Is the Selangor Dam Running Dry? ~ still waiting for the answer!

Not since 2002, when Gamuda began filling the Selangor Dam, have I seen the water level as low as this. In the wake of the 26 December 2004 Sumatran undersea earthquake and tsunami that killed more than 300,000 - the water level in the dam sank to less than 40% of its capacity. Soil tests were conducted by Gamuda to determine where the water was leaking out. There were fears that huge volumes of fast-flowing subterranean water might eventually cause enormous sinkholes - huge enough to swallow entire towns.


The shifting of the tectonic plates off the Sumatra coast may have moved the dam wall slightly too, since it is located only a few hundred yards from a suspected seismic fault line. Rumors were rife that one of the gigantic turbines in the outlet pipe had been crushed and navy frogmen were engaged to inspect it. Mysteriously, the "leaks" appeared to have repaired themselves and soon the dam lake began filling rapidly again.

There have been no recent earthquakes in the vicinity, not even a tremor... so how come the water level has gone steadily down over the last four or five months? I estimate that the lake is now at least 35 feet lower than capacity.

A muddy column of water thrusts itself into the lake, 
taking on the ominous appearance of a naga (dragon).

Has the federal government been pumping out half the lake to fill police water cannons in anticipation of more street protests? Is Syabas draining the lake so they can sell the Pakatan Rakyat state government an empty reservoir full of silt? Or have more fissures suddenly appeared at the bottom of the lake? After all, the entire area is full of hot springs, the granite bedrock is heavily fragmented, and was indeed classified by geological survey teams in the 1950s and 1970s as a "high erosion risk" zone.

The annual "haze" generated by oil palm cultivators (local as well as Indonesian) 
hangs over the lake like a suffocating mist.

Photography by Antares

THE ORANG ASLI say we cannot destroy them without ourselves being destroyed. To illustrate this, they recount a hoary legend that warns of divine retribution against those who would drive them from their birthplace, their beloved pusat negeri - for they were indeed born in the navel of the nation, in the verdant foothills of Gunung Raja - only a few miles, as the eagle flies, from the site of the proposed Selangor Dam.

And how would "divine retribution" destroy those who seek to displace them from their rightful home? Invariably, the totem naga is invoked. The dragon, guardian of the rivers, would roar in primordial rage and return to the ocean depths, its thrashing tail wreaking havoc all the way. The very earth will quake and fill with swirling floodwaters, tall buildings will shake and crumble into the mud. A deliciously apocalyptic vision, no doubt, but can it be translated into scientific terms?

Quite easily in fact. If you allow that the dragon is how "primitive" folk describe electromagnetic phenomena generated by disturbances in the earth's magnetic field, then the Orang Asli doomsday scenario translates as RIS. That's technical jargon for Reservoir Induced Seismicity - where the sheer weight of a large body of water exerts enough pressure on the tectonic shield or plate boundaries to trigger earth tremors where none have been known to occur.

Not very much is known about these quirky quakes, except that only too often they have been completely ignored or overlooked by overconfident builders of large dams. (Any structure over 15 meters is considered "large" which qualifies the proposed Selangor Dam as "titanic" at 115 meters.)

And, of course, water is a persistent and persuasive agent that works its way over, under, around and through "solid" bedrock in utterly mysterious ways. The notion of solidity or stability, we now know, is purely that - no more than a notion. If a 250-year-old bank can spontaneously collapse as a result of an earthquake 11,000 miles away, what more a 500-million-year-old embankment? Especially when you have irate dragons on the loose...

Antares
6 March 1999

Selangor Dam Lake idyll by Jhueilee

WATER WOES: SELANGOR DAM PROVES TO BE NO SOLUTION
By Sam Hui & Antares
Letters to Malaysiakini | September 23, 2005 | 1:58pm

Seven years ago, the government insisted that the construction of the Selangor Dam was "unavoidable" because of the El-Niño effect. Save Our Sungai (SOS) Selangor and other concerned NGOs advised against it and pointed out that the root causes of the 1998 "water crisis" were:

* inefficient water distribution;
* careless per capita water usage;
* wasteful leakage in the antiquated pipe system; and
* reckless denudation of watershed areas, in turn affecting rainfall patterns.

Concerned civil society groups have emphasized for years that stringent forest and water conservation, replacing leaking pipes, and appreciating the true value of water are how we can ensure sustainability of our water supply.

