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nelson mandela has died.

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Bob Watson

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He was 92..
Few have changed the world as he did..a legand a giant has passed..

He changed the world and how we view race..
"Here on the shore of middle earth comes and end of our fellowship.I will not say do not weep for not all tears are an evil"gandalf lord of the rings...
 
I agree- a genuine 20th century icon of struggle through adversity and making the journey from long-term prisoner to president of the country that incarcerated him.
A true one-off who will be missed on the international stage, even though he had all but withdrawn from public life these last years (understandably, given his advanced age).

The thing that impressed me most about Mr Mandela is how he managed not to be bitter, even after 27 years locked up in Robin Island.

RIP Nelson Mandela.
 
RIP Nelson Mandela and followed the footsteps of Gandhi which saw the true crimes of war on the battlefields of South Africa as medical orderly for the British India Army and murdered for standing up against corruption and greed maybe one day our own Western and none Western politician's might get some backbone to do the same. Mr Nelson Mandela saw the aftermath of what racism of fear brings to all of us when politician's use ethnicity as tool of control. Hope his decedents keep his dream alive.

Fly Free and Blessings
 
“I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a... great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can only rest for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not ended.”

-Nelson Mandela
 
I just started listening to sw radio a couple of years before talk was going on that fw de klerk was about to release mandela and noted the change in the narrative in radio south Africa. I almost felt like I had a heads up on most others as I was hearing the news from the horses mouth.

Anybody remember this song ? I I guess now he really is free. I wasn't a South African funeral when it's my turn to go :)

 
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To spend 27 years incarcerated and to be a peaceful specimen of hope to prevail against such adversity. I'd be content if I was half the man he was. Inspirational, I just hope his legacy doesn't come undone in the vacuum that can follow when someone the public holds so dearly passes. Praying for continued peace
 
My partner is Chinese South African and lived her first 20 years inside of apartheid S.A. before her family came to Canada for a less violent experience during the transition. She has taught me a lot about how racism really works. Apartheid was brutal and its legacy is not pleasant. However, freedom fighters like Biko and Mandela were pivot points that lifted S.A. into a better future, and ultimately a less violent one, as if Sharpeville wasn't enough.

Mandela had vision and foresight. It seemed like surviving a separate life in jail included a spiritual awakening about how to work with one's enemy. I wonder do we have politicians anymore who are guided by the goal to make government a peaceful servant of the people, or is everyone just stuck in ideologies around privatization and profit for those with the most?

Mandela brought a kind of dignity and inspiration to the world stage that we really have not seen since. You'd think he'd have influenced global leaders more.
 
I wish I could respect him more, but let's face it- he was a terrorist who made good. Making nice doesn't unbomb your victims. They need to be remembered, too.
 
If Mandela was a terrorist, what does that make the French Resistance, Underground Railway, or any resistance fighter etc.? I think it is important to know that all our heroes and histories have sides to them that have been 'forgotten' for the sake of a more palatable description for future generations. But I'm actually willing to let Mandela's and MLK's errors in judgment slide in an age where real terror, and real evil is allowed to smile on mass media and sell the lies of world war in the name of our right to consumer and environmental death.
 
The ruffians who instaged this act or rebellion must be caught and hanged. King george the 3rd about the boston tea party...
Many of todays heros were labeled terrorist..
Mandela was a great man. A hero..pity some chose to only recal his mistakes...
 
Burnt State said:
If Mandela was a terrorist, what does that make the French Resistance, Underground Railway, or any resistance fighter etc.?
Click to expand...

So you see no difference in armies fighting armies and terrorists hiding car bombs, etc.? The French Resistance fought off invading foreigners, the Underground Railway smuggled victims- they didn't bomb public places! To my mind, the difference between a Resistance and a terrorist group is easy to see- the willingness (or even preference!) to include innocent victims.

When you can show me where George Washington bombed a bar or left a car (well, wagon!) bomb in a place certain to involve civilian casualties, then you can equate Washington and his people, and Mandela and *his* people.
 
