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Mandela reminds us that it's possible for a single man to create peace amidst a huge push for war. Forgiveness is the first step in changing a society, without

• mathieuh 13y ago
  Do not allow liberals to sanitise history. Mandela was a symbol of non-peaceful resistance and of the progress that it can bring.
  • gadders 13y ago
    Do not allow liberals to do anything. Safer that way.
    • warfangle 13y ago
      Do not allow anyone to do anything. Safer that way. /reductio-ad-fascism
      • gadders 13y ago
        Ha ha. Fair point.
    • pyrocat 13y ago
      U.S. GOP strategy summed up right there.
      • gadders 13y ago
        You say it like it's a bad thing.
        • aeturnum 13y ago
          Regardless of the success of one side's v.s. the other side's policies, a system which seeks to prevent either political "side" from accomplishing anything can hardly be called democratic. Only by honestly attempting mutually exclusive policies can we discover their efficacy in the real world. I think your eagerness to see a substantial proportion of the population lose their political agency to be far more disturbing than any particular political issue.
        • dinkumthinkum 13y ago
          Oh, some may want to remain neutral but I assure you, it is a bad thing. I found one of your compatriots on C-SPAN the other day, a member of House, saying he thought the solution to the Iranian problem is a series of "small" tactical nuclear strikes. Sounds like a winner party you have there. http://santee.patch.com/groups/politics-and-elections/p/duncan-hunter-suggests-preemptive-nuclear-strike-on-iran http://santee.patch.com/groups/politics-and-elections/p/dunc...
  • SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago
    > Mandela was a symbol of non-peaceful resistance Yes, and: "Umkhonto we Sizwe (translated as "Spear of the Nation") was the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC), co-founded by Nelson Mandela, fought against the South African government.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umkhonto_we_Sizwe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umkhonto_we_Sizwe Indeed, let's not allow anyone to sanitise history. It's a fact that Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and PW Botha all called him a terrorist.
    • cm2012 13y ago
      While this is true, the remarkable part about Mandela is that his greatest accomplishments came 27 years after leaving the path of violence. He left prison not seeking revenge when it was possible, but offering forgiveness and hope.
      • mcantelon 13y ago
        Mandela was a pragmatist. Non-violence was a tactic that fit the strategic need.
        • lennel 13y ago
          tactic yes, but also a great appeal to his humanist intellectual position.
        • capex 13y ago
          He could've been out of jail in a moment if he ever wanted to be a pragmatist.
          • Crito 13y ago
            Would leaving jail under those circumstances have helped his cause? If not, then doing so would not have been pragmatic.
    • tptacek 13y ago
      I'm not sure that being called a terrorist by PW Botha is all that meaningful.
  • richardjordan 13y ago
    His peaceful assumption of power and non-violent transition of government are his lasting legacies. His violent struggle which resulted in his imprisonment became his advocacy for peaceful transformation. As the movement became focused on peaceful resistance it gained moral weight against the brutal violence perpetrated by the South African government. Emphasizing the non-peaceful roots, and the fact that there was much violence in the struggle against the oppression of apartheid is to ignore his own words on the topic and to only tell half a story.
    • mathieuh 13y ago
      Mandela's address after being released from prison emphasises the need for continuing struggle against oppression and is completely devoid of pacifist white washing: http://www.anc.org.za/show.php?id=4520 http://www.anc.org.za/show.php?id=4520
      • richardjordan 13y ago
        An unfortunate turn of phrase, but it's not about pacifist white washing... his release from prison was into a society where apartheid had yet to be removed and he advocated that in many circumstances people need to use force to defend themselves against oppression for most of his life. The point is that it takes a certain obtuseness to focus on that when his crowning achievement was avoiding a bloodbath on transition away from South Africa, choosing instead a path of peace and reconciliation. Also your flame-baiting attack on liberals is very confused - the key criticism by conservatives against liberals on this topic, for years, was their support for a terrorist who advocated violence, thereby themselves supporting violence. The truth is nuanced, but not to such a degree that it's incomprehensible to ordinary people.
      • SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago
        The word "struggle" occurs 16 times in that speech, and while it is not "pacifist", it is not "guerilla" either. The word covers every means of bringing about the end of Apartheid and start of democracy, from campaigning for votes through negotiations and yes, "Armed struggle". e.g. "mass marches and other forms of struggle" It refers to every means of bringing about the right ends. There's a paragraph near the end starting "Our struggle has reached a decisive moment...". I read it as "keep your guns, they're what's keeping those guys at the negotiating table.". He was a smart politician, neither dogmatically for violence ... or dogmatically against it.
  • casca 13y ago
    Can you please elaborate on this? The ANC (Mandela's political party) including Mandela himself certainly committed a wide range of violent acts in response to a vast display of vile force from the ruling South African government. However the respect that Mandela receives is for his actions after he was released from prison. After winning political power democratically, he was in a strong position to take retribution on those that had imprisoned him and caused such misery and hardship to his people. But he didn't. He tried to bridge the huge divide. At the time, and I speak as someone who was living through it, there was a real fear that the country would erupt into a civil war. There was so much hate on both sides. It is widely believed by people from all South African political views that Mandela was responsible for reconciling the opposing sides and beginning a path of building a new country. Was he perfect? Of course not. But he achieved what so many deemed impossible in a noble manner and this is extremely rare in political leaders anywhere in the world.
    • moultano 13y ago
      What I found interesting from reading his autobiography is that he didn't consider non-violence to be an end in itself. Rather he viewed it as one tool among many. Edit: found the citation. http://books.google.com/books?id=RHwLqVrnXgIC&lpg=PT189&dq=long%20walk%20to%20freedom%20non%20violence&pg=PT80#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=RHwLqVrnXgIC&lpg=PT189&dq=l... >Others said that we should approach this issue not from the point of view of principles but of tactics, and that we should employ the method demanded by the conditions. If a particular method or tactic enabled us to defeat the enemy, then it should be used. In this case, the state was far more powerful than we, and any attempts at violence by us would be devastatingly crushed. This made nonviolence a practical necessity rather than an option. This was my view, and I saw nonviolence in the Gandhian model not as an inviolable principle but as a tactic to be used as the situation demanded. The principle was not so important that the strategy should be used even when it was self- defeating, as Gandhi himself believed. I called for nonviolent protest for as long as it was effective. This view prevailed, despite Manilal Gandhi's strong objections.
      • treenyc 13y ago
        Effective exercise of leadership is more like a dance than doing steps. Rather than doing one step correctly, try to dance to music. There is no ONE correct solution for every situation. Sometime peaceful non-violence is required, sometimes using high tech solution is appropriate to make things more productive, and sometime military force is required to defend one self. Rather than standing behind one principle, try addressing the concerns of relevant parties. Leadership is granted by those people who lead you and those whom you lead.
  • nashequilibrium 13y ago
    Let it not be forgotten, Mandela prevented 2 wars! The first war of whites against blacks and a second war amongst blacks as there was a power struggle amongst the different black parties, most notably the IFP. Either of those wars would have been catastrophic.
  • davidgerard 13y ago
    Thank you, Young Conservatives!
    • Joeboy 13y ago
      Just a reminder of the kind of thing members of the UK's ruling party were up to in the '80s: http://www.leftfootforward.org/images/2011/11/Conservative-Future.jpg http://www.leftfootforward.org/images/2011/11/Conservative-F...
    • Crito 13y ago
      mathieuh does not seem to be criticizing Mandela's use of violence. Rather, I believe he is criticizing the failure of others to recognize and appreciate Mandela's use of violence.
  • SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago
    Could you explain why you think that "liberals" are trying to sanitise history more than anyone else?
    • Joeboy 13y ago
      They didn't say that. Misrepresenting popular / successful struggles as peaceful and overstating the effectiveness of pacifism are liberal tendencies though.
      • SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago
        The parent poster, mathieuh, says exactly that: "Do not allow liberals to sanitise history."
        • Joeboy 13y ago
          'Do not allow liberals to sanitise history.' vs '"liberals" are trying to sanitise history more than anyone else' It is possible [Edit: and, I think, reasonable] to think the former but not the latter.
          • SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago
            What reasonable interpretation, "only allow right-wingers to sanitise history"? I apologise for the clumsy phrase. The semantics of that doesn't matter, I just want to know what mathieuh is trying to say by calling special attention to "liberals" and not mentioning anyone else. I suspect trolling. Mandela was deeply "liberal".
