Nelson Mandela, anti-apartheid icon and father of modern South Africa, dies

CNN ^ | 12-05-2013 | By Faith Karimi

[Red Badger]

Nelson Mandela, the revered statesman who emerged from prison after 27 years to lead South Africa out of decades of apartheid, has died, South African President Jacob Zuma announced late Thursday.

Mandela was 95.

"He is now resting. He is now at peace," Zuma said. "Our nation has lost its greatest son. Our people have lost a father."

"What made Nelson Mandela great was precisely what made him human," the president said in his late-night address. "We saw in him what we seek in ourselves."

Mandela will have a state funeral. Zuma ordered all flags in the nation to be flown at half-staff from Friday through that funeral.

Mandela, a former president, battled health issues in recent months, including a recurring lung infection that led to numerous hospitalizations.

With advancing age and bouts of illness, Mandela retreated to a quiet life at his boyhood home in the nation's Eastern Cape Province, where he said he was most at peace.

Despite rare public appearances, he held a special place in the consciousness of the nation and the world.

[HiTech RedNeck]

More than a little. This Barack Obama is a maniacal nut, and the Surgeon General needs to put him in a rubber room.

[NormsRevenge]

Fools&tools who do not know ANC’s history will stay forever enchanted by his quest.

Those who died at the behest of the ANC are silent at the news of his death.

[HiTech RedNeck]

When an idol goes kerflooie, worship has to go somewhere else. It could go to another idol or it could go to God, but I doubt the evangelization has been good enough there for it to go to God this time around. Maybe they’ll all end up hailing Barack Obama, which he would love. Then we could ask him to quit and become the new president of South Africa and they would all deserve one another.

[AK_47_7.62x39]

This was what I posted to Facebook when Maggie Thatcher died.

A few people in her may be able to relate:

What has happened to decency? I am totally disgusted with the national pastime of dancing on the graves of people you politically disagree with.

When a person dies, in the overwhelming majority of cases, the classy response is to be gracious and allow other people to honor them. There are very few Hitler, Stalin, Rios Montt and Torquemada types who were EVIL. Their names, as Proverbs says, will rot, and rightly so. Most people are instead a mixed bag. What is so horrible about granting them a little respect and kindness?

This business of being gleeful at the death of Ted Kennedy (as Breitbart did) or then celebrating the death of Breitbart and using the justification that “he did it to Kennedy” is despicable, childish, peevish, classless and hate filled.

.... let me say to any of my “progressive” friends who have said the most despicable things about Margaret Thatcher: Don’t hand me your crap about love and tolerance and joy and all the faux moralisms of the left while you engage in this kind of petty and hateful stuff. The woman is dead. At the WORST, she caused the gap between rich and poor to increase and engaged in a needless short military conflict with Argentina, and furthered the rise of corporatism. These are contested opinions, as well (two of which I agree with) She did not leave piles of bodies, she did not preside over multitudes plunged into penury. If you are so wedded to your political ideology that you cannot distinguish between the incendiary rhetoric of the political left and reality, then you really have nothing intelligent to say and should stop embarrassing yourself, and just shut up. You CERTAINLY have nothing to say about the crap I hear about “love” and “tolerance” and “acceptance.”

If your response to this is “well, the bible bangers do it!” I will say “yes, that does happen. That is,in fact the point, isn’t it. You are both mirror images of the ones you say you hate. I know how it is, btw. It is a delicious evil to chomp into a misery sandwich of celebration of the death of someone you REALLY did not like. It is there in me,as well as in you. It is a celebration of the evil you say you dislike in the other person.

Mirror, anyone?

RIP Margaret Thatcher.

[Blackyce]

“Mandela could have been gracious and turned the glory to God... which would have been a segue to racial harmony... “

Nonsense. After all those years in prison, he chose to have De Clerk as a deputy in his administration. They managed to maintain a market economy despite the fact that three hard left wing organizations make up the core of the ANC. They’re the only decent economy in subsaharan africa. They didn’t drive the whites farmers out or confiscate all of their lands, they let them stick around and simply levied taxes on them. Any fair comparison between SA and Zimbabwe shows people what could have been. If he’d come out of prison mean and vindictive(as he arguably had every right to be) he could have rounded up and slaughtered a bunch of people and destroyed their economy at the same time.

The Mandela situation is a lot like the MLK Jr. situation. People want to focus on their ideology rather than the pragmatism of their decisionmaking and their ability to navigate through without provoking wide spread physical conflict. It would have been so easy for either the US or the SA situations in the sixties to have devolved into bitter long term partisan violence.

