Mandela has passed
and in the end, he was allowed to go quietly.
His legacy cannot be perfect because what he had to deal with was
grossly imperfect. The white tribe was
completely brainwashed or browbeaten into supporting and maintaining a doctrine
of hatred and separation. The blacks
were preferred illiterate and starved.
This also left a legacy of hatred.
He astonishingly
was able to defuse this caldron of hate.
It has been replaced by a cauldron of fear and low level struggle that
is at least evolving and in time this can become something better. That does still demand concentration on the delivery
of education to the children. An
educated South Africa will be a middle class South Africa.
South Africa is
well ahead of its competitors but then the road is naturally long. In the meantime it is easy to blame the
failure of time on the Father of his Country.
This was something no one could change.
What he did do was avoid a vastly worse outcome such as we have seen in Zimbabwe
or say the Middle East. It is now up to
his heirs to build on what he produced.
Mandela,
Man of Great Achievements
By John Nania, Epoch Times | December 5, 2013
After 27 years in
prison Nelson Mandela emerged as a beacon of hope for people worldwide. He made
a conscious decision to let go of hatred, and eventually he bequeathed to the
world the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
He admitted his
flaws and insisted he was not a saint. However he is, by acclamation, a great
man, a man who achieved greatness through physical and mental discipline.
In his youth,
Mandela was a boxer. In prison, he exercised his body and plotted out how to
advance his ideas of justice and freedom. Besides these outer pursuits, he
practiced a discipline of character found in great mystics. As Danny Schechter,
author of the just-released book “Madiba A–Z,” said, “He survived long years in
prison by ‘going inside,’ and often had to do the same as president.”
For his great
outer and inner achievements, Nelson Mandela may indeed be regarded as saintly
one day, if not today.
John Nania is Epoch Times
editor-in-chief
Nelson
Mandela: Master of Forgiveness
JOHANNESBURG—
Nelson Mandela was a master of forgiveness. South Africa’s first black
president spent nearly one-third of his life as a prisoner of apartheid, the
system of white racist rule that he described as evil, yet he sought to win over
its defeated guardians in a relatively peaceful transition of power that
inspired the world.
As head of state,
the ex-boxer, lawyer and inmate lunched with the prosecutor who argued
successfully for his incarceration, sang the apartheid-era Afrikaans anthem at
his inauguration and traveled hundreds of miles to have tea with the widow of
Hendrik Verwoerd, the prime minister at the time he was sent to prison who was
also the architect of white rule.
It was this
generosity of spirit that made Mandela, who died on Thursday at the age of 95,
a global symbol of sacrifice and reconciliation in a world often jarred by
conflict and division.
Mandela’s stature
as a fighter against white racist rule and seeker of peace with his enemies was
on a par with that of other men he admired: American civil rights activist
Martin Luther King Jr. and Indian independence leader Mohandas K. Gandhi, both
of whom were assassinated while actively engaged in their callings.
Mandela’s death
deprived the world of one of one of the great figures of modern history and set
the stage for days of mourning and reflection about a colossus of the 20th
century who projected astonishing grace, resolve and good humor.
South African
President Jacob Zuma made the announcement at a news conference late Thursday,
saying “we’ve lost our greatest son.”
At times, Mandela
embraced his iconic status, appearing before a rapturous crowd in London’s
Wembley Stadium soon after his 1990 release from jail. Sometimes, he sought to
downplay it, uneasy about the perils of being put on a pedestal. In an
unpublished manuscript, written while in prison, Mandela acknowledged that
leaders of the anti-apartheid movement dominated the spotlight but said they
were “only part of the story,” and every activist was “like a brick which makes
up our organization.”
He pondered the
cost to his family of his dedication to the fight against the racist system of
government that jailed him for 27 years and refused him permission to attend
the funeral of his mother and of a son who was killed in a car crash. In court,
he described himself as “the loneliest man” during his mid-1990s divorce from
Winnie Mandela. As president, he could not forge lasting solutions to poverty,
unemployment and other social ills that still plague today’s South Africa,
which has struggled to live up to its rosy depiction as the “Rainbow Nation.”