Obviously, the government did not heed this sound advice and went ahead with the dam construction. The outcome?

A whitewater rafting haven has been sacrificed; one of the world's largest fire-fly colonies is threatened with extinction; an entire Orang Asli village has been relocated to a virtually inaccessible hill; and 600 hectares of lush river valley, once teeming with rare species of flora and fauna, have been inundated.

It now appears that SOS Selangor's warning about the dangers of building a dam near a suspected seismic fault line is being borne out. Since the massive Sumatran earthquake of Dec 26 which spawned the killer tsunami, the water level in the Selangor Dam has steadily fallen to less than 40 percent.

Six months ago, the dam operators commissioned a series of soil tests, worried that underground water will cause disastrous erosion in areas downstream of the dam. Rumors abound that there are serious technical problems with the dam's outlet pipes, and that water has been leaking out at an alarming rate.

And now the Selangor Infrastructure and Public Facilities Permanent Committee (as reported in The Sun and The Star on Sept 16) has acknowledged that the Selangor dam is at the "caution level" of 40 percent after an unseasonal dry spell. This nullifies the 'original' purpose of the dam, which was to offset the hazards of drought.

The Selangor Infrastructure and Public Facilities Permanent Committee is "monitoring" the water level and will implement water rationing when the water level goes lower than 30 percent and is at the "critical" stage. This indicates that the government is just waiting for another 'water crisis' to happen instead of taking early action to plug possible leaks and drastically reduce water consumption.

Committee chairman Abdul Fatah Iskandar concurred that a program to reduce water wastage is needed. However, this would result in a direct conflict of interest, since his committee is working closely with private water supply concessionaires (Splash, Puas and Syabas) whose profits are based on the amount of water they supply.

It is a clear-cut case of corporate versus public interest. As in the case of the Selangor Dam project, corporate interests seem to invariably win.

Will the present 'drought' be used as an excuse to expedite the multi-billion Pahang-Selangor Interstate Water Transfer project, justifying the proposed Kelau Dam in Pahang and a water tunnel across the Titiwangsa Range?

This sort of short-term ‘band-aid solutions’ benefit only the companies awarded construction tenders. It certainly does not address the problem at its source, viz., gross disregard of the ecosystem and criminal mismanagement of our precious natural resources.

[The writers represent SOS Selangor.]


WHY THE SELANGOR DAM?

Destructive Tendencies

20 YEARS DOWN THE LINE

[Originally posted 4 August 2009]

Paco de Lucia (21 December 1947 ~ 25 February 2014): in loving memory

Francisco Gustavo Sánchez Gomes (21 December 1947 – 25 February 2014), known as Paco de Lucía, was a Spanish flamenco composer, guitarist and producer. A leading proponent of the New Flamenco style, he helped legitimize flamenco among the establishment in Spain, and was one of the first flamenco guitarists who has also successfully crossed over into other genres of music such as classical and jazz.

Richard Chapman and Eric Clapton, authors of Guitar: Music, History, Players, describe de Lucía as a "titanic figure in the world of flamenco guitar", and Dennis Koster, author of Guitar Atlas, Flamenco, has referred to de Lucía as "one of history's greatest guitarists." [Source: Wikipedia]

Michael Tellinger, master connector of dots, delivers a highly compressed 2-hour lecture on everything you've never been encouraged to find out...

NOTE: If you have a short attention span I suggest you buffer the video, then start listening at 1:18:00... it gets really juicy!

[Brought to my attention by Cassius Ribkhus via Bullet Murugan]

People of Sarawak, Free Yourself from the Clutches of The Beast!

Taib Mahmud, Chief Minister of Sarawak since 1981, owns rapacious corporations like Naim Cendera and Cahya Mata Sarawak. Taib refuses to answer questions thrown at him regarding his wealth. His long reign as "Robber Baron of Sarawak" has become synonymous with ecocide and ethnocide on a massive scale.

From the Malaysian History blog, 30 July 2007:

WINNING OVER SABAH AND SARAWAK

INITIALLY the leaders of Sabah (then British North Borneo) and Sarawak were opposed to Malaysia or at best gave it a lukewarm welcome after it was proposed by Tunku Abdul Rahman on May 27, 1961 at the Foreign Correspondents Association in Singapore.

