8 ms·
Shocked by how misinformed people are about Mandela/Apartheid, or by the amount of trolling going on here. Thousands of white people have not died in SA thanks
by moolriaz 13y ago
Shocked by how misinformed people are about Mandela/Apartheid, or by the amount of trolling going on here.
Thousands of white people have not died in SA thanks to Mandela. Mandela was not a 'terrorist'. Apartheid was BAD, and still affects the country significantly today. Here's some context for you. This all applied pre 1994/2:
I am a non white South African. The only reason I got a good education was because with the release of Nelson Mandela, my parents were one of few to study at a previously white only university, and qualify for positions previously reserved for whites only. They went on to run companies that they COULD NOT have run during Apartheid, have offices in places they could not have had before, have clients they could not have before etc. I live in a neighbourhood my parents could not have lived in prior to 1994, and study at a university my parents were not allowed to. These were white only areas only, because they are good.
My father was a lawyer during Apartheid. Black people were only allowed to represent black people. Almost all of the people he defended in court were put to death, in many cases before their trials were even heard by courts! Post apartheid, the death penalty was dropped.
My family had family friends that were white. They were never allowed to mix. My aunt wanted to marry a white (American) man but was forbidden to. They got married illegally. She was not entitled to live in the property he owned, as black people could not legally own property. She came close to being arrested many times.
Post apartheid my aunt and her white husband were married. She was allowed to legally own the property after he died.
My birth certificate does not have my parents names on it, due to Apartheid. Families were not formally recognised. I need to get an amended birth certificate to prove who my parents are, and I can now do this post apartheid.
My parents were also forcefully removed from their legally owned properties that were taken from them during Apartheid. Their property was seized by the government and never returned. My parents could barely even travel out of South Africa as flying over/travelling other African countries were restricted. They were even not allowed to enter many countries abroad.
And I'm not even 'Black'. My ethnicity is Indian. I am an Indian South Africa (of which there are millions). Everyone who wasn't white was counted as 'Black'. This accounts for over 85% of South Africa's population.
It is well known in SA that the US government actively supported Apartheid, and many people have a poor opinion of the US because of this.
If it wasn't for Nelson Mandela, I probably wouldn't even be able to post this. My family, and millions others, now live lives they simply could not have lived before.
Please explain to me how this is the work of a terrorist, or how in any way the work of the armed wing of the ANC was not justified by the Apartheid regimes massacre of innocent children and women , and torture of prisoners (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soweto_uprising http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soweto_uprising, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharpeville_massacre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharpeville_massacre, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Biko http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Biko) and their numerous policies and their effects as explained above.
- wavefunction 13y agoThanks for your take. The people calling Mandela a terrorist don't know what they're talking about.
- iends 13y agoWell, I think many are just pointing out he was classified as a terrorist by the United States until 2008.
- puller 13y agoTo be fair, he did found the armed wing of the ANC, was offered a release from prison conditional on renouncing violence which he refused to do, and afterward his group went on to carry out a number of IRA-style bombings. The apartheid regime might have justified extreme measures that killed civilians, but his hands are not as clean as you would imagine from the hagiography. We don't glorify Gerry Adams in this way and give him Nobel prizes, although he did contribute a lot to the peace process in Ireland.
- rhizome 13y agoThe hagiography is wrong. It's only in the last 20 years that people have tried to make him into a Ghandi.
- moolriaz 13y agoMandela is absolutely distinct from Ghandi. While Ghandi lived in South Africa, he wrote racist slander towards black (African) people, referring to them as 'kaffirs' (the N word equivalent in SA). Here's a quote: "Ours is one continued struggle against degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the European, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir, whose occupation is hunting and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with, and then pass his life in indolence and nakedness." Ghandi too was not perfect, and also experienced Apartheid (most notably when he was kicked off a train in Pietermaritzburg), and demonstrated against it in SA. Though I do not think he believed in equality for Indians with Blacks.