In the only interview he's conducted since, he seemed a broken, disconsolate man, accusing the South African government of besmirching his name due to his anti-Apartheid views.
Throughout his stay in a mansion in a well-to-do white Johannesburg suburb, Tate refused to express his views on apartheid.
The speech, which set forth South Africa's views on apartheid and spoke of poverty and illiteracy in some African countries, was seized on by African delegates as a severe affront to their dignity.
As for the programming so far in 2009, well, there have been some fantastic gems, most recently Monday evening's revelatory drama Endgame, about the ending of apartheid, which in my view every secondary school child ought to watch.
The plan is part of South Africa's efforts to become a unifying force in a region where, in the era of apartheid, it was often viewed as a destabilizing factor.
Mongane Wally wrote poetry in solitary confinement in a prison cell during apartheid, work with a view far from prison walls; Amos Oz writes his illuminating novels of Israel within Middle East politics, history and psychological states from a sort of cellar in his house.
For one that enjoys no direct government subsidy for an artform that, after apartheid, has invariably been viewed as a symbol of white, European culture, it is remarkable.
When the National Party was elected in 1948, and implemented apartheid, Arnold was advised, in view of the number of arrests, to leave South Africa.
After apartheid was dismantled, those elements viewed Mandela's emphasis on reconciliation as placating whites at the expense of the black South Africans who remained exiled at the economic periphery.
But whereas transforming a regime of institutionalised racism, or apartheid, into a democracy was viewed as a triumph for human rights and international law in South Africa and Northern Ireland, it is rejected out of hand in the Israeli case as a breach of what is essentially a sacred right to ethno-religious supremacy (euphemistically rendered as Israel's "right to be a Jewish state").
It was difficult for me to be viewed as an Apartheid supporter when I was not, and was actually trying to find ways to bring my country together, not split it apart.
