Madiba

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

At 94 who is surprised?

 

He has always had weak lungs since his long imprisonment where he had TB.  That he is still going at this age is miraculous.

[LexusInfernus 908]

Meh, its gonna happen at some point. We have not reached immortality....yet. 

[Duke87 1,070]

Yeah, I heard about this today and my reaction was "wait - he's still alive? Isn't he like a million years old by now?"

 

94 is an impressive age to make it to, especially for someone who spent such a long time in prison.

[Meg 368]

Sometimes people make a stand that can cost them personally but leads to positive change.   He was imprisoned for his beliefs and I doubted they would ever let him go, much less elect him as President of his country.  

 

I thank him and hope he can spend what little time he has remaining without pain and in peace.

[LarksTonguesInAspic 28]

who can forget his immortal words "I am a Marxist, I have always been a Marxist, and I will always be a Marxist!".

 

pfft, kick him to the curb of history.

[Meg 368]

Why am I the only one around here who remembers apartheid?

[AkemiAzula 280]

Most people have read about it even if they didn't live during that era.

 

I don't know much about the man so am indifferent regarding him or his reign as their leader. 

[hym 358]

Why am I the only one around here who remembers apartheid?

 

It would help to remember is that many of us don't remember apartheid because we weren't alive when it happened or were too young to remember anything about it.

 

(The extent of mention that Nelson Mandela ever got in any history book I looked at was to vilify him as a communist.)

[Haljackey 17,241]

 

Why am I the only one around here who remembers apartheid?

 

It would help to remember is that many of us don't remember apartheid because we weren't alive when it happened or were too young to remember anything about it.

 

(The extent of mention that Nelson Mandela ever got in any history book I looked at was to vilify him as a communist.)

 

 

I don't recall any mention of apartheid in high school history class so anyone who was born after it or was too young to know much about it is pretty unfamiliar of what it was. You would have to do your own research on it.

 

Thankfully, we have Wikipedia these days. A quick read is all one needs to familiarize themselves with it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid

 

 

I for one hope that if these are his last days, he is kept comfortable. Commendable man to say the very least.

[Meg 368]

 

Why am I the only one around here who remembers apartheid?

 

It would help to remember is that many of us don't remember apartheid because we weren't alive when it happened or were too young to remember anything about it.

 

(The extent of mention that Nelson Mandela ever got in any history book I looked at was to vilify him as a communist.)

 

 

::: facepalm :::   

 

The way some people like to cherry pick to write history.    I'm not saying the man was a saint or even that I agree with all of this politics but let's at least pretend to look at the whole picture.

 

How about biography.com?  

 

 

Nelson Mandela was born on July 18, 1918, in Transkei, South Africa. Becoming actively involved in the anti-apartheid movement in his 20s, Mandela joined the African National Congress in 1942. For 20 years, he directed a campaign of peaceful, non-violent defiance against the South African government and its racist policies. In 1993,  Mandela and South African President F.W. de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to dismantle the country's apartheid system. In 1994, Mandela was inaugurated as South Africa's first black president. In 2009, Mandela's birthday (July 18) was declared Mandela Day to promote global peace and celebrate the South African leader's legacy. 

 

What I am saying is that I believe that peaceful, non-violent defiance against unjust government policies is a good thing.

 

 

 

I don't recall any mention of apartheid in high school history class so anyone who was born after it or was too young to know much about it is pretty unfamiliar of what it was. You would have to do your own research on it.

 

Thankfully, we have Wikipedia these days. A quick read is all one needs to familiarize themselves with it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid

 

 

I for one hope that if these are his last days, he is kept comfortable. Commendable man to say the very least.

 

 

 

Thank you.   That is what I was trying to say.

[hym 358]

I'm not saying anything about the man or his politics.  I am pointing out that if you're in Gen Y or later, you're likely looking at the entire issue through the lens of history, which may or may not reveal an accurate image of the situation.

[Meg 368]

I'm not saying anything about the man or his politics.  I am pointing out that if you're in Gen Y or later, you're likely looking at the entire issue through the lens of history, which may or may not reveal an accurate image of the situation.

