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Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary who was imprisoned and then became a politician who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the first black South African to hold the office, and the first elected in a fully representative, multiracial election. His government focused on dismantling the legacy of apartheid through tackling institutionalised racism, poverty and inequality, and fostering racial reconciliation. Politically an African nationalist and democratic socialist, he served as the President of the African National Congress (ANC) from 1991 to 1997. Internationally, Mandela was the Secretary General of the Non-Aligned Movement from 1998 to 1999.

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The Funeral of Mother Jessica Huntley

Greetings Family, Friends, Colleagues and Partners,

The funeral of Mother Jessica Huntley yesterday was beautiful, moving, overwhelming and busting to over - capacity. You came out in your hundreds...friends, family, colleagues, local community activists, dignitaries from abroad as well as ambassadors who are London-based; and women Pallbearers, some sisters who are personal friends, carried Mother Huntley's coffin, while High Priestesses and Master Drummers and other musicians, such as flautist, Keith Waithe, blasted, beat and blew their sounds to escort the coffin, draped with the Flag of Guyana, into Christ The Redeemer Church in Southall. The service was like none I have ever attended, with the sounds of the drums of Africa, which roared rich and blended astutely with the Gospel and Blues of Nina

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Political campaigner who co-founded the publisher Bogle-L'Ouverture, named after two Caribbean resistance heroes
Eric and Jessica Huntley. Both were involved in politics in their native Guyana before arriving in Britain in the late 1950s. Photograph: Nell Freeman

In the late 1960s the activist and publisher Jessica Huntley, who has died aged 86, co-founded the pioneering, London-based Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications (BLP) with her husband, Eric Huntley. Named in honour of two heroes of Caribbean resistance, Toussaint L'Ouverture and Paul Bogle, and deeply rooted in the concerns of the African diaspora, BLP began as a small, unorthodox, self-financing venture that brought a radical perspective to non-fiction, fiction, poetry and children's books. The company went on to publish works by a growing list of notable authors, among them Andrew Salkey, Linton Kwesi Johnson,] Lemn Sissay and Valerie Bloom.

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Geraldine Connor who has died aged 59, was a real larger-than-life figure in every sense of the phrase.
A Trinidadian who became an honorary Yorkshirewoman, her life in the arts and education was a remarkable testament to the meeting of Caribbean and British cultures and, in her acclaimed stage production Carnival Messiah, her interests and talents were fully and potently integrated.
Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago, she lived for close to 20 years in Yorkshire, in Skelmanthorpe and, more recently, Harewood. She came from a distinguished line.