“Let us become independent first and then we will decide whether to join Malaysia or not,” said Tan Sri Ong Kee Hui, the Kuching mayor and leader of the Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP), formed in 1959.

Other prominent Sarawak leaders like Datu Abang Haji Openg – later the first local governor – and Abang Mustapha Abang Haji Abdul Gapor who are also members of the Council Negeri, considered the oldest legislature in the country, were unanimous in their opposition to the Tunku’s plan.

In Sabah, Tun Fuad Stephens (then Donald Stephens), a newspaper publisher, a member of the State Council and Huguan Siou (paramount leader) of the Kadazan/Dusun people, shared the same view as Ong. “We must not be seen as changing colonial masters,” was the response of the United National Kadazan Organisation (Unko), a party Fuad formed with Keningau

They contacted leaders from the other territories to see whether they should revive the idea of a federation of Borneo states of Sabah, Sarawak and Brunei instead.

Many of the leaders believed that Malaysia’s formation was not really meant to benefit the people of the two territories but more to provide a solution to solve the problems of Britain, Malaya and Singapore.

Britain needed to withdraw from the East but it could not just up and go without ensuring its former colonies’ survival. Malaya wanted to increase the number of bumiputras to ensure that their numbers were bigger than the others. Singapore, threatened by communists, wanted security.


The leaders opposed the plan because they feared their people would be at the mercy of the commercially superior Chinese whose numbers would increase with Malaysia, and they also feared that they would eventually be sidelined by the more politically sophisticated Malays.

They also worried that their culture and polity would be gradually eroded. Thus, discussions were held on such issues as religion, education and finance where early assurances on these matters were made. Most of the discussions centred on the Sabah All-party 20-point memorandum and the Sarawak 18-point memorandum containing matters the two territories wanted to safeguard. But mostly the focus was on religion, constitutional safeguards, immigration, special position of the indigenous people, language, education and fiscal arrangements.

But even while discussions were still at the early stages, more and more leaders and their people gradually began to voice support for the plan.

[Read the rest here.]



From Malaysiakini, 26 August 2008:

THE SARAWAK DAMS: Multiple follies
Kua Kia Soong | Aug 26, 08 12:53pm

The recent announcement that the Sarawak government intends to build 12 more dams in Sarawak apart from the ill-fated Bakun dam is cause for concern.

It is a cause for grave concern. Malaysian tax payers, Malaysian forests and Malaysian indigenous people will again be the main victims of this misconceived plan.

The stop starting since the damned project was first proposed in the seventies, the proposal and abandonment of the aluminium smelter, the upsizing and downsizing of the dam, the inclusion or exclusion of the undersea cable project are all symptomatic of a wanton disregard for planning. Let me remind Malaysians of the ludicrous inconsistencies of official policy on this damned project.


In 1980, the Bakun dam was proposed with a power generating capacity of 2400MW even though the projected energy needs for the whole of Sarawak was only 200MW in 1990.

The project was thus coupled with the proposal to build the world’s longest (650km) undersea cable to transmit electricity to the peninsula. An aluminium smelter at Bintulu was also proposed to take up the surplus energy.

In 1986, the project was abandoned because of the economic recession although then Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamad announced just before the UN Conference on Environment & Development in Rio that this was "proof of Malaysia’s commitment to the environment".

In 1993, with the upturn in the Malaysian economy, the government once again announced the revival of the Bakun hydro-electric plant project.


To cushion the expected protests, the then Energy Minister S. Samy Vellu gave Parliament a poetic description of a "series of cascading dams" and not one large dam as had been originally proposed.

Before long, it was announced that the Bakun dam would be a massive 205-metre high concrete face rockfill dam, one of the highest dams of its kind in the world and it would flood an area the size of Singapore Island.

The undersea cable was again part of the project. There was also a plan for an aluminium plant, a pulp and paper plant, the world’s biggest steel plant and a high-tension and high-voltage wire industry.

Then in 1997, with the onset of the Asian financial crisis, the Bakun project was put on hold for the second time. But the scandal was, while the anthropologists in all Malaysian universities were sound asleep, the government proceeded to remove 10,000 indigenous people made up of fifteen different ethnic groups from their ancestral lands.


All this happened while the project was on hold and Malaysians shouted "Malaysia Boleh!"

In 1999, after the economy had recovered, the government again announced that the project would be resumed, albeit on a smaller scale of 500MW capacity.