 

I'm not sure which is worse:  that "you kids these days" don't get it or that I sound like my mother when she told me that "you kids these days" don't get it.

 

This reminds me of the time that someone here needed to interview one of us older folks for a school project on a different subject.   Turns out that he wasn't being told half the story.   Apparently history doesn't see fit to mention that there was once a three day riot in Washington, DC and the National Guard had to be called out to restore the peace and we had armed guardsmen on every street corner.   A bizarre sight but apparently not worth mentioning a few decades later.

 

Getting back to apartheid, we (as in American university students) were marching to end it and boycotting the multi-national companies that did business with South Africa.  It took a while to research these things back then (no internet) so companies were added to the list as their ties to South Africa were uncovered.

[AkemiAzula 280]

Boycotting an entire nation because of one policy. 

 

Okay then...

 

At any rate I remain indifferent to the man. Peaceful protest is naturally better than violent, but immortalising an individual because of what they achieved seems idolising, surely? I'm sure if this policy was indeed irrational then it would eventually have been defeated anyway by the natural forces that act in governments brains.

 

However, whether or not he served any use last century, this being this century, naturally many of my generation born in the 90s would have little or no interest in digging up skeletons from that time. The policy doesn't exist these days and thus I don't see why we need to overly grant attention to the man. 

 

As to communism that's another kettle of fish altogether of course.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

People change, and what they say in their early life is often inapplicable to them when they age.  However, there are some "historians" who keep a little book of negatives about everyone.

 

As the elder around here, I can remember things that I am sure are not in the history books (anymore).  Anyone remember the German-American Bund of the 1930s.  Some pretty important Americans were proponents of appeasing that mad corporal across the sea.  If it had succeeded American would be speaking German, and worrying about the Gestapo instead of HSA and NSA.

 

Remember Wendell Wilkie?  If he had defeated Roosevelt in the 1940 election, America would probably have been invaded by the Japanese and the west coast of North America would be part of the South-East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere (remember that, I do).  Isolationism in the global village would have been a disaster for the US.

 

Remember that the winners write history, and a century later the didacts edit it to suit themselves.

[ROFLyoshi 1,760]

I'm not saying anything about the man or his politics.  I am pointing out that if you're in Gen Y or later, you're likely looking at the entire issue through the lens of history, which may or may not reveal an accurate image of the situation.

If anything, this gives us a more complete scope and makes us able to decide our own opinion, given all the facts.

[Benedict 3,119]

who can forget his immortal words "I am a Marxist, I have always been a Marxist, and I will always be a Marxist!".

 

pfft, kick him to the curb of history.

 

Many people say many things at different points in their lives; I believe a person is the sum of his/her parts, and should not be categorized based on an isolated statement. He could certainly have turned South Africa into a Marxist state, but chose not to.

 

The curb of history will always remember that he is a Nobel peace prize winner, which in my opinion is no small achievement. 

[AkemiAzula 280]

On the issue of time I'll say this. An old friend of mine I knew back in school and I a few years ago met on Facebook after eleven years. At first it seemed unbelievable, too good to be true, that I had found her again. But after a while it turned out I was right, it was indeed too good to be true, and apparently it was not her after all. She said she was 'not the same girl she used to be'.

 

Now if you think about it from anything but a purely physical point of view that is actually the case. I am not who I was back in 1999. Some people may stay the same or change only slightly, but it seems that it is almost legitimate to consider various stages of a person's life in many cases to be different people altogether. It doesn't need to be as extreme as Anakin and Darth, but if you think about it the Marxist youth may well be a different man to his later self.

 

Not that I know much about the man, I know more about Nelson Muntz than Nelson Mandela. But I think a person should be considered rationally in the light of whether they remained the same person throughout their life. When ones ideals and core values and beliefs undergo a shift one may well be said to have become a different person altogether.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Well, when he shared the Political Peace Prize, we knew that he had joined the establishment.  His value now is as a statesman.

 

Shakespeare was right, and Madiba is not even dead so far as I know.  "The evil that men do lives after them/The good is oft interred with this bones" - Julius Caesar, Act II.