Pygar2 said:
So you see no difference in armies fighting armies and terrorists hiding car bombs, etc.? The French Resistance fought off invading foreigners, the Underground Railway smuggled victims- they didn't bomb public places! To my mind, the difference between a Resistance and a terrorist group is easy to see- the willingness (or even preference!) to include innocent victims.

When you can show me where George Washington bombed a bar or left a car (well, wagon!) bomb in a place certain to involve civilian casualties, then you can equate Washington and his people, and Mandela and *his* people.
Click to expand...

Are you telling me all those white folk were born in S.A. or just got transported there magically one day by the Boerewors mother ship? Those were invading foreigners they were dealing with. They were arrogant and sometimes evil. When you have those white folk pulling up into random neighborhoods, jumping out with guns and shooting people indiscriminately then, yes, I would suspect the path to freedom is going to get very messy for everyone.

As for George W. where in history did he insure the future freedoms for all?

home_security_oval_logo_700.jpg
 
Yes, I suspect that by Mandela's time, a great many white people had been born and raised in Africa, and were therefore just as native. The reference you made to random shootings by hoodlums seems irrelevant to a political discussion- do you think the existence of crime means the existence of even more crime is justified? I am trying to point out the difference between army-to-army and resistance-army to government army violence, and just shooting and bombing at random. Since you find such randomness offensive, you must find it offensive when it is being done by people on *either* side... don't you? And as for George Washington- if you don't remember what he did for freedom, start at Wikipedia and work your way over to real books. You might take a side turn over to check out Crispus Attucks... first to die in the war for freedom that Washington fought, planting the seed for what freedom we *do* have. Contrast this with your hero, who merely traded the colors of racial injustice. I don't see, to use a Trek reference, that the "Beles" and the "Lokis" are different enough to justify *either* side, when they behave poorly. Which, again, has nothing to do with random attacks on innocent bystanders- the behavior that I objected to, and that you seemed to.
 
Sorry, I should have been more specific: the Trojan horse operations were carried out by the police who drove into neighborhoods and then suddenly pulled out weapons and started waging their own local wars. This is well after the Sharpeville massacre and the killings during the Soweto uprising. So as a reminder, regarding who was initially in the wrong, it was in fact the white colonist who instituted apartheid which included: controlling where blacks could live, work, who they could marry and who they could have sex with. This state sponsored enslavement of the masses also involved the kidnapping of freedom fighters like Biko in the middle of the night, his beating and killing all at the hands of the police. These are all state sponsored terrorist activities.

Now I could continue to list the inhumane atrocities of legal authorities such as the denial of treatment of wounded peaceful Sharpeville protestors, and their removal from the hospitals to police stations to die, or I could describe the shooting of unarmed men, women and children, but apparently the bigger crime is Mandela's mistakes? I think history always, eventually sides with the side of Resistance up against those who take control of other people's lands and employ genocidal practices. There's nothing random about it.

Local bombings, the killing of black police officers and the practice of "necklacing" those blacks who reported their own people to authorities, are the ugliness that comes with pursuing freedom in an unjust land. Eventually those neighborhood action tactics eased up and people we're warned in advance. Perhaps everyone was always warned in advance and the dead just can't speak. When my wife's family was told their store would be bombed in 24 hours, they simply took everything they could ovenight and made sure no family or workers were present the next day when the bomb went off.

Your persective on the situation might be too distant and not directly related to the history and experience of what was known as the evil that was apartheid. Up against many other notoriously bloody civil wars, Mandela's body count is a model for how to save lives. While transitioning power. Your 'trek' reference doesn't even come close to reality and is best saved for entertainment purposes and not real life, real hate and real butchery.
 
So you do think the existence of crime means the existence of even more crime is justified? That police officers are incapable of breaking laws, and so their crimes aren't crimes, and should be counted as official acts? That white-on-black institutionalized racism is wrong, but that the reverse is just fine? The "Trek" reference dates back to a time when both whites and blacks were doing horrific things, and was a very deliberate parable, not mere entertainment. Would the Watts riots have been any more acceptable, in your eyes, if it had been whites rioting? Or just morally the same? Or equally disgusting?
 
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