Plan B Forum

(CNN) -- 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.

Not a shock, but still saddening.

Such a life, such a great statesman.

I'm sad, that one of the lights of the world has gone out.

Truly one of the greatest of the great, and one Nobel laureate who truly earned that honor.

Requiescat in pace.

I'm sure liberty has a theory on how he was a commie.

"No-one is born hating another person for the colour of his skin or his background or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite."

RIP Mr Mandela.

I believe that the role Mandela played after his 27 years on Robbins Island , is what makes him a towering figure...

Prior to that he was a "pro-Soviet left-wing agitator"...

And there was no way that the White Minority Government in Pretoria would negociate with such a person...

Once Mr. Mandela was released from prison, (after the collapse of the Soviet Union...thank you, Mr. Reagan) he was still getting his bearings about how much the world had changed...

I remember, shortly after he was released, Mandela saying how much he wanted to thank Fidel Castro...

(Apparently he hadn't gotten the memo....)

But despite this, he rose above this kind of out-of touch-initial reaction, and the personal anger he might quite legitimately have used as a guiding compass, and he pivoted away from it to make peace with his former enemies...

And to reach the peace he reached with FW De Clerk...

And to put endless rounds of recrimination behind them with the "Truth and Reconciliation Commission"; where there could be an airing of the history without fear of retribution...

South Africa's path to a functioning democracy has not been an easy one, (and it's still a long way from completion; corruption is rampant within the ANC...We'll know that South Africa has achieved a truly fully developed functioning democratic system when power passes peacefully from the ANC, to another Party...(Just as democracy was truly achieved in Mexico when power finally passed peacefully from the PRI) but it's got a lot better shot at success then a place like Zimbabwe because of the influence of a man like Nelson Mandela....

All the Aussie and England cricketers are wearing black armbands.

"Now he belongs to the ages" as Stanton said of Lincoln. It's true that Mandela was, among other things, a dues-paying member of the SACP, a terrorist and some other unpleasant things in his youth (which as you know in South Africa refers to the period between 1 hour old and about 35-36 years of age). Prison was (I guess) good for him and good for the entire country as it turned out. No-one else could have done what he did in the late eighties and the nineties. No-one else had the credibility to push for reconciliation, for forgiveness, for a peaceful transition. He was one of the few who recognised that the legacy of colonialism and apartheid could as well be a prosperous and viable infrastructure as an opportunity for looting and decay - he chose the first route for the sake of all his people. One of the most shameful episodes of ANC history occurred when the ANC hotheads booed the retired statesman from the conference stage during the Mbeki/Zuma struggle. Heaven only knows what will happen here if the Zuma/Malema/Kunene thugs feel excused and released from any allegiance at all to the Mandela-inspired past. We shall see.



Is this any guide or just a vastly slanted take because Zuma is here and a poor comparison to the sainted Mandela? Mbeki's home figure doesn't include R90 million spent on a wall so he's really sandwiched between Nelson and Jacob. Except that Mandela's costs are vastly understated, failing to include costs on his many other houses.

The difference is that Mandela is the messiah of this sick country, a saint descended from heaven, the little angel himself, so no one would ever dare say anything bad about him now would they?

Personally I think that the R32 million spent on Mandela's home at the time, together with the ridiculous amounts of money spent on the preparations for his spectacular funeral yet to come, and the R103 million spent on Mbeki's home were much more compared to the R215-million spent on Nkandla Zuma's palace. In 19 years the SA Rand has weakened from R3.41 to R10.40. So how much was the R236,000 spent on that de Klerk chap's home that time, compared to R215 million today?

All the presidents, saint Mandela included, sucked us dry, while Zuma just made the news, because he is in the firing line, while the spending on the others went by unnoticed and unchallenged.

http://toxinews.blogspot.com/2013/11/di ... -cost.html

It will be a long time before a truthful biography of Nelson Mandela can be written and published (if ever). But in the end nothing can take away his majority role in the peaceful move into democracy - right man, right time.

Meade

The worst of it I think, was Winnie Mandela...

A sadistic sociopath who delighted in having burning tires thrown around the necks of teenage boys...

A sick woman, so depraved that even Nelson wound up denouncing her...

glass half full or half empty ... did Mandela live so long because of prison or in spite of it

An extraordinary man.

