Mandela.

[SMOKEU]

RIP Madiba.

[oldrider]

Nelson Mandela was a very nice honest caring almost perfect person, unfortunately, like all humans, he grew old and died.

The world will miss Nelson Mandela. R.I.P.

South Africa? ... I remain hopeful and optimistic!

[SPman]

All the gratuitous platitudes by arseholes around the world make one want to chuck!

However....

http://www.informationclearinghouse....ticle37037.htm

http://www.informationclearinghouse....ticle37033.htm

and......

By Musa Okwonga

December 07, 2013 "Information Clearing House -
Dear revisionists, Mandela will never, ever be your minstrel.
Over the next few days you will try so, so hard to make him something he was not, and you will fail. You will try to smooth him, to sandblast him, to take away his Malcolm X. You will try to hide his anger from view. Right now, you are anxiously pacing the corridors of your condos and country estates, looking for the right words, the right tributes, the right-wing tributes. You will say that Mandela was not about race. You will say that Mandela was not about politics. You will say that Mandela was about nothing but one love, you will try to reduce him to a lilting reggae tune. “Let’s get together, and feel alright.” Yes, you will do that.

You will make out that apartheid was just some sort of evil mystical space disease that suddenly fell from the heavens and settled on all of us, had us all, black or white, in its thrall, until Mandela appeared from the ether to redeem us. You will try to make Mandela a Magic Negro and you will fail. You will say that Mandela stood above all for forgiveness whilst scuttling swiftly over the details of the perversity that he had the grace to forgive.

You will try to make out that apartheid was some horrid spontaneous historical aberration, and not the logical culmination of centuries of imperial arrogance. Yes, you will try that too. You will imply or audaciously state that its evils ended the day Mandela stepped out of jail. You will fold your hands and say the blacks have no-one to blame now but themselves.

Well, try hard as you like, and you’ll fail. Because Mandela was about politics and he was about race and he was about freedom and he was even about force, and he did what he felt he had to do and given the current economic inequality in South Africa he might even have died thinking he didn’t do nearly enough of it. And perhaps the greatest tragedy of Mandela’s life isn’t that he spent almost thirty years jailed by well-heeled racists who tried to shatter millions of spirits through breaking his soul, but that there weren’t or aren’t nearly enough people like him.

Because that’s South Africa now, a country long ago plunged headfirst so deep into the sewage of racial hatred that, for all Mandela’s efforts, it is still retching by the side of the swamp. Just imagine if Cape Town were London. Imagine seeing two million white people living in shacks and mud huts along the M25 as you make your way into the city, where most of the biggest houses and biggest jobs are occupied by a small, affluent to wealthy group of black people. There are no words for the resentment that would still simmer there.

Nelson Mandela was not a god, floating elegantly above us and saving us. He was utterly, thoroughly human, and he did all he did in spite of people like you. There is no need to name you because you know who you are, we know who you are, and you know we know that too. You didn’t break him in life, and you won’t shape him in death. You will try, wherever you are, and you will fail.

[MisterD]

Some Class A spin and revisionism in that quote too.

Apartheid was a *Boer* policy, you know, that group of settlers who were at one time the brave freedom-fighting Davids pitted against the Goliath of the British Empire? It was a unique reaction by a unique group of people in unique circumstances, namely that black immigration into the prosperous South Africa was changing the balance of power radically. It was an historical aberration.

Thanks for posting it though, because when I expressed the view that Mandela wasn't some kind of perfect saintly individual, but a real person, a natural leader with massive charisma, and the strategic brilliance to use both violence and then peace and reconcilliation to acheive his aims, I was being "racist".

[SPman]

Some Class A spin and revisionism in that quote too.

Apartheid was a *Boer* policy, you know, that group of settlers who were at one time the brave freedom-fighting Davids pitted against the Goliath of the British Empire? It was a unique reaction by a unique group of people in unique circumstances, namely that black immigration into the prosperous South Africa was changing the balance of power radically. It was an historical aberration. - quite true - in some ways a bit like Fiji vs the dominant imported Indian population....