He secured
near-mythical status in his country and beyond. Last year, the South African
central bank released new banknotes showing his face, a robust, smiling image
of a man who was meticulous about his appearance and routinely exercised while
in prison. South Africa erected statues of him and named buildings and other
places after him. He shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with F. W. de Klerk, the
country’s last white president. He was the subject of books, films and songs
and a magnet for celebrities.
In 2010, Mandela
waved to the crowd at the Soccer City stadium at the closing ceremony of the
World Cup, whose staging in South Africa allowed the country, and the continent,
to shine internationally. It was the last public appearance for the former
president and prisoner, who smiled broadly and was bundled up against the cold.
One of the most
memorable of his gestures toward racial harmony was the day in 1995 when he
strode onto the field before the Rugby World Cup final in Johannesburg, and
then again after the game, when he congratulated the home team for its victory
over a tough New Zealand team. Mandela was wearing South African colors and the
overwhelmingly white crowd of 63,000 was on its feet, chanting “Nelson! Nelson!
Nelson!”
It was typical of
Mandela to march headlong into a bastion of white Afrikanerdom — in this case
the temple of South African rugby — and make its followers feel they belonged
in the new South Africa.
The moment was
portrayed in “Invictus,” Clint Eastwood’s movie telling the story of South
Africa’s transformation through the prism of sport.
It was a moment
half a century in the making. In the 1950s, Mandela sought universal rights
through peaceful means but was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964 for
leading a campaign of sabotage against the government. The speech he gave
during that trial outlined his vision and resolve.
“During my
lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people,”
Mandela said. “I have fought against white domination, and I have fought
against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free
society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal
opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if
needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”
He was confined to
the harsh Robben Island prison near Cape Town for most of his time behind bars,
then moved to jails on the mainland. It was forbidden to quote him or publish
his photo, yet he and other jailed members of his banned African National
Congress were able to smuggle out messages of guidance to the anti-apartheid
movement, and in the final stages of his confinement, he negotiated secretly
with the apartheid leaders who recognized change was inevitable.
Thousands died, or
were tortured or imprisoned in the decades-long struggle against apartheid,
which deprived the black majority of the vote, the right to choose where to
live and travel, and other basic freedoms.
So when inmate No.
46664 went free after 27 years, walking hand-in-hand with his wife Winnie out
of a prison on the South African mainland, people worldwide rejoiced. Mandela
raised his right fist in triumph, and in his autobiography, “Long Walk to
Freedom,” he would write: “As I finally walked through those gates … I felt —
even at the age of seventy-one — that my life was beginning anew,”
Mandela’s release,
rivaled the fall of the Berlin Wall just a few months earlier as a symbol of
humanity’s yearning for freedom, and his graying hair, raspy voice and colorful
shirts made him a globally known figure.
Life, however,
imposed new challenges on Mandela.
South Africa’s
white rulers had portrayed him as the spearhead of a communist revolution and
insisted that black majority rule would usher in bloody chaos. Thousands died
in factional fighting in the runup to democratic elections in 1994, and Mandela
accused the government of collusion in the bloodshed. But voting day, when long
lines of voters waited patiently to cast ballots, passed peacefully, as did
Mandela’s inauguration as president
“Never, never and
never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the
oppression of one by another and suffer the indignity of being the skunk of the
world,” the new president said. “Let freedom reign. The sun shall never set on
so glorious a human achievement! God bless Africa! Thank you.”
Mandela also stood
hand on heart, saluted by white generals as he sang along to two anthems now
one: the apartheid-era Afrikaans “Die Stem,” (“The Voice”) and the African
“Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika” (“Lord Bless Africa”).
Since apartheid
ended, South Africa has held four parliamentary elections and elected three
presidents, always peacefully, setting an example on a continent where
democracy is still new and fragile. However, corruption scandals and other
missteps under the ruling African National Congress, the liberation group once
led by Mandela, have undercut some of the early promise.
President Jacob
Zuma periodically observes that the South African white minority is far
wealthier than the black majority, an imbalance that he regards as a vestige of
the apartheid system that bestowed most economic benefits on whites.