Before long in 2001, the 2400MW scale was once again proposed although the submarine cable had been shelved. Today, we read reports about the government and companies still contemplating this hare-brained scheme which is now estimated to cost a whopping RM21 billion!

Not only that, we now hear that 12 more hydroelectric dams will be generating a total capacity of 7000MW by 2020 – an increase of 600 percent from its current capacity!

Who pays?

Ultimately it will be the Malaysian consumers who pay for this expensive figment of the chief minister’s wild imagination. Enough tax payers’ money has been wasted - Sarawak Hidro has already spent some RM1.5 billion on the project.

The human cost has been immeasurable - 10,000 indigenous people have been removed from their ancestral lands in 1998 even while the project had been shelved.

If the prime minister really wants to know the state of the Malaysian energy industry, he should ask for independent audits on every power station in the country. These should preferably be done by reputable international audit authorities from outside Malaysia.

We are told that TNB is now selling off property, power stations are not working at full capacity and that the electricity industry is hugely indebted.

Right now, the country is being fed conflicting reports about energy demand. There is supposed to be a 43 percent oversupply of electricity capacity in peninsula Malaysia.

Experienced Bakun dam watchers will tell you such conflicting and mutually contradictory assertions have been used by dam proponents to justify every flip flop of this misconceived project.

Apart from the economic cost and the wastage, how are investors supposed to plan for the long-term and medium term? What is the long-term plan for Bakun? Can Bakun compete with the rest of the world or for that matter, Indonesia?


Aluminium smelters to take up the bulk of Bakun electricity have been mentioned ever since the conception of the Bakun dam project because they are such voracious consumers of energy.

Even so, has there ever been any proper assessment of the market viability of such a project with the cheaper operating costs in China?

Does it matter that the co-owner of one of the smelters is none other than Cahya Mata Sarawak (CMS) Bhd Group that is controlled by Chief Minister Taib Mahmud’s family business interest?

Scandalous flaws in planning

Clearly, Bakun energy and Sarawak’s tinpot governance do not inspire confidence in investors. First it was Alcoa, and then Rio Tinto also had second thoughts about investing in Sarawak.

Concerned NGOs have all along called for the abandonment of this monstrous Bakun dam project because it is economically ill-conceived, socially disruptive and environmentally disastrous.

The environmental destruction is evident many miles downstream since the whole Bakun area has been logged by those who have already been paid by Sarawak Hidro.

The social atrophy among the 10,000 displaced indigenous people at the Sungei Asap resettlement scheme remains the wicked testimony of the Mahathir-Taib era. The empty promises and damned lives of the displaced people as forewarned by the concerned NGOs in 1999 have now been played out.

The economic viability of the Bakun dam project has been in doubt from the beginning and the new scheme to build 12 more dams merely represents multiple follies and a scandalous flaw in planning.

DR KUA KIA SOONG is director of Suaram.

[First posted 6 September 2008]

Return from Bamboo River ~ a report from beyond the veil!

Friends have been coming to me with pieces of a vast, multidimensional jigsaw that's still in the process of being assembled.

Where was I during the five days in December 2009 I spent comatose in the Intensive Care Unit of Sungai Buloh Hospital? (I can't call it the ICU after seeing Avatar without fantasizing about the beautiful blue-skinned Neyteri...)


My beloved friend Selina - whose eyes can penetrate the many veils of reality - said she meditated with the Blue Buddha mantra as soundtrack and found herself looking at my lifeless body all hooked up to life support equipment. There was nobody in. So she searched the astral planes for me... and eventually found me sitting on a rock, looking very relaxed in a sarong, with a cup of tea.

We had a long conversation and I conveyed to her that I was utterly fed up with the entropic, apparently deteriorating conditions in the 3D Matrix. She used the full force of her feminine charms and persuasive powers to convince me that it was worthwhile returning to my physical body. "You don't want to miss the grand celebration when all of us break through to the next level!" she said (or something to the effect) and offered me her hand. My expression softened at that point, she said, and I reached out to touch her.

Well, I was pleased to hear Selina's report - though I can't confirm if this astral encounter really did occur. Another friend - a Puerto Rican shaman named Rafael - later informed me that he, too, had searched for me in the astral and, like Selina, was relieved to find me sitting on a rock by the river. Seeing I was in fine form, he left me alone.