Thanks for posting it though, because when I expressed the view that Mandela wasn't some kind of perfect saintly individual, but a real person, a natural leader with massive charisma, and the strategic brilliance to use both violence and then peace and reconcilliation to acheive his aims, I was being "racist".

How in (insert deity/belief of choice) could stating the truth be deemed "racist"! He had massive charisma. He had a rage, that he channeled first through violence, then through peace and reconciliation, which made the transition a lot more manageable. Unfortunately........

Mandela spent most his adult life treated as a “terrorist”. There was a price to be paid for his long walk to freedom, and the end of South Africa’s system of racial apartheid. Mandela was rehabilitated into an “elder statesman” in return for South Africa being rapidly transformed into an outpost of neoliberalism, prioritising the kind of economic apartheid most of us in the west are getting a strong dose of now.

In my view, Mandela suffered a double tragedy in his post-prison years.

First, he was reinvented as a bloodless icon, one that other leaders could appropriate to legitimise their own claims, as the figureheads of the “democratic west”, to integrity and moral superiority. After finally being allowed to join the western “club”, he could be regularly paraded as proof of the club’s democratic credentials and its ethical sensibility.

Second, and even more tragically, this very status as icon became a trap in which he was forced to act the “responsible” elder statesman, careful in what he said and which causes he was seen to espouse. He was forced to become a kind of Princess Diana, someone we could be allowed to love because he rarely said anything too threatening to the interests of the corporate elite who run the planet.

It is an indication of what Mandela was up against that the man who fought so hard and long against a brutal apartheid regime was so completely defeated when he took power in South Africa. That was because he was no longer struggling against a rogue regime but against the existing order, a global corporate system of power that he had no hope of challenging alone.

[Crasherfromwayback]

Thanks for posting it though, because when I expressed the view that Mandela wasn't some kind of perfect saintly individual, but a real person, a natural leader with massive charisma, and the strategic brilliance to use both violence and then peace and reconcilliation to acheive his aims, I was being "racist".

Only by people that obviously are none too bright.

[MisterD]

Only by people that obviously are none too bright.

Labour voters.

[Banditbandit]

Thanks for posting it though, because when I expressed the view that Mandela wasn't some kind of perfect saintly individual, but a real person, a natural leader with massive charisma, and the strategic brilliance to use both violence and then peace and reconcilliation to acheive his aims, I was being "racist".

Don't take it too personally - a good tag to label someone when you don't like what they are saying ... its a technique steeped in De Nile ...

[oldrider]

I don't see the point in spending untold money on rushing "dignitaries" (cough cough) over there to appease and impress the doubtful living!

We (as a nation) can say nice things and send nice messages just as sincerely from here at a fraction of the cost.

[wharekura]

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news...ectid=11169985

[roogazza]

Ho nee Howareya thinks we should pay for him for a holiday, F..k Off.

Minto, professional protester, wish I had got him in my PR24 sights 1981 ??? F..K wit.

ps on second thought we should pay for Honee, then get someone to push him out of the plane over Africa, without a shute !

[sgtp]

aint this Mandela chap the guy that helped spread the practice of necklacing?

what a fine chap he is, eh?

[oldrider]

aint this Mandela chap the guy that helped spread the practice of necklacing?

what a fine chap he is, eh?

True!

However, Mandela the man put aside the necklace temptations when he was bestowed with the power to use it to the full and offered unconditional power instead!

Took a strong and good man at heart to do that and to control those who would do otherwise in their hour of vengeance!

One might well wonder what lays ahead for South Africa without the physical presence of Mandela? I guess we must but and see!

[Banditbandit]

aint this Mandela chap the guy that helped spread the practice of necklacing?

what a fine chap he is, eh?

Mandela was in jail from 1962 - necklassing was first seen in 1985 ... you can draw your own dots ...

Mandela certainly supported and encouraged the armed struggle .. but necklassing? There's no evidence of that ..

Winnie Mandela certainly seemed to condone the practice ... but Nelson distanced himself from her while still in jail ...

[The Reibz]

Nelson Mandela BPNZ undercover agent!