNESBURG (AP)—Nelson Mandela’s ex-wife has bitterly criticized the 92-year-old anti-apartheid icon as having “let us down,” prompting outrage March 10 in South Africa.

CRITICISM SPARKS OUTRAGE—In this Feb. 11 photo, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, left, alongside her former husband former President Nelson Mandela, center, and his current wife, Graca Machel, attend the opening of Parliament in Cape Town, South Africa.

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela said she could not forgive him for accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 alongside F.W. de Klerk, according to March 9’s Evening Standard, a British newspaper. The White president released Mandela and went on to participate in negotiations that ended apartheid.

(NNPA/GIN)—Top U.S. officials made an unannounced visit to Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, a former military dictator, during their recent trip to the oil-producing African nation—a move that raised fears of U.S. support for a possible run by Babangida for the presidency in next year’s elections.

“At the very least, the parley suggests that Obama’s team regards the retired general as an instrument for solving Nigeria’s myriad and deep political crises,” wrote columnist Okey Ndibe on the anti-corruption website SaharaReporters.

PORT-au-PRINCE, Haiti (NNPA)—Hurricane-ravaged Port-au-Prince continues to rebound even as the rainy season approaches the island of Haiti.

This week, U.S. officials are scurrying to deliver portable toilets, hurricane-resistant tents and plastic tarps that Haitian Tourism Minister Patrick Delatour has said he prefers for the coming torrential rains, possible hurricanes and mudslides. Already eight people were killed over the weekend in flooding after a downpour—and the rainy season has not fully started in earnest.

RECOVERY CONTINUES—Haitian workers continue to press for normalcy as the people prepare for the rainy season.

SYDNEY (AP)—An Australian government program imposing radical restrictions on Aborigines in a crackdown on child abuse is inherently racist, breaches international human rights obligations and must be changed immediately, a U.N. official said Feb 24. In a report to be released this week, the United Nations special rapporteur on indigenous human rights, James Anaya, expressed serious concerns over the controversial initiative known as “the intervention.”