[BartSimpson]

Xort Xort:

Feel free to remember Mr. Mandela as an effective leader, remember him as a popular head of state, remember him as someone that changed the world.

But don't try and rewrite history to make him into a good person that did good things.
~
Just as a side note, who here has studied the life of Nelson Mandela? Take it down a level, who here has even just read the wiki on Mandela and South Africa?

If you haven't at least read a recounting of his personal history and the history of his nation but you have made a comment that he was a great man or a good guy, then maybe you should ask yourself if your statement means anything.

Very balanced. Mandela was a reformed terrorist who murdered and orchestrated the gruesome murders of whites, blacks, and 'coloreds' alike. While he should be recognized for the things he did and how he conducted himself after he left prison most people here should note that had they met him prior to his 1962 capture that they would have been unlikely to survive the encounter.

From Wiki (and this is pretty sanitized as it leaves out lots of gruesome details about Mandela's crimes):

$1:

Umkhonto we Sizwe and African tour: 1961–1962

The thatched room at Liliesleaf Farm, where Mandela hid
Disguising himself as a chauffeur, Mandela travelled the country incognito, organising the ANC's new cell structure and a mass stay-at-home strike for 29 May. Referred to as the "Black Pimpernel" in the press – a reference to Emma Orczy's 1905 novel The Scarlet Pimpernel – the police put out a warrant for his arrest.[97] Mandela held secret meetings with reporters, and after the government failed to prevent the strike, he warned them that many anti-apartheid activists would soon resort to violence through groups like the PAC's Poqo.[98] He believed that the ANC should form an armed group to channel some of this violence, convincing both ANC leader Albert Luthuli – who was morally opposed to violence – and allied activist groups of its necessity.[99]

Inspired by Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement in the Cuban Revolution, in 1961 Mandela co-founded Umkhonto we Sizwe ("Spear of the Nation", abbreviated MK) with Sisulu and the communist Joe Slovo. Becoming chairman of the militant group, he gained ideas from illegal literature on guerilla warfare by Mao and Che Guevara. Officially separate from the ANC, in later years MK became the group's armed wing.[100] Most early MK members were white communists; after hiding in communist Wolfie Kodesh's flat in Berea, Mandela moved to the communist-owned Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia, there joined by Raymond Mhlaba, Slovo and Bernstein, who put together the MK constitution.[101] Although Mandela himself denied ever being a Communist Party member, historical research has suggested that he might have been for a short period, starting from the late 1950s or early 1960s.[102] Operating through a cell structure, the MK agreed to acts of sabotage to exert maximum pressure on the government with minimum casualties, bombing military installations, power plants, telephone lines and transport links at night, when civilians were not present. Mandela noted that should these tactics fail, MK would resort to "guerilla warfare and terrorism."[103] Soon after ANC leader Luthuli was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the MK publicly announced its existence with 57 bombings on Dingane's Day (16 December) 1961, followed by further attacks on New Year's Eve.[104]

The ANC agreed to send Mandela as a delegate to the February 1962 Pan-African Freedom Movement for East, Central and Southern Africa (PAFMECSA) meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.[105] Traveling there in secret, Mandela met with Emperor Haile Selassie I, and gave his speech after Selaisse's at the conference.[106] After the conference, he travelled to Cairo, Egypt, admiring the political reforms of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, and then went to Tunis, Tunisia, where President Habib Bourguiba gave him £5000 for weaponry. He proceeded to Morocco, Mali, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Senegal, receiving funds from Liberian President William Tubman and Guinean President Ahmed Sékou Touré.[107] Leaving Africa for London, England, he met anti-apartheid activists, reporters and prominent leftist politicians.[108] Returning to Ethiopia, he began a six-month course in guerrilla warfare, but completed only two months before being recalled to South Africa.[109]

[Strutz]

Wolf1412 Wolf1412:

He spent 27 years in prison for his crimes. Sentenced to hard labour in the rock quarries. When release he could have continued his earlier attempts to bring about black equality through violence but didn't. In 1990 he was release a different man, a man of peace and reconciliation who brought about the end of apartheid and elected president in 94. He served only one term and stepped aside not looking for power but happy with his attempt to raise the Rainbow Nation.

