RIP Nelson Mandela
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plawolf
Lieutenant General
Re: World News Thread & Breaking News!!
This is a sad day. One of the brightest and purest lights of ours, or any, generation has gone out. The world is a darker and poorer place without him.
This is a sad day. One of the brightest and purest lights of ours, or any, generation has gone out. The world is a darker and poorer place without him.
Equation
Lieutenant General
Just creating a thread here to pay respect for Nelson Mandela.
I remember watching the rugby world cup final in 1995 and cheering for the New Zeland all blacks against South African Springboks. Never realized how important that win was for the unity of the country or for Mandela himself until watching the movie Invictus years later. Watching that movie really makes you realize how much Mandela had to deal with in those early days.
On another sports note, it was really cool watching 2010 world cup and see how important soccer was to the political prisoners back in the day as they were developing ideas about governing a new country without apartheid. Makes me really love sports even more.
Also, after watching Invictus, everytime I thought of Nelson Mandela, the image of Morgan Freeman came to my mind.
I remember watching the rugby world cup final in 1995 and cheering for the New Zeland all blacks against South African Springboks. Never realized how important that win was for the unity of the country or for Mandela himself until watching the movie Invictus years later. Watching that movie really makes you realize how much Mandela had to deal with in those early days.
On another sports note, it was really cool watching 2010 world cup and see how important soccer was to the political prisoners back in the day as they were developing ideas about governing a new country without apartheid. Makes me really love sports even more.
Also, after watching Invictus, everytime I thought of Nelson Mandela, the image of Morgan Freeman came to my mind.
shen
Senior Member
Too many people are misrepresenting Mr Mandela by portraying him as a man of peace. He was a man of JUSTICE. In his youth, when confronted by the injustice and violence of the apartheid regime, he wasn't afraid to take up armed resistance. In his many years of imprisonment, he never gave up on the option of armed resistance. Of course, he was also a brilliant politician. When the opportunity presented itself, he wasn't above making peace with former enemies either and used peaceful means to achieve freedom for his people. If Mr Mandela was a man of peace, he would've remained a privileged lawyer and turned a blind eye to the suffering of his people. No, he was a man of justice and action. A true revolutionary. We lost a great man today.
Equation
Lieutenant General
True, but sometimes in order to have justice you need to use force when necessary "by any means possible" (MALCOLM X another civil rights activists who I believe is just as important). Can't fight for justice when you're dead and no one to hear your oppression scream right?
Nelson Mandela was an extraordinary individual.
I will say right up front that I did not agree with his earlier political ideology. He pushed communist and marxist ideology and princples early on, which ideology and principles I completely disagree with.
Having said that, that does not blind me to the fact that he was truly a great man who saw a serious injustice and dedicated his life to righting it.
He sought the overthrow of the aparthied regime in South Africa. For that, as a South African, he was tried for treason against his government, convicted and put in prison for life.
But he never stopped his fight for justice.
They ended up letting him out of prison after 27 years, at an age they thpought was old enough where he would no longer cause them problems. But they were wrong. He never stopped in his fight for justice. Three years after being released, he ran for office and won, and went on to become the President of all of South Africa.
The man they had jailed, became the leader of those who jailed him. He ended up seeing justice for the people of South Africa...the vast majority who had been so discriminated against by the former system.
But he was also a very rare individual who had compassion, even for the people who jailed him. He became friends with the jailers, and treated them with respect...and over they years, they came to respect him.
When he became President, he did not seek revenge, but reconcilliation...and he got it. By doing so, he kept that nation of South Africa from descending into a Rhodesia style cauldron of revenge, killing, and chaos. The people who jailed him came to respect him...and ultimately to look up to him and understand the type of great man he was. Most South Africans came to love him.
He was a rare individual who was able to overcome the discrimination and injustice, and then turn it around for the betterment of all...even the people who had been a part of the earlier mistreatment.
I heard a black US journalist speak who spent several months with Mandela after he was released from prison. He indicated that Mandela had a storng sense of wonder, interest, and affinity for the US Constitution. He saw how in the US system, a minority of people who were also discriminated against had risen up, and peacefully (for the most part) used the laws and the constitution to assert their rights, and ultimately to win them. He felt that if a minority could do that, then surely a majority of people could do the same in South Africa if they followed that model. Even though South Africa did not have the same constitution, he felt they had the same rights...and looked to the US Declaration and Constitution for support...believing himself that those rights were unalienable and came from above.
He used this knowledge, ultimatley modifying and altering his own ideology from younger years, squelched any desire or need for revenge...and ultimately carried the day for South Africa and the entire society, black and white alike.
A truly great man...who has my utmost respect.
I will say right up front that I did not agree with his earlier political ideology. He pushed communist and marxist ideology and princples early on, which ideology and principles I completely disagree with.
Having said that, that does not blind me to the fact that he was truly a great man who saw a serious injustice and dedicated his life to righting it.
He sought the overthrow of the aparthied regime in South Africa. For that, as a South African, he was tried for treason against his government, convicted and put in prison for life.
But he never stopped his fight for justice.
