EmailIt was refreshing to hear the boos and jeers that greeted President Zuma at Nelson Mandela's memorial (Report, 11 December). They may or may not have been justified, but there is something refreshing about an event – even a solemn event – that was open to unruly speech of this kind. In Britain or America those greeting a head of government in this way would have been peremptorily removed from the event. Political choreography, backed up by exaggerated concerns about security, has become one of the greatest threats to free speech in western democracies, as the event-planners and the spin-masters insist on having everything go their way. So maybe we should celebrate the fact that this event for Mandela was not tightly choreographed. Certainly we should recoil from the patronising suggestion of your reporter that Mandela's memorial ought to have been staged and orchestrated like an opening ceremony for the Olympic Games.
Professor Jeremy Waldron
All Souls College, Oxford
• One of the most striking passages in President Obama's inspirational address at the memorial service was his pointed inclusion of the persecution of people "for who they love" on his list of evils that still need to be confronted in a post-Mandela world. This is something of a contrast with the views of the adviser to the European Union on African affairs, the British diplomat Nicholas Westcott, who was reported not long ago to be urging the EU to stop raising the issue of lesbian and gay rights in public.
Nicholas Billingham
London
• President Obama said in his memorial speech, he wanted to be a better person, like Mandela. What would Madiba have done about Guantánamo Bay?
Anna Ford
Brentford, Middlesex
• In these days, when it is hard to find someone who did not support the release of Mandela from jail on Robben Island, it is worth remembering that far less than 0.1% of the UK population were members of the Anti-Apartheid Movement. As a former member of staff at the AAM in the 1980s I know that membership averaged about 8,500. Following the "Nelson Mandela Freedom at 70" campaign, which included the Wembley concert and the Freedom March from Glasgow to London, membership peaked at about 20,000. After Mandela's release and even before a date was set for free elections in 1994, support fell back to about 14,000. So what better way to mark Mandela's passing than joining one of the many organisations intent on making the world a better place. You choose – there are certainly plenty of them, but please don't leave it to someone else and then kid yourself in the future that you were part of the struggle.
Paul Brannen
Newcastle upon Tyne
• Comparing Nelson Mandela to Jesus of Nazareth is not barking mad (Simon Jenkins, In Mandela we must beware the banality of goodness, 11 December). Religions like Christianity and Islam both evolved from Mandela-like characters who became mythologised and then sanctified after their death.
Stan Labovitch
Windsor, Berkshire
• What a relief someone has put the death of Mandela in true perspective. Glad to know I am not the only one who thinks the media has gone barking mad.
Brian Boreham
Swanage, Dorset
• I'd like to congratulate the Guardian on providing some corrective (for instance John Harris's article; and Steve Bell's cartoons) to the sanctimonious platitudes about Mandela in much of the media. By contrast, the BBC seems to be determinedly courting further criticism of its narrow Englishness and the sexism of its news service since it chose to switch to its own commentators during nearly all of the speeches from the African Union, Brazil, China, India and Cuba and, in doing so, also cut out the two most important female speakers at the event. These speakers, some of whom were personally involved in the struggle against apartheid, and between them representing most of the world's population, were replaced by a series of English men commenting on topics like the rain.
Margaret Dickinson
London
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