And the arc of his life was consistently in the right. When the whites were waging a systematic war of slaughter, torture, and oppression against blacks he saw that only armed resistance was possible. It was the choice forced upon him by an enemy who had given him no others. Saying he was a 'terrorist' is just mindless name-calling; like calling the Warsaw Ghetto uprising a 'terrorist' act.

Renouncing violence against an enemy who, at that moment, is throwing your children into the fires of Moloch is the act of a coward or someone who is morally confused. Not the act of a moral leader.

He paid a heavy price for his moral correctness and certitude by refusing to be released from prison under terms that required him to renounce violence while the Whites continued to use it against them and terms that outlawed the ANC. The whites tried to corrupt him by bribing him with his own freedom, after > 20 years in prison, and he refused. He refused not knowing the future, he refused not knowing that he would not die in prison, he refused after having already grown old suffering unrelieved injustice. This is Jesus in the wilderness refusing temptation. That is a great leader.

He did not 'become' a great man after he went to prison, he was great already, he was not turned away from doing the right thing no matter what the inducements were, this was the expression of his character not the creating of it. He had proven he was willing to die for what was right before prison. This is the common standard for heroic courage. And he went far beyond it. Lets keep the facts in mind.



yrs,
rubato

Farewell to one of the greatest; someone who clearly rose above his own interest to look out for the interest of all (or at least of the oppressed). And I have to agree with rubato, his time in prison didn't make him great, it confirmed his greatness. While he had some flirtations with the strange bedfellows the politics of the time pushed him to associate with, he stood firmly on the side of principle, refusing to back down. And after his conduct in prison, there is no way the Pretoria government could have refused to negotiate with him. Rest in Peace.

What rubato and BigRR said.

We could all learn from, and be improved by, Mandela's capacity for peace and forgiveness.

Although initially committed to non-violent protest, he co-founded the militant Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) in 1961 in association with the South African Communist Party,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mandela

“As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison.”

― Nelson Mandela

It is that latter part, not the former, that made Mandela a great and transformational figure.

Yes, let's keep the facts in mind...

Personally, I think one of Mandela's greatest strengths was his capacity to know when to fight and when to try and negotiate. One does not achieve much negotiating from a point of weakness, nor does one often successfully take on a strong government by acts of violence alone; usually, one needs both. I remember seeing Ralph Abernathy during the 60s saying something along the lines "Yes, jesus taught us to turn the other cheek; but he didn't say what to do when you get hit on that cheek as well. I say you get back up and kick the hell out of the man striking you twice."

But Mandela didn't act out of personal animosity, he acted in the best interests of the people he represented; and when he got out of prison, he knew it was time to negotiate, and he chose not to seek personal retribution, though I wouldn't blame him if he had.

I celebrate him for having the courage to stand up to his oppressors before and after his imprisonment, and for having the wisdom to know when he was nearing victory, and how to achieve it.

One does not achieve much negotiating from a point of weakness

Gee Big RR, whenever I've made precisely that point in reference Mr. Reagan's defense restoration in the early 80's followed by his subsequent bold (and successful) arms reduction negotiations, I haven't seen you as being notably impressed with my argument...

The fact of the matter is that from the late 1950's to the late 1980's left wing guerrilla fighters were a dime a dozen...

What distinguished Mandela wasn't what he was; it was what he became....

Because he refused to engage in retribution or large scale expropriations, South Africa, while hardly a garden spot, (Mandela himself was not a great administrator, and some of his successors have been corrupt and/or crazy) has managed to avoid the economic ruin and systematic brutality of many of its neighbors.( like Zimbabwe)

It took a man with the strength of character to be able to rise above his prior experiences and move forward to achieve that.

Well Jim, as you celebrate what he became, I won't argue with you as it is certainly worth celebrating. As for the rest, we can just disagree. He wasn't a perfect man by any means, but I think we can agree he achieved the accolades of greatness.

And as for Reagan, I'll just leave it alone as I do not want to derail this thread, if for no other reason, then for respect to the memory of Mr. Mandela. He deserves a thread of his own.

BBC news is reporting that the Dyslexia Association of South Africa (DASA) have mistakenly laid a wreath outside the Nissan Main Dealer in Durban.

Your coat is over there Gob