They ended up letting him out of prison after 27 years, at an age they thpought was old enough where he would no longer cause them problems. But they were wrong. He never stopped in his fight for justice. Three years after being released, he ran for office and won, and went on to become the President of all of South Africa.
The man they had jailed, became the leader of those who jailed him. He ended up seeing justice for the people of South Africa...the vast majority who had been so discriminated against by the former system.
But he was also a very rare individual who had compassion, even for the people who jailed him. He became friends with the jailers, and treated them with respect...and over they years, they came to respect him.
When he became President, he did not seek revenge, but reconcilliation...and he got it. By doing so, he kept that nation of South Africa from descending into a Rhodesia style cauldron of revenge, killing, and chaos. The people who jailed him came to respect him...and ultimately to look up to him and understand the type of great man he was. Most South Africans came to love him.
He was a rare individual who was able to overcome the discrimination and injustice, and then turn it around for the betterment of all...even the people who had been a part of the earlier mistreatment.
I heard a black US journalist speak who spent several months with Mandela after he was released from prison. He indicated that Mandela had a storng sense of wonder, interest, and affinity for the US Constitution. He saw how in the US system, a minority of people who were also discriminated against had risen up, and peacefully (for the most part) used the laws and the constitution to assert their rights, and ultimately to win them. He felt that if a minority could do that, then surely a majority of people could do the same in South Africa if they followed that model. Even though South Africa did not have the same constitution, he felt they had the same rights...and looked to the US Declaration and Constitution for support...believing himself that those rights were unalienable and came from above.
He used this knowledge, ultimatley modifying and altering his own ideology from younger years, squelched any desire or need for revenge...and ultimately carried the day for South Africa and the entire society, black and white alike.
A truly great man...who has my utmost respect.
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airsuperiority
Captain
Hmm very interesting idea. It's true that he may have taken up armed resistance in the past, but that to me may not detract him being a man of peace because that's what he fights for, and when presented the opportunity to use peaceful means, that's what he does. That's what a man of peace and of principle should do; use peace as the means until all non-violent options have been exhausted, and only then, should violent methods be considered, which even then should still be the type and amount of violence that's most limited to merely sufficient to serve a cause. Therefore, my thought is that being a man of peace doesn't mean you have to take the violent option off the table; rather it's because you value and treasure, cherish peace so much, that you will do everything you to use the peaceful ways before ultimately resorting to the final measures of using violence.
Andy, he was a communist early in his life and he did things that were very wrong and illegal. He was tried and convicted for some of those things and put away for life. And the African government released him 27 years later...all legally.As the OP, I still haven't given my opinion on Mandela.
A lot of people regard Mandela as a hero who fought against an injustice system and as a liberator who freed millions of people. I don't have a good word for Mandela. To me he is almost the same as Mugabe, the only difference is that Mandela has this warm smile and Mugabe his fancy moustache.
SA and Rhodesia were examples of how hardworking and innovative Europeans were. They turned a barren land with no infrastructure what so ever to the most prosperous nations in Africa. Under the Apartheid regime, blacks where given housing, schools, free healthcare etc. which almost every their African country lacked.
To get back to Mandela. Many people do not know he was in the armed resistance who was responsible for the killing of innocent people.
Fast forward to the '90. SA had to deal a lot with international pressure because of it's apartheid regime and nuclear weapons program. Economic sanctions dished out blows the the economy and mostly black people where hit with unemployment. Then came De Klerk, the president who set the 'independence' in motion in 1992.
After the 1994 election, which Mandela obviously won, things started to get very grim for white SA's. murders, abductions, criminal offenses, immigration of illegal Africans and the emigration of white SA's...
Not to mention that Mandela was a communist...(SACS).
However, he continued in his older years to fight for the cause of liberating the blacks from Apartheid. He was elected...and then he was elected as President of SA.
He had the means at that point to extract a terrible revenge or hatred against the whites of SA. In fact, some did, and it could easily have turned into a Zimbavwe or Rhodesia...but it did not. It was Mandela who ensured that it would not.
Did some wrongs take place? Yes. Heck, terrible things happen here in the US (or in any other country) on a daily basis. But he steared it away from the abyss.
Did their economy suffer with the change? Yes. At first and for several years. But they are coming back now and the white manufacturers, farmers, doctors, etc., etc. did not all whole-sale leave the country. Some did...but nowhere near the majority.
Why? Because they saw that perhaps they could all live together in peace and remake their country...and I believe they are doing that.
So, though Mandela had his negative points, in the end he held fast to a course, and he in fact modified his ideology in the midst of it. (SA is not a communist country, and as President he did not make it one).
Andy, you will not find a more conservative, Red/White and Blue American than me. Deciated to the Constitution of the US and most importantly the clear principles upon which it was founded. But I can still stand back and look at the totality of what Mandela did over 57 years of my life and say that he accomplished great things.
In fact, I will admit that he did far far more, and far far better than I would have forecast while he was in prison and just after he was let out...but I have to be honest with myself and with others and give him credit for the fact that he did do those things and helped remake a country. And he did it in an area of the world where most often any national "remaking," has involved mass murder, genocide, total corruption, and abject tyranny.
That did not happen in SA, when it easily could have. Mandela is one of the principle reason it did not.
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