Around the time Selina had this vivid vision, thousands of other people - immediate family, close friends and total strangers from around the world - were praying for me or sending positive vibes. For sure, my soul must have felt the massive force of all this love and was humbled by it. Perhaps falling ill was my soul's way of sulking, but such an outpouring of concern would certainly have convinced me that life on earth wasn't all that terrible and that I really ought to renew my earthly visa and return to physical embodiment.


A couple of friends - a practising shaman and spiritual master from Germany named Rainer and his angel-voiced wife Karin - visited Magick River with six other pilgrims in tow and stayed 13 days, about a week after I was discharged from the hospital. Rainer and Karin came with many messages for me: essentially, they wanted me to be aware that I was embarked on a whole new phase of my earthly mission with dramatically enhanced powers - and that it would require some time for me to fully integrate the new software.

I was grateful for Rainer and Karin's inspired insights and their magnanimous friendship. Seems ironic to me that the people closest to me physically are the most reluctant to acknowledge me for what I am - and that it takes a group of relative strangers coming from halfway round the planet to recognize and appreciate my gifts. In any case, I felt richly rewarded by Rainer, Karin and their friends' wonderful company.

I was required to report back to the hospital on 14 January to get a clean bill of health from the doctor in charge of my case - but when I showed up he was nowhere to be found. The nurses said he was busy on his rounds, so I distributed the thank-you cards and fancy chocolates I had brought (courtesy of my daughter Belle) and checked in with Dr Zulkifli, head of the psychiatric unit, who had said he wanted to see me.

Dr Zul wasn't in a chatty mood. He sat me down in his office and told me I had MDP. "What's that?" I asked. "Manic depressive personality," he said laconically. I wasn't in the mood to argue with Dr Zul who struck me as essentially a decent guy, even if he appeared completely caught up in his role as drug-dispensing psychiatrist and arbiter of sanity. I detected a trace of the Inquisitor in his ego-field and knew at once he wasn't keen to hear my opinion of psychiatry.

Dr Zul's prescription was 2 mg Risperidone to be taken twice daily. I knew from Dr Zul's expression that he was utterly convinced it was his moral and professional duty to slow down my brain functions and return me safely to the 3D Matrix where I could take my place amongst billions of other well-adjusted tax-paying robots.

Now, the question is: I was admitted to the hospital for malaria. So how did the shrinks insert themselves into the story?

As I have already narrated in earlier segments of this report, I emerged from my 5-day coma completely renewed, with gleaming neural circuitry and upgraded software. My brain functions were crystalline and I was able to navigate several dimensions simultaneously (imagine being promoted from driving a 4-wheeled internal combustion earthbound vehicle to piloting a flying saucer).

Naturally I was ecstatic and ebullient. Dr Zul's assistant, Dr Siti, had come around to interview me after the nurses reported on my being awake most nights. She subsequently told my daughter: "Your father is too happy." Belle found that amusing. "Isn't it a good thing that he's happy?" Dr Siti's enigmatic reply was: "Yes, but not too happy."

So, because I was too happy, I needed to be tranquilized, sedated and occasionally strapped to my bed whenever I did anything to upset the normal routine (for example, on two occasions, I tested the staff's response time by pulling on the emergency cord in the shower. Both times they took nearly five minutes to arrive on the scene and were chided by me. They must have taken offence when I suggested that the only acceptable response time was one minute. That would make the difference between life and death for whoever needed help.)

I must confess that I've always considered myself a top-level Quality Control Inspector whose job is to ensure that all systems are running perfectly. Hence the terrible frustration I have felt most of my life on this planet where dimwitted mediocrity still rules in so many areas - especially the country I chose as my operating base.

Why was I so over-the-top happy?


Simply because I had glimpsed the inevitable outcome of all evolutionary threads - and it was an extremely happy one. Our destiny is to be fully conscious in the body and free of all robotic indoctrination. We are not fated to remain semi-conscious, semi-intelligent slaves to any system. Indeed, we are baby gods who will someday take over the management of the entire universe - when we have become totally compassionate and infinitely patient.

Of course, the fast-crumbling and benighted power structure would like us humans to remain sheep-like and half-asleep forever. After all, it depends entirely on us for "manpower." The so-called ruling elite have for countless generations fattened themselves off the blood, sweat and tears of so many species. To them we are merely farm animals, their property. That's what feudalism is all about: a gross misunderstanding of the nature and ultimate purpose of existence.