Is South Africa perfect today? no! but it is a young nation, just a teenager in the world. Hatred still exsists both with the whites and the blacks, no one group is to blame. I have read a number of misinformed ignorant posts in this thread.

But don't take my word for it I only live in Pretoria and am preparing for the State Funeral.

Good of you to share your view.


Rest in Peace Mr. Mandela

[Thanos]

As opposed to the IRA, the Palestinian groups, and the Islamists of today, the ANC did make the effort to not deliberately target civilians. Them shooting up a school the way the Taliban does, or blowing up crowded pubs or Remembrance Day ceremonies the way the IRA did, was unheard of and really testified to Mandela's ability to control and neuter the really dangerous radicals.

The fall of Communism at the same time as the end of apartheid was probably instrumental to the transition in SA being mostly peaceful. With no financing, training, or weapons being supplied by the Soviets, and with the Chinese apparently being uninterested in the region at the time, the radicals couldn't depend on much outside support if they wanted to make a more violent attempt at ethnically cleansing the whites. Who knows what might have happened if a much stronger outside Communist benefactor had been on the scene to embolden the ANC hardliners.

[Jabberwalker]

... kind of reminds me of that Nobel Peace Prize winner Menachem Begin, who led the Irgun terrorist organization in Trans-Jordan before Israeli independence. Begin ordered the bombing of the British administrative and military headquarters at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem that killed 91 people.

[Zipperfish]

Wolf1412 Wolf1412:

He spent 27 years in prison for his crimes. Sentenced to hard labour in the rock quarries. When release he could have continued his earlier attempts to bring about black equality through violence but didn't. In 1990 he was release a different man, a man of peace and reconciliation who brought about the end of apartheid and elected president in 94. He served only one term and stepped aside not looking for power but happy with his attempt to raise the Rainbow Nation.

Is South Africa perfect today? no! but it is a young nation, just a teenager in the world. Hatred still exsists both with the whites and the blacks, no one group is to blame. I have read a number of misinformed ignorant posts in this thread.

But don't take my word for it I only live in Pretoria and am preparing for the State Funeral.

Thanks for that!

[BartSimpson]

Thanos Thanos:

As opposed to the IRA, the Palestinian groups, and the Islamists of today, the ANC did make the effort to not deliberately target civilians.

20 May 1983 (BBC):

$1:

At least 16 people have been killed and more than 130 people injured in a car bomb explosion in South Africa's capital city, Pretoria.
The explosion happened outside the Nedbank Square building on Church Street at about 1630 hours - the height of the city's rush hour.

More than 20 ambulances attended the scene and took the dead and injured to three hospitals in and around Pretoria.

Police sealed off the surrounding area with a barbed-wire fence as emergency personnel sifted through the rubble looking for bodies.

Bomb disposal experts were called to the scene to search for a possible second bomb.

The outlawed anti-apartheid group the African National Congress has been blamed for the attack.

Bled to death

A huge pall of smoke rose hundreds of feet into the air as debris and bodies were strewn around the scene of the explosion.

It is understood the bomb had been placed in a blue Alfa Romeo car outside the multi-storey building, which houses the South African air force headquarters.

It exploded at the height of the city's rush-hour as hundreds of people were leaving work for the weekend.

Glass and metal were catapulted into the air as shop-fronts and windows were blown out.

Many passers-by had limbs amputated by the flying debris. Others bled to death.

South Africa's Minister for Law and Order, Louis le Grange, who visited the scene immediately, blamed the attack on the ANC.

He said: "I have no doubt who is responsible for this despicable attack."

He said the explosion was the "biggest and ugliest" terrorist incident since anti-government violence began in South Africa 20 years ago.

He added: "Most of the victims were civilians, but some were air force personnel in uniform, black and white. Quite a number of those killed were black.

The ANC is committed to overthrowing the minority white government.

