Mandela's funeral and Tsar's reburial

The History Hour

BBC

History, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 16 December 2023

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Max Pearson presents a collection of this week's Witness History episodes from the BBC World Service. Our guest is Dr Ongama Mtimka, lecturer in South African politics at the Nelson Mandela University. He tells us about Mandela's life and legacy 10 years on from his death.

We start with with Mandela's daughter, Makaziwe, describing her relationship with her father and planning his funeral. Then, the brother of Emanuela Orlandi describes his lifelong mission to unravel the mystery of her disappearance in Rome in 1983.

The second half of the programme has a Russian flavour. A relative of Tsar Nicholas II describes the murder of the Romanov royal family in 1918. Then a Russian journalist describes attending the Romanov's controversial reburial 80 years later. We finish with one of Russia's greatest poets, Anna Akhmatova.

Contributors: Dr Ongama Mtimka - Lecturer in South African politics at the Nelson Mandela University. Dr Phumla Makaziwe Mandela - Nelson Mandela's daughter. Pietro Orlandi - Emanuela Orlandi's brother. Olga Romanov - Great niece of Tsar Nicholas II. Lilia Dubovaya - Journalist who was at the reburial of the Romanovs. Era Korobova - Art historian and expert on Anna Akhmatova.

(Photo: Nelson Mandela. Credit: Tom Stoddart Archive/Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Global Story, with Smart Takes and Fresh Perspective, on one big news story,
0:07.8	every Monday to Friday from the BBC World Service.
0:11.3	Search for The Global Story, wherever you get your BBC podcasts, to find out more.
0:17.0	Hello and welcome to the History Hour podcast from the BBC World Service with me
0:27.2	Max Pearson a collection of this week's witness history episodes on the BBC
0:31.1	World Service. This week the Murder of the Romanovs we hear from a relative
0:35.6	of Tsar Nicholas II. The youngest child Alexei Paul Boer, his father actually was carrying
0:41.3	him down the steps of the cellar and I believe he was
0:45.2	holding him when he got shot.
0:47.8	Also how Boris Yeltsin took a political risk by speaking at the Romanov's eventual
0:52.3	rebarial and a Vatican mystery. by speaking at the Romanov's eventual
0:53.0	and a Vatican mystery over a teenager who disappeared in 1983.
0:58.2	It was the Vatican and the Pope who made it clear she'd been kidnapped and it's always been obvious to me that
1:05.5	they already knew something that we her relatives didn't know. That's coming up
1:10.2	later in the podcast but we begin with a truly towering figure of
1:14.0	20th century history Nelson Mandela. It was in December 2013 that South Africa
1:19.8	held the funeral for the revered statesman who led the struggle in defeating apartheid and became the country's first black president.
1:27.0	His humble ancestral home in the eastern Cape was the venue, but the funeral service and the guest list had been eight years in the planning.
1:35.6	Josephine McDermott has been talking to a central figure in his life and in his being laid to rest. The What Timum to go go on the vip.
1:45.0	A very important person, a very important prince, a very important person, a very important prince, a very important
1:55.0	patriot, a very important politician, a very important prisoner, a very important
2:02.3	philosopher, a very important philosopher, a very important pragmatist, a very important
	...

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