View Full Version : Nelson Mandela
The light of tolerance shines a little less bright tonight.
David Banks
06-Dec-13, 02:36
Today, I am going to wear my Mandela shirt, which is much more colourful than I would normally choose to wear. I bought it in Shelly Beach, South Africa which is up the coast a bit from Mthatha. It may help me to find the right words.
I bought it on a visit to see my sister who has lived in that country since the late 60's. I am extremely proud of her being one of the few white-skinned migrants who did not flee the country after Mandela's release from jail. She is still there.
My sister emailed me:
The people have been celebrating his life . You will have seen the ”African” way of dealing with his death on TV .
All of us living here in SA owe him so much.
Alice in Blunderland
06-Dec-13, 03:52
A truly inspirational person.
Ballymore
06-Dec-13, 12:48
Nelson Mandela - a man who could forgive and let bygones be bygones. Wish there were more of his kind in the world.
Dr Maya Angelou, Still I Rise,
Read on Nelson Mandela’s inauguration:
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
A remarkable , dignified, forgiving man ..A true leader. r.i.p. Nelson Mandela
Hey doesn`t Golach usually do these posts?
Ian Thomas
07-Dec-13, 16:09
Has everyone forgotten all the innocent women and children hacked to death under the name of ANC? I'm sure everyone of them thinks kindly of mandella and the anc.
Has everyone forgotten all the innocent women and children hacked to death under the name of ANC? I'm sure everyone of them thinks kindly of mandella and the anc.
Probably as much as we have ever thought of the innocent women and chil;dren hacked to death to spread the likes of Christianity, Islam, the British Empire and Western Style Democracy...and enrich companies?
If we were to judge people on what they did, conspired to do, turned a blind eye to, tacitly approved on the way up (and often continued when they arrived)......then we'd have no leaders left at all..which might not be such a bad a thing.
Maybe he learned from his mistakes..and changed......like Israel's leaders have (not) after their terrorist activities in the past :roll:. You think the mistakes of Iraq and Afghanistan are going to teach our leaders anything?
Ian Thomas
07-Dec-13, 17:54
No leaders don't learn they just try to brush over things and the media brain washes people into accepting anything. Violence is wrong in every respect and SHOULD be remembered so that these mistakes can't be made again. Mandella ISN'T a hero, he was a terrorist and the ONLY thing he and the ANC did for south Africa was to turn it from a self dependant country into the aids capitol of the world and the most violent cities in the world that can't feed themselves so depend on hand outs from other countries. I saw babies that had been burnt alive and women raped to death, all in the name of 'finding freedom'! So let's not have any more of this pathetic wailing for a terrorist who only ever did one good thing in his life and that was to die.
Ian Thomas
07-Dec-13, 17:55
complete rubbish
Blimey I wondered how long it would take for this to go south.
No leaders don't learn they just try to brush over things and the media brain washes people into accepting anything. Violence is wrong in every respect and SHOULD be remembered so that these mistakes can't be made again. Mandella ISN'T a hero, he was a terrorist and the ONLY thing he and the ANC did for south Africa was to turn it from a self dependant country into the aids capitol of the world and the most violent cities in the world that can't feed themselves so depend on hand outs from other countries. I saw babies that had been burnt alive and women raped to death, all in the name of 'finding freedom'! So let's not have any more of this pathetic wailing for a terrorist who only ever did one good thing in his life and that was to die.
That's not really the case. Violence is not necessarily wrong in certain circumstances if there is no other way to be heard, particularly in the days when there was no democracy of any kind.....the responsibility for fomenting violence is very often that of deaf Governments who want things to carry on as they always have..because they are in charge and liking it.