Oliver Tambo, who is the organisation's acting president while its senior figure, Nelson Mandela, is in prison, said the Nedbank Square building was a legitimate target, although he did not admit carrying out the attack.

General Mike Gedenhuys, Police Commissioner, said: "Many of the victims are so badly mutilated they have not yet been identified."

General Magnus Malan, South African's defence minister, described the explosion as a "cowardly, criminal deed in the Communist war being raged against South Africa".

He said more than 40,000 civilians had died as a result of terrorism in the past five years in Africa and 83,000 armed men had died.

South Africa has nearly five million whites, 21 million blacks, nearly one million Indians and about 2.5 million people of mixed race.

The government's apartheid system denies citizenship rights to black people except in 10 remote homelands.

The ANC has warned it intends to step up its campaign to bring an end to white minority rule.

The ANC was and is no better than the bombers at the Boston Marathon.

[martin14]

Thanos Thanos:

As opposed to the IRA, the Palestinian groups, and the Islamists of today, the ANC did make the effort to not deliberately target civilians. Them shooting up a school the way the Taliban does, or blowing up crowded pubs or

Exactly who are you trying to bamboozle with your BS ?



People who don't know any better, or people like yourself desperate to paint
this gang of terrorists as a bunch of saints ?

Church_Street_bombing

Magoo Bar bombing

Johannesburg Magistrate court bomb

Pick 'n Pay supermarket in Durban
http://articles.latimes.com/1986-09-02/ ... upermarket

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

bank in Roodepoort in 1988
"Wimpy Bar" fast food outlets

Soviet landmines in the 80's, todays IEDS.



Sure Thanos, sure.
Keep posting your ignorant crap.



Oh, I know, let's have a sing along with Nelson, his buddy Jacob Zuma, and
others singing

"Let's kill the Boers (white farmers)"





Mandela gets rockin' about 1:30 in..

[Thanos]

Oh go to hell already, you black-hearted Ustace prick.

[BartSimpson]

Thanos Thanos:

Oh go to hell already, you black-hearted Ustace prick.

Martin is a Croat? I had no idea.

Makes me like him all the more.

[CanadianJeff]

Sad to see such an honest and kind hero go but at 95 he lived a long life.

RIP Mandela.

[BRAH]

Remember it's about Mandela.

[Zipperfish]

Nelson Mandela: World leaders pay tribute

$1:

Tributes from around the world have been pouring in following the death of South African leader and legend Nelson Mandela.


"He achieved more than could be expected of any man and today he’s gone home," U.S. President Barack Obama said. "We've lost one of the most influential, courageous and profoundly good human beings that any of us will ever share time with on this earth. He no longer belongs to us. He belongs to the ages.”

Crowds gathered outside Mandela's home in Johannesburg, some dancing and singing in honour of the anti-apartheid icon.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said "a great light has gone out in the world."

French President ​François Hollande said Mandela's message will continue to "inspire fighters for freedom, and to give confidence to peoples in the defence of just causes and universal rights."

Former South African President F.W. de Klerk, who had reached an agreement with Mandela to end apartheid and hold elections, told CNN that Mandela was a "great unifier and a very, very special man in this regard beyond everything else he did. This emphasis on reconciliation was his biggest legacy."

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said that "the world has lost one of its great moral leaders and statesmen."

​South African President Jacob Zuma, who announced Mandela's death, said that the nation "has lost its greatest son. Our people have lost a father."

Former U.S. presidents also reacted to Mandela's death. George W. Bush said Mandela was "one of the great forces for freedom and equality of our time." Meanwhile, Bill Clinton tweeted that "I will never forget my friend Madiba."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed Mandela as one of the "most honourable figures of our time."

"He was the father of his people, a man of vision, a freedom fighter who rejected violence."

Mandela was a "man of quiet dignity and towering achievement," UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said, adding he was a "giant for justice and a down-to-earth human inspiration."

The UN Security Council interrupted a meeting on the tribunals for former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and stood for a minute in silent tribute to Mandela.

Argentina's UN Ambassador Maria Cristina Perceval called Mandela "a man who gave hope to the entire world."