            • Joeboy 13y ago
              Presumably mathieuh used the word liberal as they were drawing attention to a liberal fallacy. I have no idea if they're an introspective leftist with a critique of pacifism or a paid Koch shill or something in between. The thing they said seems entirely reasonable to me though.
  • afriend4lyfe 13y ago
    He has come to represent forgiveness and peace over time by learning from his past mistakes. No one is saying he never fought fire with fire. It is untrue to say his life "was a symbol of non-peaceful resistance and the progress that it can bring." Especially because his greater achievements were made through peace and reconciliations. No one's perfect but it's unreasonable to only focus on the negative.
    • eruditely 13y ago
      Except it is you who is projecting his value system over who you are responding to. Nobody implied 'violence' was wrong in this context, violence is at many times necessary and was so in mandela's case, he had to do what he had to do to achieve progress, and when it wasn't necessary he did, but when it was he did as well. We cannot allow people to only paint him as peaceful completely simply because non-violent struggle is not what brought about long-term peace. Both did.
    • Crito 13y ago
      I do not believe that mathieuh considers Mandela's "not always nonviolent" stance to be a negative. I think the idea is more along the lines of "violence had its place in that conflict, it was for a good cause, and it worked." Injecting my own opinion here: I think that if we forget the usefulness of violence then we may risk failing to repeat Mandela's success, should the need ever arise. Nonviolence is great, but only when it works. When it doesn't, violence should be embraced. We should embrace whatever is necessary to get the job done, nonviolence should be seen as a (typically very effective) means to an end, not an end in itself.
  • utopkara 13y ago
    Obama's address points out to his non-peaceful background: "His journey from a prisoner to a president embodied the promise that human beings and countries can change for the better." And, in this case, we are talking about one of the better humans that ever lived.
    • philwelch 13y ago
      "Change for the better"? That assumes that change happened at all. There's no inconsistency between using violence to effect political change and being magnanimous in victory.
  • chasing 13y ago
    Yes, I also remember the bloody, vicious civil war he advocated after his release from prison that finally brought down Apartheid. Oh, wait. That's not what happened at all, is it?
    • Joeboy 13y ago
      > The factors which necessitated the armed struggle still exist today. We have no option but to continue. We express the hope that a climate conducive to a negotiated settlement will be created soon so that there may no longer be the need for the armed struggle. ...is what Mandela said in his first speech after being released from prison. I'm not sure which half of your comment is intended to be sarcasm, but fwiw those are the words he used.
  • 3am 13y ago
    "I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I've cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die." -Nelson Mandela edit: also, "If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner." Your statement on Mandela is un-nuanced and simplistic. We all evolve through life, hopefully for the better. Mandela clearly became one of the great 20th century champions of peace alongside MLK and Gandhi. None of them were perfect human beings, but that doesn't diminish their greatness at all.
    • rdl 13y ago
      I wouldn't call Mandela a champion of peace, but of freedom.
      • jbooth 13y ago
        AND of peace. Mandela was in prison for 27 years, oppressed his whole life before and after that, and once he gets power, his watchwords? Truth and Reconciliaton. That's why he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize, because with any other leader (just pick a country on the same continent, Zimbabwe's right next door) that situation turns into a shitshow at that point. The fact that he was in the ANC isn't what makes him notable, plenty of other guerilla leaders in Africa who threw out colonialists or white minority rule. That's not why we're talking about him. What he did when he won made him notable. The "he wasn't peaceful" idiots on this thread are either incapable of seeing the big picture or fighting some dumb US domestic political battle.
        • rdl 13y ago
          I agree what he did after he won was amazing, and a great precedent, but I value the victory against Apartheid by ~any means (largely non-violent) more, mainly because if he hadn't won that victory, he wouldn't have been in a position to be noble in victory. (I don't think the Rhodesia precedent was exact, as the white rulers of Rhodesia were probably far more acceptable, and blacks far less oppressed, than they were in RSA; RSA was sufficiently self-sufficient that this could have gone on indefinitely. The other cases were anti-colonialism, which is also different; the Boers were not particularly tied to any European power, so there was no European state pulling out to end the colonial situation, either.)
