JAMAICA Labour Party new city councillors yesterday stayed away from a function honouring Thabo Mbeki, but the South African president hardly appeared to have noticed the snub as he hailed Jamaica’s role in helping to end apartheid and declared that Africans — at home and abroad — were heading into a renaissance.

Mbeki, on a four-day state visit to Jamaica, received the keys to Kingston at a function at Mandela Park in Half-Way-Tree, named in honour of his predecessor, Nelson Mandela, the elder statesman of South African politics, who became the symbol of the struggle to end apartheid — the white supremacist system that prevailed in South Africa up to 1994.

In his speech, after being presented with the keys to Kingston by outgoing mayor of the city, Marie Atkins, Mbeki acknowledged that South Africans owed Jamaica a debt of gratitude for the island’s assistance in their liberation struggle.

“We are greatly inspired by the fact that you took up the struggle against apartheid colonialism as your own,” he told the gathering. “We thank you most sincerely for honouring that greater leader we all share, Nelson Mandela, as a tribute to the unconquerable strength to the spirit to be free.”

But while Mbeki may not have noticed, or known, the absence of JLP’s new members of the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation (KSAC) — including the putative chairman and mayor-elect — Desmond McKenzie — he couldn’t ignore the earlier heckling by a group of Brown’s Town, St Ann, Rastafarians who, during Atkins’ remarks, shouted the name of Winnie Mandela, Nelson Mandela’s ex-wife.

The aim of the Rastafarians was to express their displeasure over what they consider to be poor treatment of Winnie Mandela, herself one of the anti-apartheid leaders. She was recently convicted of embezzlement, the latest of several brushes with the law since her former husband was released from 27 years in prison in 1990 to become South Africa’s first universally-elected president.

Before he started his formal address, Mbeki, in remarks directed to the group, described Winnie Mandela as a friend who had suffered a great deal, but suggested that she had erred.

“She is a good comrade and friend of mine,” he declared. “But even comrades and friends sometimes make mistakes. I would like to say that normally in South Africa, comrades don’t normally demonstrate against other comrades.”

Mbeki then offered to meet with the Rastafarians, from the Rastafari Centralisation Organisation, this morning at 8:30 am at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel.

In the case of the JLP councillors, their protest was silent. They were no-shows. McKenzie, according to the official programme, was to have delivered the vote of thanks. That role was performed by outgoing councillor, Victor Cummings.

McKenzie did not comment on the issue last night and other senior JLP officials were unavailable. But it is believed that the boycott was to demonstrate the JLP’s peeve that the swearing-in of KSAC councillors, following the June 19 municipal elections, was not done early enough for McKenzie to have had the honour of presenting the keys to the city to Mbeki.

But Mbeki’s speech focused on recent efforts in Africa at social, political and economic reform through the internationally-backed New partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) initiative.

“Your mother continent, Africa, has embarked on an exciting journey towards its renaissance,” he said. “… the initiatives of NEPAD is the common resolve of the peoples of our continent to take their destiny into their own hands and succeed in building a better life for themselves.”

Saying that the development challenges faced by Africa were the same as those in Jamaica and the rest of the Caribbean, Mbeki added: “The renaissance we speak of in Africa is not confined to the physical boundaries of the African continent but includes Africa’s sons and daughters in the Caribbean and elsewhere on our globe.”

Africa and the Diaspora, he argued, needed to build on their “close historical ties of solidarity and friendship, developing co-operation to deal with problems of poverty, under-development and global marginalisation”.

Meanwhile, the South African leader, in an address last night at the Mona Campus of the University of the West Indies, said the time has come for the African intelligentsia in the Americas, the Caribbean, Europe and Africa to come together again, this time to make the statement — the problem of the Africans of the 21st Century is the problem of poverty, underdevelopment and marginalisation — and together search for ways and means by which to confront this problem.

“As each one of us works to discover these ways and means, operating within our national and regional boundaries, we are confronted by the reality that those who have, do not hesitate to tell us the have-nots what to do to extricate ourselves from poverty, underdevelopment band marginalisation,” he said.