Apartheid was wrong......I thought so in the sixties, and I think it just as wrong now the way it is being practised in Israel and the Palestinian Territories...a situation we tacitly (and sometimes vocally) approve. South Africa was a self dependent country for the white population......but not for the non-white population from whom we and the Dutch stole the land for its resources. The whites in South Africa were the BNP/EDL of their time...and the non-whites were barely educated....and we whites have to bear the blame for that fact as well. I'd like to say that the lack of education was what has fueled the corruption and incompetence of many of the South African politicians...but I'm inclined to think it is because they are as greedy as many of the white ones..and work on the "I'll get as much as I can for myself and my friends first" principle..though it does show that Western politicians make good teachers.
If I didn't live in Scotland in 2013, at a time when we can seek to acquire our right to Independence, if the majority agree, through a political process..... but if I lived in the Palestinian Occupied Territories with no voice...or had lived in a bantustan in South Africa, in the eighties, with no voice...in Palestine after WWII, with no voice...in Ireland, in the twenties, with no voice...or in Scotland in the early 18th Century, with no voice etc...I'd have been/be fighting for fairness, equity and/or freedom....and in the process, if innocents got killed.....well..as Governments always tell us..civilian deaths are collateral damage..if the sheeples let that work for them to excuse the killing of innocents to justify Iraq, Afghanistan and all the wars the UK has been involved in since WWII.....why isn't it an excuse for everybody with an axe to grind?
I think the biggest pity is the fact.......and it is a fact....that as Lord Acton said "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.".......and for the last few hundred years, many if not most of our, and most countries', "great men" have been bad men, if you were only to consider how they got to the position of achieving their "greatness". You should judge an individual on his/her whole life...not just on the part which goes against your grain.
Ian Thomas
08-Dec-13, 10:11
While I accept, in principle, your comments and agree with a lot of them, bomber Harris and his fire bombing of innocent people, Churchill and his sending a 100,000 Canadians to their death as a gesture etc; etc; there are loads of examples we can both give. I also agree that apartheid was and is wrong, it just gets my goat the way people carry on about mandella being a hero, because he wasn't in any sense. He and the anc got rid of apartheid, but in the process effectively killed of South Africa and their actions have now reduced a country, a wonderful country at that, to nothing less than a cess pit. Farms were forcibly taken and the white farmers, and in many cases their black workers, were killed in the most horrific manners. The farms were divided up into smaller lots and 'given to the people' who promptly left them to rot, crops as well! Now the South Africans have their freedom but live in abject poverty and fear, both for the future and the violence that is an everyday affair. Young girls, barely into double figures of age are raped and nothing is done, people are killed every day and nothing is done, but they have their freedom!
I lived in South Africa when apartheid was the norm, and yes there were restrictions on the blacks, however the vast majority were happy and not only that but there even educational programmes for some. The anc and mandella promised all sorts of things, which the blacks believed, but like all politicians, they lied. I knew blacks that didn't want 'freedom' and yes you can argue that change can be a scary thing and that was the reason. However the reality is that all African countries are split into warring factions that go back hundreds of years and no matter what happens they will NEVER get along and this is still true. The shanty towns that have sprung up in South Africa are proof of this fact, because they have gangs from different factions roaming around attacking anyone that doesn't belong to their tribe etc.
As for using Scotland as an example, well while I agree that what the English did was terrible and inexcusable in every way, it is rather different. England exploited Scotland and the people because basically they were afraid of the war like nature of the Scottish people. Let's face it, you guys never give up and indeed won out in the end, more power to you. Also now you have a chanc
to Ian Thomas, from 1961 to 1963 I worked as a Steward on the RMS Windsor Castle running from UK to Suid Afrika, and saw apartheid in operation. Cape Town IMO one of the most beautiful cities on the world, with yellow lines on the pavements, Non whites of the outside, whites on the inside. The public transport segregated etc etc I could go on and on.
As a Waiter we would have 2 sittings for all meals, no mixing of the races, and would often be asked by Afrkiaaners, how can a white man like you serve food to those Kaffers, you are better than them, our standard reply was, those people you talk of pay the same fare as you, and tip better, I do not like Yarpies
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