"Good men and women, men such as Mandela, resisted and taught us to resist fear … to resist oblivion," she said.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Mandela "made racism everywhere not just immoral but stupid; something not only to be disagreed with, but to be despised. In its place he put the inalienable right of all humankind to be free and to be equal."

[BartSimpson]

BRAH BRAH:

Remember it's about Mandela.

Nope! Everything that happens in the world is all about our Narcissist-in-Chief...

http://floppingaces.net/2013/12/06/obam ... ion-of-me/

[BRAH]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

BRAH BRAH:

Remember it's about Mandela.

Nope! Everything that happens in the world is all about our Narcissist-in-Chief...

http://floppingaces.net/2013/12/06/obam ... ion-of-me/

Indeed!

[xerxes]

I suppose the point would be lost on you both that Mandela was a source of inspiration for your president. But no. Everythingn Obama does is bad by default.

$1:

Like many people around the world, I came to know of Nelson Mandela from a distance, when he was imprisoned on Robben Island. To so many of us, he was more than just a man – he was a symbol of the struggle for justice, equality, and dignity in South Africa and around the globe. His sacrifice was so great that it called upon people everywhere to do what they could on behalf of human progress.
In the most modest of ways, I was one of those people who tried to answer his call. The first time that I became politically active was during my college years, when I joined a campaign on behalf of divestment, and the effort to end apartheid in South Africa. None of the personal obstacles that I faced as a young man could compare to what the victims of apartheid experienced every day, and I could only imagine the courage that had led Mandela to occupy that prison cell for so many years. But his example helped awaken me to the wider world, and the obligation that we all have to stand up for what is right. Through his choices, Mandela made it clear that we did not have to accept the world as it is – that we could do our part to seek the world as it should be.
Over the years, I continued to watch Nelson Mandela with a sense of admiration and humility, inspired by the sense of possibility that his own life demonstrated and awed by the sacrifices necessary to achieve his dream of justice and equality. Indeed, his life tells a story that stands in direct opposition to the cynicism and hopelessness that so often afflicts our world. A prisoner became a free man; a liberation figure became a passionate voice for reconciliation; a party leader became a president who advanced democracy and development. Out of formal office, Mandela continued to work for equality, opportunity and human dignity. He has done so much to change his country, and the world, that it is hard to imagine the history of the last several decades without him.
A little more than two decades after I made my first foray into political life and the divestment movement as a college student in California, I stood in Mandela's former cell in Robben Island. I was a newly elected United States senator. By then, the cell had been transformed from a prison to a monument to the sacrifice that was made by so many on behalf of South Africa's peaceful transformation. Standing there in that cell, I tried to transport myself back to those days when President Mandela was still Prisoner 466/64 – a time when the success of his struggle was by no means a certainty. I tried to imagine Mandela – the legend who had changed history – as Mandela the man who had sacrificed so much for change.
The story told by Mandela's life is not one of infallible human beings and inevitable triumph. It is the story of a man who was willing to risk his own life for what he believed in, and who worked hard to lead the kind of life that would make the world a better place.
In the end, that is Mandela's message to each of us. All of us face days when it can seem like change is hard – days when our opposition and our own imperfections may tempt us to take an easier path that avoids our responsibilities to one another. Mandela faced those days as well. But even when little sunlight shined into that Robben Island cell, he could see a better future – one worthy of sacrifice. Even when faced with the temptation to seek revenge, he saw the need for reconciliation, and the triumph of principle over mere power. Even when he had earned his rest, he still sought to inspire his fellow men and women to service.
Prior to my election as president of the United States, I had the great privilege of meeting Mandela, and since taking office I have spoken with him occasionally by phone. The conversations are usually brief – he was in the twilight of his years, and I am faced with the busy schedule that comes with my office. But always, in those conversations, there were moments when the kindness, and generosity, and wisdom of the man shone through. Those are the moments when I was reminded that underneath the history that has been made, there was a human being who chose hope over fear – progress over the prisons of the past. And I was reminded that even as he became a legend, to know the man – Nelson Mandela – was to respect him even more.

Barack Obama

.