  • alan_cx 13y ago
    Tryanny is the suppression of nuance.
  • kunai 13y ago
    In other words, Gandhi should be shunned because he was a sleazy lawyer who was screwing his wife while his father was dying across the hall. We respect our heroes not for their flaws, but for their feats. It's no secret to anybody that the ANC used terror for political causes; what followed Mandela's jail term, however, is far more important. He didn't fix South Africa completely. Nobody could have, but the forgiveness he showed during his tenure, to both blacks and whites alike, is the notable part of his life. To myopically describe Mandela's actions as terroristic is to do a disgrace to one of the great leaders of our time.
  • brudgers 13y ago
    When did the interpretation of history become the sole prerogative of liberalism? Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
    • vixen99 13y ago
      Ignoramuses I know but many us, dare I say, don't understand Latin. Assuming you're not quoting yourself, a source would be appreciated.
      • amerika_blog 13y ago
        First goog hit: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tacitus http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tacitus
  • crisnoble 13y ago
    I think it is a little more complicated than "he was peaceful" or "he was non-peaceful". Some great listening on the subject: http://mandelahistory.com/ http://mandelahistory.com/ -a 5-part radio series documenting the struggle against apartheid through rare sound recordings, the voice of Nelson Mandela himself, as well as those who fought with him, and against him.
    • mcv 13y ago
      > I think it is a little more complicated than "he was peaceful" or "he was non-peaceful". He used violence when violence was needed, he used peace when peace is needed. I'd like to be as pacifist as I can possibly be, but there simply are situations where violence is necessary. And severe oppression without non-violent means to end the oppression, is one of them. Some things need to be fought.
      • cook1929 13y ago
        You're saying that it's fine to target your bombings at children and women if you're fighting to end something like apartheid? Wow.
        • deleted 13y ago
          [deleted]
        • frankzinger 13y ago
          So what, exactly, is your point? Are you saying that what the Apartheid government did was legal and legitimate? Obviously bombing civilians is wrong, nobody disputes that. But the Apartheid government killed and tortured many innocent people. Both sides did bad things. None of this is news. Why are you pointing this out? Edit: the thing that makes Mandela special is that, once he became the government, it would have been just as "legitimate" for him to have behaved as the Apartheid government had, but he effected peace instead.
  • dspeyer 13y ago
    That's part of the point. A single man -- even one who has engaged in violence -- can create peace in a situation where revenge is natural. In fact I wonder if his past willingness to use violence when he thought it justified is what gave him the credibility to say "it's not justified now" at the critical moment.
  • richardw 13y ago
    The armed struggle went nowhere for decades until international sanctions forced the hand of the ruling party. What Mandela fully understood at the time of his release was that the country required reconciliation. Nobody expected the power handover to go as smoothly as it did. Mandela was a huge contributor to that.
  • EliRivers 13y ago
    Is it acceptable to allow non-liberals to sanitise history, or is this your own political bias spilling over into your implied complaint about other people's political bias?
  • diogenescynic 13y ago
    >Do not allow liberals to sanitise history. It was the right that supported apartheid, almost until the end like Reagan and Thatcher. Dick Cheney voted against a 1986 resolution calling for the release of Mandela from prison. A month before Nelson Mandela was elected president Ron Paul's newsletter warned of a'South African Holocaust.' Get your facts straight. It seems you're the one right-washing this.
• a8da6b0c91d 13y ago
  > a single man to create peace Let's keep in mind that South Africa has been very far from a peaceful place over the last 20 years. Many thousands have been murdered, and many thousands more have left the country.
  • richardjordan 13y ago
    but it also hasn't been the bloodbath many who lived there expected it to become on the fall of apartheid - and Mandela bears a huge portion of the credit for this
  • rsynnott 13y ago
    South Africa's murder rate peaked before the end of apartheid; it has been on the decline since. It's still very high, but the idea that it's a result of the collapse of apartheid is not plausible.
• purringmeow 13y ago
  "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." Nelson Mandela, 1991 History is truly written by the victorious ones. I find it funny that people praise a communist guerrilla fighter, responsible for so much violence. That's like praising Che Guevara. Oh wait... And don't get me wrong - I hate the apartheid as much.