I don’t see why it’s so hard for people to just tip their hat and move on. People can call him a terrorist, but I doubt there are more than a handful of freepers that wouldn’t have their guns at the ready if our government tried to treat us that way. He’s a man with flaws who handled things pretty well, all things considered. I think people don’t realize how bad things in SA could get if the racist populist types like his ex wife or Julius Malema ever truly gain control in the country. The same types of political idiots who’ve run Zimbabwe into the ground make up a sizeable chunk of the ANC. The fact that SA has maintained a favorable business climate over the last few decades is remarkable, all things considered, and it’s mostly stems from his decision to set a more moderate tone despite the fact that ANC had the power to do anything they liked.

[x]

Good post.

[Ironfocus]

http://www.censorbugbear.org/black-racism/terrorism/nelson-mandela-the-bombing-record

[x]

The Mandela situation is a lot like the MLK Jr. situation. People want to focus on their ideology rather than the pragmatism of their decisionmaking and their ability to navigate through without provoking wide spread physical conflict. It would have been so easy for either the US or the SA situations in the sixties to have devolved into bitter long term partisan violence.

Good point. White rule and apartheid South Africa weren't going to last forever. Their end could have been a lot more violent and destructive without Mandela and de Klerk.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Also, scapegoating a mortal figure, even a prominent one, doesn’t further the battle of good against evil. It only distracts us. Did Mandela do anything good at all, well we should try not to stop that. Did Mandela fail, and yield to sin or leave good things undone. Well we should try to remedy that. And God is whom we should be looking to in order to get it done.

[BigSkyFreeper]

Mandela - The "Great Statesman"

Mandela with SACP boss, Joe Slovo

"Nelson Mandela is a symbol, an icon, one of the world's most famous statesmen, recognised and revered by all. He dines with royalty, associates with the world's great leaders and his opinion is sought and valued on all weighty matters. He has achieved an almost divine status in the world, equal to that of the Pope or the late Princess Diana." Most people on the left of the political spectrum would agree wholeheartedly with the above quote. But they run into an unexpected problem when someone asks "why is he considered such a great statesman?" The problem is that Mandela, apart from having a likeable personality, has achieved next to nothing in his relatively short political career which saw South Africa rapidly decline to the status of the world's most violent and crime-ridden country, and, to add to the confusion, his greatest friends are communists and dictators like Fidel Castro, Moammar Qaddafi, Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein. His ex-wife Winnie Mandela, whom he quickly jettisoned when it became clear she was a considerable embarassment to his political career, is a self-confessed advocate of terrorism and violence and has even committed murder. In his public statements and speeches Mandela is always critical of the democratic countries of the west, but has nothing but praise for the remaining communist dictatorships of the world. He condemns mistakes and controversial policies of the west, but refuses to publicly condemn the genocides and brutal repression of current or former communist countries; he is supposedly a "champion of freedom and democracy", the "hero of oppressed people everywhere" but considers dictatorships like Cuba and Libya shining beacons of freedom and justice... Perhaps this is what makes Mandela such a revered statesman - chameleon-like he can advocate democracy and freedom as the highest ideals one day and hold up Cuba or Libya as shining examples for the world to follow the next day. And his admirers do not even notice the contradiction, or worse, they agree with him... Many of his apologists optimistically claim that Mandela may well have had "communist leanings" in his past, but that he has since put all that behind him and become a moderate in his political beliefs. They are perhaps unaware of his fulsome praise of a communist dictatorship as late as 1991 when he and Winnie went to what they called their "second home" - Cuba - to celebrate the communist revolution with Fidel Castro. In his speech Mandela said:

"Long live the Cuban Revolution. Long live comrade Fidel Castro... Cuban internationalists have done so much for African independence, freedom, and justice. We admire the sacrifices of the Cuban people in maintaining their independence and sovereignty in the face of a vicious imperialist campaign designed to destroy the advances of the Cuban revolution. We too want to control our destiny... There can be no surrender. It is a case of freedom or death. The Cuban revolution has been a source of inspiration to all freedom-loving people."

Mandela's adulation of Castro and Cuba almost outshines that of his own admirers. In May of 1990 Mandela, visiting America, went on record, referring to Cuba:

There's one thing where that country stands out head and shoulders above the rest. That is in its love for human rights and liberty.