When Mandela came
to power, black South Africans anticipated quick fixes after being denied
proper housing, schools and health care under apartheid. The new government,
however, embraced free-market policies to keep white-dominated big business on
its side and attract foreign investment. The policy averted the kind of
economic deterioration that occurred in Zimbabwe after independence; South
Africa, though, has one of the world’s biggest gaps between rich and poor.
Nelson Rolihlahla
Mandela was born July 18, 1918, the son of a tribal chief in Transkei, a Xhosa
homeland that later became one of the “Bantustans” set up as independent
republics by the apartheid regime to cement the separation of whites and
blacks.
Mandela’s royal
upbringing gave him a regal bearing that became his hallmark. Many South
Africans of all races would later call him by his clan name, Madiba, as a token
of affection and respect.
Growing up at a
time when virtually all of Africa was under European colonial rule, Mandela
attended Methodist schools before being admitted to the black University of
Fort Hare in 1938. He was expelled two years later for his role in a student
strike.
He moved to
Johannesburg and worked as a policeman at a gold mine, boxed as an amateur
heavyweight and studied law.
His first wife,
nurse Evelyn Mase, bore him four children. A daughter died in infancy, a son
was killed in a car crash in 1970 and another son died of AIDS in 2005. The
couple divorced in 1957 and Evelyn died in 2004.
Mandela began his
rise through the anti-apartheid movement in 1944, when he helped form the ANC
Youth League.
He organized a
campaign in 1952 to encourage defiance of laws that segregated schools,
marriage, housing and job opportunities. The government retaliated by barring
him from attending gatherings and leaving Johannesburg, the first of many
“banning” orders he was to endure.
After a two-day
nationwide strike was crushed by police, he and a small group of ANC colleagues
decided on military action and Mandela pushed to form the movement’s guerrilla
wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, or Spear of the Nation.
He was arrested in
1962 and sentenced to five years’ hard labor for leaving the country illegally
and inciting blacks to strike.
A year later, police
uncovered the ANC’s underground headquarters on a farm near Johannesburg and
seized documents outlining plans for a guerrilla campaign. At a time when
African colonies were one by one becoming independent states, Mandela and seven
co-defendants were sentenced to life in prison.
The ANC’s armed
wing was later involved in a series of high-profile bombings that killed
civilians, and many in the white minority viewed the imprisoned Mandela as a
terrorist. The apartheid government, meanwhile, was denounced globally for its
campaign of beatings, assassinations and other violent attacks on opponents.
Even in numbing
confinement, Mandela sought to flourish.
“Incidentally, you
may find that the cell is an ideal place to learn to know yourself, to search
realistically and regularly the process of your own mind and feelings,” he
wrote in 1975 to Winnie Mandela, a prominent activist in her own right who was
in a separate jail at that time.
Mandela turned
down conditional offers of freedom during his decades in prison. In 1989, P.W.
Botha, South Africa’s hard-line president, was replaced by de Klerk, who
recognized apartheid’s end was near. Mandela continued, even in his last weeks
in prison, to advocate nationalizing banks, mines and monopoly industries — a
stance that frightened the white business community.
But talks were
already underway, with Mandela being spirited out of prison to meet white
government leaders. After his release, he took charge of the ANC, and was
elected president in a landslide in South Africa’s first all-race election.
Perceived
successes during Mandela’s tenure include the introduction of a constitution
with robust protections for individual rights, and the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission, which he established with his fellow Nobelist, Archbishop Desmond
Tutu. It allowed human rights offenders of all races to admit their crimes
publicly in return for lenient treatment. Though not regarded as wholly
successful, it proved to be a kind of national therapy that would become a
model for other countries emerging from prolonged strife.
Despite his
saintly image, Mandela was sometimes a harsh critic. When black journalists
mildly criticized his government, he painted them as stooges of the whites who
owned the media. Some whites with complaints were dismissed as pining for their
old privileges.
