A former African National Congress activist appointed by Nelson Mandela as a justice to South Africa’s Constitutional Court has been lined up for a two day conference on a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland.

TÁNAISTE and Health Minister Mary Harney last night compared the way the State treats patients at the Central Mental Hospital with conditions meted out to Nelson Mandela by the Apartheid regime.

The party linked to decades of white racist rule in South Africa formally departed the political stage today, with its leader apologising for ”a system grounded in injustice.”

Transport minister Dullah Omar, a leading human rights lawyer and anti-apartheid activist who was justice minister in South Africa’s first black-lead government, died today of cancer.