A week later in Libya, he lauded Qaddafi's:

Committment to the fight for peace and human rights in the world.

While in America Mandela also made public statements that amounted to support for violence and terrorism in the furtherance of political aims. In a speech in Harlem, referring to four Puerto Rican terrorists who shot and wounded five US Congressmen in 1954, he said:

We support the cause of anyone who is fighting for self-determination, and our attitude is the same, no matter who it is. I would be honored to sit on the platform with the four comrades you refer to.

Suitable "comrades" for Mandela indeed. He was himself originally incarcerated, not for his political views, but for involvement in 23 different acts of sabotage and conspiring to overthrow the government. He and his fellow conspirators of the ANC and the South African Communist Party were caught by the police while in the possession of 48,000 Soviet-made anti-personnel mines and 210,000 hand-grenades!* It is also interesting to note that in later years Mandela was offered his freedom by none other than the South African President Botha if he would simply renounce the use of terrorism, but Mandela refused to do this. Winnie Mandela has been equally fulsome in her praise of Communism and violence. In 1986 she was reported in Moscow's communist party newspaper Pravda as saying:

The Soviet Union is the torch-bearer for all our hopes and aspirations. We have learned and are continuing to learn resilience and bravery from the Soviet people, who are an example to us in our struggle for freedom, a model of loyalty to internationalist duty. In Soviet Russia, genuine power of the people has been transformed from dreams into reality. The land of the Soviets is the genuine friend and ally of all peoples fighting against the dark forces of world reaction.

and again at Munsieville, on April 13, 1986, she said:

With our boxes of matches and our necklaces we shall liberate this country.

referring here to her own specific brand of democratic political activity whereby anyone who opposed her would be bound hand and foot and then burned to death by means of a tyre filled with gasoline being placed around the neck and set on fire.

Has Mandela since changed his tune in any way?

In September, 2002, Mandela gave an interview to "Newsweek" and the following summary gives his views on the situation with regard to the Iraq crisis:

You will come to the conclusion that the attitude of the United States of America is a threat to world peace…. It (war against Iraq) is clearly a decision that is motivated by George W. Bush’s desire to please the arms and oil industries in the United States of America…When there were white (UN) secretary generals you didn’t find this question of the United States and Britain going out of the United Nations. But now that you’ve had black secretary generals like Boutros Boutros Ghali, like Kofi Annan, they do not respect the United Nations. They have contempt for it… It is the men around him (Cheney and Rumsfeld) who are dinosaurs, who do not want him (President Bush) to belong to the modern age… The only man, the only person who wants to help Bush move to the modern era is Gen. Colin Powell.

No-one will deny Mandela the right to hold views opposed to a war on Iraq, but he is here revealing his own racist attitude to world politics - only white leaders are a threat to peace, and especially so when there are black secretary generals of the U.N. And in case we don't get the message he singles out the black member of the US administration, Colin Powell, as the only exception! (And, one could add, when it suits Mandela's argument, the Egyptian Boutros Ghali, suddenly qualifies as a "black" man...) The race card is one that is always brought out by Africans when they lack valid arguments, and it has always been a standard ploy of Communist rhetoric. To Mandela's way of thinking, it is capitalist greed that is preventing a one-world U.N. Government - in February 2003 he was reported as saying:

"if there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America...Iraq produces 64 percent of the oil in the world. What Bush wants is to get hold of that oil."

Apart from displaying his Communist sentiments, Mandela here also reveals his ignorance of world economics - Iraq produces only 5% of world oil exports, not 64%. He also makes no mention of the huge debts of money that Iraq owes France, Germany and Russia, and that it is just possible that they are opposed to the war because they would like those debts paid. If Mandela's opposition to the United States comes as a surprise to some, or are dismissed as an expression of particularly strong feelings about the Iraq crisis, we should note that Mandela is nothing if not consistent. His views are always anti-American and pro-Communist, and always have been. In his book "The Struggle is My Life", a collection of his writings, we read in a piece dated 1958:

...the people of Asia and Africa have seen through the slanderous campaign conducted by the U.S.A. against the Socialist countries. They know that their independence is threatened not by any of the countries in the Socialist camp but by the U.S.A., who has surrounded their continent with military bases. The Communist bogey is an American stunt to distract the attention of the people of Africa from the real issue facing them, namely, American imperialism. (pp 76)

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* The full list of munitions and charges read as follows:

• One count under the South African Suppression of Communism Act No. 44 of 1950, charging that the accused committed acts calculated to further the achievement of the objective of communism;
• One count of contravening the South African Criminal Law Act (1953), which prohibits any person from soliciting or receiving any money or articles for the purpose of achieving organized defiance of laws and country; and
• Two counts of sabotage, committing or aiding or procuring the commission of the following acts:
1) The further recruitment of persons for instruction and training, both within and outside the Republic of South Africa, in: (a) the preparation, manufacture and use of explosives—for the purpose of committing acts of violence and destruction in the aforesaid Republic, (the preparation and manufacture of explo- sives, according to evidence submitted, included 210,000 hand grenades, 48,000 anti-personnel mines, 1,500 time devices, 144 tons of ammonium nitrate, 21.6 tons of aluminum powder and a ton of black powder); (b) the art of warfare, including guerrilla warfare, and military training generally for the purpose in the aforesaid Republic; (ii) Further acts of violence and destruction, (this includes 193 counts of terrorism committed between 1961 and 1963);
(iii) Acts of guerrilla warfare in the aforesaid Republic;
(iv) Acts of assistance to military units of foreign countries when involving the aforesaid Republic;
(v) Acts of participation in a violent revolution in the aforesaid Republic, whereby the accused, injured, damaged, destroyed, rendered useless or unserviceable, put out of action, obstructed, with or endangered:

• (a) the health or safety of the public;
• (b) the maintenance of law and order;
• (c) the supply and distribution of light, power or fuel;
• (d) postal, telephone or telegraph installations;
• (e) the free movement of traffic on land; and
• (f) the property, movable or immovable, of other persons or of the state.

Source: The State v. Nelson Mandela et al, Supreme Court of South Africa, Transvaal Provincial Division, 1963-1964, Indictment.

 

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[dfwgator]

The fact that SA has maintained a favorable business climate over the last few decades is remarkable, all things considered, and it’s mostly stems from his decision to set a more moderate tone despite the fact that ANC had the power to do anything they liked.

They still need to answer for the Vuvuzela.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Well now that Mandela has passed off the scene, what will happen next. I hope it isn’t just riots. That’s the trouble with a small-s savior who makes himself an idol instead of pointing to God. Once he’s off the mortal coil... vacuum city.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Oh that horn is such an abomination isn’t it.

[jocon307]

RIP Nelson Mandela - I hope all h*ll doesn’t break out in the wake of your death. (Ha, no pun intended.)

[HiTech RedNeck]

God is not nonsense, and to flout God is nonsense and foolish. We of course should be glad that God did not let the situation fail as bad as Zimbabwe had. Nonetheless to deify Mandela is wrong too. That kind of allegiance only belongs to God. With Mandela’s being gone, comes the acid test of his legacy. If it fails, it’s at least in part because he did not emphasize God enough.

[a fool in paradise]

I cannot find the article I saw just last month from a British source (BBC? Guardian?) that had Tutu criticizing the ANC and Mandela.

I do offer up this:

Troubled South Africa Debates Impact of White Rule
AP ^ | April 12, 2013 | CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3007539/posts
Few South Africans have the moral stature of retired archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who campaigned against apartheid and now laments the crime and inequality that plague the nation two decades after it cast off racist white rule.

“We can’t pretend we have remained at the same heights and that’s why I say please, for goodness’ sake, recover the spirit that made us great,” Tutu said. “Very simply, we are aware we’ve become one of the most violent societies. It’s not what we were, even under apartheid.”

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We are being overrun with a bunch of revisionist history on the web today to establish a new Camelot. Mythical. “EVERYBODY” loved each other. Bury their disputes. Bury their atrocities. Bury their hypocrisy.

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We are being overrun with a bunch of revisionist history on the web today to establish a new Camelot. Mythical.

[Cousin Eddie]

Best post I’ve seen in quite some time. Spot on!

[IbJensen]

South Africa, with America moving up from behind, has been turned into a dump.

60% of the populace (those that can read and write, that is) have stated they wished a return to the minority government.

With the exception of the Zulus, most of those living in and around J’burg are illegal aliens.

South Africa is another Zimbabwe. The current president, Zuma, is a dyed-in-the-wool communist.

[aumrl]

Now mort56
Don’t you know Ian Smith was the George Washington of Rhodesia ?
Certainly has thrived after his departure.....
Jus sayin

[BatGuano]

Was that the rubber tire version? He was a murderer and so was Winnie. No sadness here at the ranch.