On the death of any seemingly much loved husband, father, grandfather (and great-grandfather?) condolences are very much in order for the bereaved family. On this basis I would wish to add my condolences to the Mandela family.
However the reception of the not unexpected news that Nelson Mandela after quite a long illness and well into his 90’s had now died was overblown by all the media generally, but especially ridiculously so by the BBC.
Nelson Mandela was of course a great man not only as Leader of the ANC and President of South Africa, but also as a world figure, but I do question whether he was the greatest man of the 20th Century as at least one commentator burbled? I certainly think not.
In terms of secular sainthood we should remember that he was responsible for various deaths and convicted of terrorist offences in South Africa. I suspect that he would have been convicted on the same facts in a British court as well.
It is certainly true that his crimes were politically motived by his opposition to the apartheid regime in South Africa, but nevertheless there was blood on his hands. This puts him in sharp distinction to another figure that he has been compared with and, in my opinion, a much greater figure, namely Mahatma Gandhi. Mandela also did not have world impact of somebody like Churchill in the 20th Century. Nor can he be compared in stature as a historical figure against some of the bad men of the 20th Century, Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tsi-Tung, Pol Pot. Nevertheless it is proper to say that, in the context of South Africa, he is an important and great man.
The news reporting that I read and heard seems entirely to ignore the role played in a peaceful transition from apartheid to ANC rule by President of South Africa, President de Klerk. De Klerk was after all as important in enabling a peaceful transfer of power as Nelson Mandela himself. No doubt the whole process of peace talks had been going on for a long time before Nelson Mandela was released from prison and it may have happened on the footing that there was going to be a peace process.
Nevertheless Nelson Mandela deserves great credit for the peaceful transfer and the emergence of largely a peaceful nation although not as a successful and peaceful as made out by the media, given the large numbers of murders and rapes and general civic and criminal mayhem that is occurring in South Africa.
Nelson Mandela’s outstanding qualities are most vividly revealed by comparison to any other black African politician.
Compare him for example with the Leader of the opposition to white rule in Rhodesia and what has happened since with the now President Robert Mugabe of what is now Zimbabwe and you will immediately see that as against the appalling standard of most black Africa’s leadership, Nelson Mandela stands out as a relative beacon of hope for humanity.
But secular saint? Sorry, no I don’t think so, but what do you think?
He has been elevated as a plaster saint owing to the lefts desperation to find some African leader with a modicum of self restraint and principle. He was a good rebel but a poor leader. The results of his presidency were mixed and the remnants of the civil society produced by the Boers has been ripped to tatters. His legacy for South Africa, should one wish to examine it impartially would not reflect well if the leftist agenda did not resolutely ignore the facts
ReplyDeleteYer wha?
DeleteHe was responsible for certain deaths, Indirectly or directly ?
ReplyDeleteMother/daughter passengers , Bombing of a railway station.
He was HELL a great man. He was a terrorist and should have been executed 40 years ago. When he governed the SA economy went down,
ReplyDeletethe productive part of society was marginalised or in the case of farmers,
4000 were murdered, that is WHITE farmers, the most productive group in
the country. That led to Mbeki, another racist shithead. And now they have
Zuma, a total emptyhead. The more interesting part of the discussion is not Mandela but DeKlerk, and how much that traitor was paid to hand over
control to a bunch of totsis.
All this fuss about the death from old age of a foreign terrorist is total
ReplyDeletenonsense and nothing to do with our situation here in the EUK.
Sorry Alfred 99 but I have been watching tv again. No mention of Putin attending the mass hysteria events in South Africa. Perhaps he wants to distance himself from what the Soviets did there. The Russians don't seem to be impressed although spouting the usual mantras.
ReplyDeleteHowever, Russia Today's Paula Slier, who sounds like a South African herself, has been reporting on the fact that Mandela let in refugees from all over Africa and the blacks now want to kick them out. No refugees from the North went there in the apartheid days. If I remember correctly a large number of South Africa's blacks have arrived since the Europeans in the 17th century.
The other item Paula covered was about the blacks now wanting the whites' money; don't know how unless they are suggesting massive taxation of the whites. Mandela was smart enough to know that this would drive out the remaining whites from the country and he would be left with another Zimbabwe. What happens in South Africa from now on will decide the fate of whites worldwide whom the Marxists are reducing to racial minorities in what used to be their own countries.
As for the white farmers, if they kill them all then who do they think is going to grow the food to feed them. I return again to Rhodesia the erstwhile breadbasket of Africa. White birthrates are falling worldwide in order to protect the planet whilst non-whites, with the exception of the Japanese are booming. Non-whites are expanding and colonising white areas with the help of the Marxists and the psychopathic plutocracy. The Japanese and Europeans have the highest iqs in the world and if they vanish then we risk a world that is akin to present day Africa. South America and South Asia. But any discussion of this has been rendered taboo by the infantile Marxists. Nice to see that Peter Hain is at last seeing the truth though.
Mandela was a Mau Mau terrorist, over 1000 blacks were necklaced with burning rubber tyres.
ReplyDeleteEven his wife was found guilty of murder, Stompie a 12 year old boy was mutilated and murdered by Winnie, yet she never went to prison.
So much for being equal.
68 thousand White farmers were brutally murdered for no reason, except they were farmers in a land they loved.
There was no uproar in the MSM, it was kept quiet, like they do.