RIP. A long hard journey.
No one lives forever, but some have a lasting impact.
That’s what I call a life.
A great man has left us, who were made better because of his presence.
'In short, he became a guerrilla fighter, hunted by both South African forces and the CIA. In fact, it was the Americans who tipped the police off on where to capture him. There was no Julian Assange in his day to blow the whistle on their covert surveillance.
This is not a part of his history that corporate media likes to project, for fear of what it could encourage. The corporations and charities that fund his foundation prefer to treat him as an icon that everyone loves, not an agitator that the establishment hated.’
[…]
'After his death, this fight for freedom that inspired the world and deserves to be told - but which story do you think the networks will tell?
Will they present him as victim or victor, as flawed as he sees himself - or as a saint cleaned up, sanitised and repackaged for mass consumption?
Will they give us the Hollywood one-dimensional picture of the soft and endearing “gentle giant” that turns him into a grandfatherly cuddly bear? Or the real saga of a liberation leader who won against the odds?
Which narrative will prevail?’
Nelson Mandela’s contested legacy
By Danny Schechter
— http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/07/201172141053378510.html
Wait—he was a GOOD guy? Then why did President Reagan do everything in his power to stop the Anti-Apartheid act?
I remember being disgusted and amazed at how campus libertarians, whom presumably would on principle object to aparthied, fervently supported Reagan’s ludicrous “constructive engagement” and mocked campus boycotts of companies engaged with South Africa.
As best I can tell, by empirical observation, a country’s laws concerning the free movement of capital count more than its laws concerning free movement of people when it comes to calculating the Libertarian Liberty Index. Treatment of foreign investors is also generally the #1 hot-button human rights issue, with the native human resources totted up mostly on the basis of whether they are more likely to be a cheap, docile labor force or an imminent marxist uprising that might heinously expropriate something.
I remember dancing around stupidly to this:
Probably the same reason he chose to have his “states rights” coming out party right by where those civil rights workers were murdered: He was a racist pig catering to racist voters. A lot of his prominent fellow Republicans were even angered and dismayed by his continued support for apartheid, which really illustrates just how awful he was.
I hadn’t realized that Mandela was already 30 when South Africa’s whites took over the post-British government, disenfranchised the blacks, and imposed apartheid and its terrorism against the population.
He leaves behind Sarah Palin to bravely carry on the fight against inequality–Gaah–I couldn’t keep a straight face.
Right; we tend to think of Apartheid as a horrible holdover from the 19th century or earlier but it was a disturbingly modern construct. It began the same year that President Truman signed the order to end racial segregation in the U.S. military.
Not that this song is particularly appropriate (maybe his kids would disagree), but it contains a line that was kind of absurd until today:
I was at a meeting with the education program at Spelman College today when this was announced. We had a moment of silence.
I think I was one of only 2 or 3 people in the room who might have remembered a time when Mandela was in prison. I was an undergraduate when the Reagan administration was fighting off the idea of economic sanctions against Botha’s South Africa.
What amazed me at the time, and still does today, is how he never held a grudge against the people who abused him. My congressman, John Lewis, has the same quality. Both were beaten nearly to death and seem to still be able to love the people who beat them.
I grew up in the last dying vestiges of “separate but equal.” If you saw my elementary school class pictures, you’d think I grew up in Norway and not Georgia. I told my students when Obama was elected that I never thought I’d live to see that day. That’s how much the world has changed in living memory, and Mandela was one of the driving forces of that change.
There was a time when giants walked the Earth. Most of them have left us now. It is our responsibility to honor those who remain while we still can.
I should add that both Nelson Mandela AND Bishop Desmond Tutu both stated that the Apartheid in Israel is far worse than what they suffered under in South Africa. Why then is there such little outcry over the Apartheid in Israel?
Nelson Mandela was a violent terrorist. He was jailed for multiple murders and pled Guilty. He was offered an early release if he would embrace non violence, He refused and went on to approve the continued bombings and bloody terrorists acts against innocent civilians, This is all well establish history which he never denied.
Today it seems that people wish to forget the blood of innocents on his hands. What will tomorrow bring? If Apartheid is so evil that innocent blood is the price, then why ignore the apartheid in Israel?
Don’t let David Cameron claim any regret or sorrow. He was part of the student group that created “Hang Mandela” posters.
We forgive our heroes their faults, but I hope we don’t paint over them. No one is perfect, but some pretty hard to make their country, their world that way for everyone. Knowing Hollywood, they will make bad movies that make a lot of money and good movies that are entirely ignored by general audiences, because they didn’t get the right amount of advertising for their movie. Hollywood honestly carries too much social weight- the video game industry doesn’t get to call itself art but it still makes more money. Which since I’m going off topic here, no, they will make bad movies about it now if the one with Idris Elba was any good or not. Can’t be making a saint look bad.
Sort of a sidenote from my rant, hoping incredible people are born to lead countries out of their dark ages mindset and then making them suffer extraordinary lengths to get there sucks. And rich countries letting themselves atrophy due to indifference needs to stop too.
For now, I’ll settle for remembering who the villains were, because they’re still around and in power.