[AkemiAzula 280]

It is true that we remember politicians for their failings more than for their successes in some cases I suppose. Then again all the prime ministers I've lived during are still alive so... Maybe they'll be top blokes after death.

[Haljackey 17,241]

I will always remember Mandela as a good man who man who tore down racial walls and united a nation for the better. His political ideology is secondary to me.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Madiba is not exactly equivalent to Mahatma Gandhi, but he comes a close second.  (BTW Mahatma is a title.  It means "Great Souled").

[ROFLyoshi 1,760]

Maybe they'll be top blokes after death.

Is that a Chaser reference?

[LarksTonguesInAspic 28]

 

The curb of history will always remember that he is a Nobel peace prize winner, which in my opinion is no small achievement. 

 

 

As were PLO terrorist Yassir Arafat, climate change hoaxster Algore, and our own Fearless Leader, the Man Who Needs No Introduction, the Nobel winner that has fired more cruise missiles than all the rest combined... Barracks O'Bomber. Hitler and Stalin were both nominated, but fell short.

 

The Nobel Peace Prize veritably falls out of boxes of kid's cereal. It has become just another leftist circle jerk since the 60s.

[Cockatoo 2,256]

 

Maybe they'll be top blokes after death.

Is that a Chaser reference?

 

 

I believe it is. If so, +1.

 

As controversial as that song was, it rung true.

[Duke87 1,070]

The story of the collapse of Apartheid concluded just a wee bit too soon for me to remember hearing anything about it on the news. The earliest "big event" I remember seeing coverage of as it was current was the O.J. Chase, and that was a couple months after South Africa's first free election.

 

It being so recent, we never really talked about it in school. But I do remember my mother explaining it to me - that conversation was prompted by listening to U2's "Silver and Gold", which is about it.

[Easy Bakes 253]

People change, and what they say in their early life is often inapplicable to them when they age.  However, there are some "historians" who keep a little book of negatives about everyone.

 

As the elder around here, I can remember things that I am sure are not in the history books (anymore).  Anyone remember the German-American Bund of the 1930s.  Some pretty important Americans were proponents of appeasing that mad corporal across the sea.  If it had succeeded American would be speaking German, and worrying about the Gestapo instead of HSA and NSA.

 

Remember Wendell Wilkie?  If he had defeated Roosevelt in the 1940 election, America would probably have been invaded by the Japanese and the west coast of North America would be part of the South-East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere (remember that, I do).  Isolationism in the global village would have been a disaster for the US.

 

Remember that the winners write history, and a century later the didacts edit it to suit themselves.

History also changes how we view some  people too.

Take Nixon,vilified and hung out to dry after watergate and his resignation.

A great statesman when he died.

[LexusInfernus 908]

Yeah but Nixon was actually a great statesman. Sure, Watergate was wrong and he rightly got burned for it, but other than that, the guy was brilliant. 

 

And Nelson Mandela will always be the guy that tore down an utterly racist regime with racist policies. 

 

 

 

And seriously, you are comparing Obama with Hitler and Stalin?  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

^ Somehow, Obama, for all that he is president, does not have the streak of megalomaniac ruthlessness of Hitler, not the murderous paranoia of Stalin.  Besides, even though it is an oligarchy, there are lots of watchers watching him.

[AkemiAzula 280]

Yes it was a Chaser reference. 

 

I think even people like Hitler should be considered rationally. After all the man growing up in Vienna is not the same man as the later man who ruled the Nazi party. Even though there is a progression between the twain. And similarly those usually considered 'good guys' shouldn't be sugar coated and all their flaws or mistakes turned a blind eye to. 

 

On the whole, however, I think what Mandela achieved was laudable, in that racism is illogical and, while I have no particular opinion regarding SA, I'm sure he benefitted his country more than negatively affected it. So on the whole I'm sure he is a 'top bloke' to the extent statesmen usually can be.

 

After all even the greatest leaders had their flaws. Mandela might have been a Marxist at one point. Hitler might have been a painter at one point. Time changes things.

[Mr Saturn64 742]

Well, no matter what, Mandela will be remembered for what he did to destroy racism.