In the buildup to
the Iraq War, Mandela harshly rebuked President George W. Bush. “Why is the
United States behaving so arrogantly?” he asked in a speech. “All that (Bush)
wants is Iraqi oil.” He suggested Bush and then British Prime Minister Tony
Blair were racists, and claimed America, “which has committed unspeakable
atrocities in the world,” had no moral standing.
Until Bush
repealed the order in 2008, Mandela could not visit the U.S. without the
secretary of state certifying that he was not a terrorist.
To critics of his
closeness to Fidel Castro and Moammar Gadhafi despite human rights violations
in the countries they ruled, Mandela explained that he wouldn’t forsake
supporters of the anti-apartheid struggle.
To the
disappointment of many South Africans, he increasingly left the governing to
Deputy President Thabo Mbeki, who won the next presidential election and took
over when Mandela’s term ended in 1999.
“I must step down
while there are one or two people who admire me,” Mandela joked at the time.
When he retired, he said he was going to stand on a street with a sign that
said: “Unemployed, no job. New wife and large family to support.”
His marriage to
Winnie had fallen apart after his release and he married Graca Machel, the
widowed, former first lady of neighboring Mozambique.
With apartheid
vanquished, Mandela turned to peacemaking efforts in other parts of Africa and
the world and eventually to fighting AIDS, publicly acknowledging that his own
son, Makgatho, had died of the disease.
Mandela’s final
years were marked by frequent hospitalizations as he struggled with respiratory
problems that had bothered him since he contracted tuberculosis in prison.
He stayed in his
rural home in Qunu in Eastern Cape province, where Hillary Clinton, then U.S.
secretary of state, visited him in 2012, but then moved full-time to his home
in Johannesburg so he could be close to medical care in Pretoria, the capital.
He is survived by
Machel; his daughter Makaziwe by his first marriage, and daughters Zindzi and
Zenani by his second.
What
More Is There to Learn From Nelson Mandela?
By Danny Schechter | December 5, 2013
Just days before
he died on Thursday, Nelson Mandela’s daughter Makaziwe Mandela told SABC, the
state-owned television network SABC that her father (from his first marriage)
was teaching the family life lessons from what she termed his “deathbed.”
“Even, for a lack
of a better word, on his deathbed, he is teaching us lessons; lessons in
patience, in love, lessons of tolerance.”
Thanks to the
release of the new epic movie, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom starring Idris
Elba and Naomi Harris, the public is learning other lessons about the freedom
struggle that he led.
On Christmas day,
it opens nationwide in the United States on 2000 screens, with a majority of
reviews very positive. It is already showing in France, and England will be
next in January.
In South Africa,
the movie that shows Mandela’s early days as a boxer broke all box-office
records.
At the same time,
no one movie can hope to tell the full story of a life that has spanned 95
years. Hollywood-style storytelling inevitably telescopes history, compresses
characters, and seek to entertain more than inform
Some of the
critics make this point, even as most were laudatory. A few found it too
rushed, others too long, or they dwell on missing context, and insufficient
history, as does Simon Abrams on RogerEbert.com: ”The prison guard insists that
Nelson and his wife should not talk about politics, and Long Walk to Freedom’s
creators honor that request. Instead, they talk about how they feel about
politics. So the raised tone of Winnie’s voice is more important than the
content of her words.”
Critical
nitpicking aside, many can agree with the LA Times’s conclusion: “This may be a
familiar story, but it is one worth experiencing again and again. “ And, that’s
also why the AP reviewer noted, “This is the perfect time for youngsters (or
their elders) who don’t know enough about the man to go learn about him.”
And that’s also
precisely why the film’s producers asked me to draw on many of the interviews I
did for a companion documentary series on the making and meaning of Long Walk
to Freedom for a book that seeks to tell some of the rest of the story. “Madiba
A to Z” (Seven Stories Press) is now out in the United States and in South
Africa.
To supplement
Mandela’s own autobiography and the many biographies about them, I look at what
insiders realize but many in the adoring public do not. Quite a few who do know
him well are loving but privately critical (and self-critical), most deeply
aware of the limits of the changes in South Africa almost twenty years after
the end of apartheid and the coming of democracy.