However, there is absolutely no call to hate or resent the ruling elite - because they are only maintaining a misguided tradition inherited from their distant ancestors, the not-so-noble Creator Gods who established the early civilizations on this planet. And these were indeed great civilizations with astonishingly advanced architecture and a complex bureaucracy. Without their tutelage, we would be without written language, mathematics and technology. Not such a bad thing, actually, since the introduction of alphanumeric symbols eventually led to a left-brain-dominant culture at the expense of our animal instincts and intuition.

Those who believe they wield ultimate power on earth are, in truth, terrified of their own shadows - which explains why they allocate almost two-thirds of their time and resources to defence systems and live in a perpetual Green Zone behind barricades and barbed wire. They are trapped in their own compulsive, paranoid need for secrecy, gathering data through covert agencies and 24/7 electronic surveillance of the population at large. Take away their protective armor and sophisticated killing machines - and what you get is an increasingly desperate and bewildered bunch of overaged delinquents, totally panicked by the prospect of losing control over what is essentially uncontrollable. It is beginning to dawn on some of the brighter ones that money, power and prestige will not get them through the frequency gates. The qualities that will - compassion, empathy, integrity, and the capacity for love - cannot be acquired through reptilian cunning and public relations.

But there's no way back - only the way forward.

From simplicity we became enmeshed in complexity; and now it's time for us to evolve to another level of simplicity - the Zen state of Buddhic consciousness so lucidly described by modern mystics like Eckhart Tolle.

pic courtesy of dpchallenge

In my beatific state of fully expanded awareness, I could see all humanity finally released from drudgery and meaningless toil; from cruelty, injustice and oppression. Freed from mechanical routine, we would swiftly blossom into cosmically conscious beings and take our place in ever larger constellations of sentient beings as galactic citizens.

It would be the end of disease, debt, decay and death. Physical immortality (or at least indefinite life extension) would become an option. We would regain our childlike curiosity and sense of wonder and many of us would choose to become adventurers and explorers (but not colonizers, that's a big no-no), beyond the confines of our native planet. Yes, the promise and prophecy of Star Trek would be fulfilled!


From my expanded perspective, the political shenanigans taking up so much bandwidth were nothing more than a ruckus in the schoolyard. Even the most villainous players became mere manga characters in an X-rated cartoon universe.

PlayStation wasn't invented when I was a kid - but I now found myself in a 4D virtual reality game in which I could gleefully immerse myself with absolutely no fear of getting hurt. Within the confines of the 4D Matrix, all objects and characters appear 3D. Humans are programmed to behave in specific ways and whatever they say is scripted. And because the fictitious deity they invented happens to be a punitive and vengeful one,  they have become compulsive liars in order to avoid - or at least postpone - punishment.


If you're a truth-speaking entity in virtual world populated by congenital liars, you'll definitely be viewed as a serious MDP case. MDP is what Dr Zulkifli chose to call my "condition." Other shrinks might have labeled it dementia praecox, schizophrenia or bi-polar disorder.

Truth is, my clinical death and resurrection experience had cleared my cache and made room for a massive file some might call the God Program. I wouldn't call it that for the simple reason that every time anyone installs that particular software and attempts to run it in public, they either get crucified for blasphemy or incarcerated in a madhouse.

Binder dundat.

[First published 7 February 2010]

A remarkable monument to Nelson Mandela by Marco Cianfanelli...

Fifty rods of steel, symbolizing prison bars... 

... so people will never forget the years Nelson Mandela was imprisoned. 

 The remarkable thing about this artwork is that...

... it is only when you stand at a certain distance that you see him.

South African artist Marco Cianfanelli has designed and constructed a monument to commemorate the 50-year anniversary of peace activist, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela’s arrest by the apartheid police in 1962.  The sculpture comprises 50 steel columns measuring 21.32 and 29.52 feet (6.5 and 9 meters) high, each anchored to the concrete-covered ground. The shape and form of the sculpture are representative of the leader’s 27 years behind bars for his efforts to bring equal rights and governmental representation to the once racially divided nation. 

The monumental sculpture is located in Howick, 56 miles (90 kilometers) south of Durban. For more images, go here.

[Courtesy of Olivia de Haulleville]

Astounding little-known facts that may cause you to rethink your existence...

[Courtesy of Olivia de Haulleville]