• ww520 13y ago
  I really admire his ability to walk away from power. Instead of making himself indispensable and hanging on to power indefinitely, he understood the importance of grooming the next generation, walking away, and letting the others to continue the work.
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• dpcheng2003 13y ago
  "The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." - Nelson Mandela Just some inspiration for everyone here. RIP Madiba.
• GnwbZHiU 13y ago
  > it's possible for a single man to create peace No it's not possible. Nelson Mandela is a great and admirable man. But he did not work alone. The peace is the work of many men and women, and is still a work in progress.
• srean 13y ago
  > Forgiveness is the first step in changing a society Yes, but sometimes it backfires. Sometimes a Nuremberg is necessary. However, it has to be quick, but within limits of reason and fairness. It also has to be set in motion immediately after a change of hands. It should be more of a "fair compensation and equalization" than merely about retribution. Although this will be a controversial comment, to see an example of where (Mujib ur Rahman's) "lets forgive, no harm, no foul" did not go down well is Bangladesh's war of independence. The little that I know of the SA situation, Mandela chose right. But the right choice is not the same in every situation.
  • Crito 13y ago
    Your comment reminds me of Nicolae Ceaușescu, the brutal dictator of Romania between 1967 and 1989. In on December 23, 1989 he and his wife were captured while attempting to flee the country. On December 25 they were given a show trial (playing more than a little fast and loose with fairness...), found to be guilty, and shot. Nearly immediately after the execution, execution was declared to be abolished. This upset some Romanians who thought that more executions were in order, but their new constitution (ratified in 1991) cemented this decision. Nicolae and Elena Ceauşescu remain the last people ever executed in Romania. From wikipedia: "The manner in which the trial was conducted was widely criticized inside and outside Romania. However, Ion Iliescu, Romania's provisional president, said in 2009 that the trial was "quite shameful, but necessary" in order to end the state of near-anarchy that had gripped the country in the three days since the Ceaușescus fled Bucharest[23] Similarly, Victor Stănculescu, who had been defense minister before going over to the revolution, said in 2009 that the alternative would have been seeing the Ceaușescus lynched on the streets of Bucharest.[24]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu I am a bit conflicted on the whole affair, but I think my main take-away is that what needs to be done is not always pleasant, but if it must be done, do it fast and make sure it does not happen again. If you are going to do something unpleasant, make sure that you at least do it to break the cycle.
  • capex 13y ago
    Could you explain a bit more on who Bangladesh forgave that didn't go well?
• lennel 13y ago
  There was no push for war. The apartheid government just wanted to finish their plundering and not be liable for the economic position they created.
• paternalist 13y ago
  "I think there are plenty of good people in America, but there are also plenty of bad people in America and the bad ones are the ones who seem to have all the power and be in these positions to block things that you and I need. Because this is the situation, you and I have to preserve the right to do what is necessary to bring an end to that situation, and it doesn't mean that I advocate violence, but at the same time I am not against using violence in self-defense. I don't even call it violence when it's self-defense, I call it intelligence." - Malcolm X
• kika 13y ago
  I'd say "Rest in a necklace, Madiba". It completely escapes me how sane people can so seriously worship cannibals like Mandela.
  • capex 13y ago
    Can you justify what you said here?
    • kika 13y ago
      sure, like http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necklacing http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necklacing for example? Moloko said her sister was burned to death with a tire around her neck while attending the funeral of one of the youths. Her body had been scorched by fire and some broken pieces of glass had been inserted into her vagina, Moloko told the committee. In my book it's a perfect example of "cannibalism".
      • saraid216 13y ago
        Not sure you have any idea what cannibalism is... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannibalism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannibalism
        • kika 13y ago
          Not sure if you have any idea what sarcasm is. I didn't mean he actually eat people, actually even if he did that wouldn't have changed a lot.
          • saraid216 13y ago
            > I didn't mean he actually eat people That's not sarcasm. That's lying.
            • kika 13y ago
              When you call some political leader a "butcher" you lie, because he actually doesn't work in a butcher shop and doesn't have a license? I linked to the wikipedia article about necklacing. Did you find any factual errors in there?
• CmonDev 13y ago
  Reverse apartheid?