I spoke to many
key players and insiders, including two former presidents, DeKlerk and Mbeki
and Deputy President Motlanthe, his prison comrades and fellow ANC activists
including Archbishop Tutu, as well as thoughtful writers like Nadine Gordimer
and Njabullo Ndebele.
Here are some
highlights from an investigation that features intimate stories on 26 aspects
of Mandela’s life and times.
•The key finding
is how many of the “stalwarts” of the struggle including Mandela himself are
privately disappointed with the “progress” that’s been made and have “regrets”
with the ANC’s many failures in a way we haven’t seen before.
•Thabo Mbeki told
me that the problems of South Africa have not changed very much from 1994
because of the greed of the white business community and its failure to invest
in job creation.
•Madiba A-Z
explains that there were top-secret economic negotiations alongside the televised
political talks that allowed the World Bank and global business leaders,
especially powerful Americans, effectively to limit what South Africa could do
to regulate industry and fight poverty. This is what led to the neo-liberal
policies South Africa was pressured to adopt in the name of pro-market
stability.
Promised jobs and
investments by an adoring world, few were forthcoming. Poverty in South Africa
today is as bad as it was when Mandela was elected in 1994.
Other points of
special interest:
• The armed
struggle fought by the ANC’s guerilla army Umkhonto we Size was also aided by
the Vietnamese army after the defeat of the U.S. led war in that country. The
Cuban defeat of South African military forces in Angola helped spur
negotiations.
•While Mandela
deserves credit for engineering a peaceful political settlement, it was
external pressure including economic and cultural sanctions demanded by a
global anti-apartheid movement that brought decisive leverage on political
leaders to negotiate. His law partner, Oliver Tambo’s role as ANC leader was
probably more decisive in orchestrating pressure when Mandela was behind bars.
•While Mandela was
hailed by a cheering world for his iconic role, he was often personally
miserable because of the break-up of his marriage and the bitter internal
battling inside the ANC. He survived long years in prison by “going inside,”
and often had to do the same as President.
These are just a
few of the disclosures as I dealt with the “many faces” of a leader so many
think they know, but often only one dimensionally, as I explored Mandela as a
villager, bully, boxer, prisoner, lover and womanizer, peacemaker and legend.
Throughout his
political struggles, he rejected the idea that he was a “savior” and always
embraced collective leadership even as the media lionized him and treated him
as a “brand” or celebrity.
The media and even
the movie avoid deeper political debates and minimize the role of a bottom-up
movement for the decisions of a top-down leader. News reports of pervasive
corruption today rarely reference how corrupt the Afrikaner regime had been.
The enormity of
what he and South Africa achieved in resolving conflicts can best be seen when
compared to other conflicts in the world that ended more violently, or not at
all.
Recall what else
was going on in this period — genocides in Rwanda and the Balkans, or today’s
unresolved fighting in Syria and Egypt. If leaders in those countries had
adopted Mandela’s approach to reconciliation, the outcomes might have been
different
How he helped
guide a peaceful outcome in a racially explosive society is a story that even
now is treated superficially by the press there and here, when at all.
What emerges is a
portrait of a man, and a troubled nation as well as the texture of a struggle
that, despite many gains, is still fighting for true freedom. After his release
from prison, Mandela was told, “Well now you’re free.” And he said: “No, we’re
freed to be free.”
News dissector Danny Schechter
directed six documentaries about Nelson Mandela. More news about the book and
its author, including a selection, can be found at Madibabook.com He blogs at
Newsdissector.net and edits Mediachannel.org. Comments to
dissector@mediachannel.org.
Well, living as a black in South Africa under apartheid would be quite similar to living in the USA today.. The vote brings you nothing, it is worthless if the welfare you vote for is stolen by force off your fellow-citizens. The State spys on Americans more closely than the White Govt ever did, your travel is restricted by ID documents, random stops by State thugs and more intrusive inspections at airports than Verwoerd could ever dream of!
ReplyDeleteYour environmetal and health/safety bureacracies mean you can do less with the land you "own" than anyone in South Africa, a place where 'freedom' still means something.
Mandala was a communist terrorist, something people today have conveniently 'forgotten'.