Nelson Mandela, South Africa's first black president, dies at 95

[Vaagmi]

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While Nelson Mandela was a great freedom fighter, a man who survived more than 20 years of incarceration and one who lived long enough to see his country moved ahead forgetting the racial hatred and grievances. He deserves the tributes as he is dead and gone. But to eulogize him and try to create a larger than life size halo around him is out of place and it may even turn him in his grave. It is rather jarring. My thoughts on the eulogies presented here:

post # 10:

--A prison is a prison whether it is an old palace no more in use or a 6x4 chamber. A golden cage is not relished by the parrot. For it a golden cage is just as bad as an iron one.
--Mandela fought for all SAfricans because there were only two racial factions living there and they were both in substantial number which fact can not be ignored. It is practical wisdom. Mandela knew that the whites will never leave SA and go back home..

--Subscription to the principle of non-violence is irrational? This is a new thory. Violence is shunned by mature people not because it is violence alone but because it affects the whole society, many innocents are also caught in the vicious circle. When you reserve your right to be violent you can never promise that innocents will not be affected by your violence.

--US labels many people many things for its own reasons. Modi is one. Any way US is not the high priest of the morality of the world for people to bother as to what it labels a person with. Who is bothered. The world smiles and keeps moving.

MKG was the first to take up non-violence and satyagraha as weapons against establishment. He proved that they can be successfully used to achieve goals. MLK took a leaf from MKG’s theory and was successful. Mandela admitted that Gandhi was his role model. Now we know who was luminescent.

It is perhaps the proclivity of TBs. Some people mythify using epithets like mahatma, sarveswaran etc. Some others do it by using terms like “shining bright star in the galaxy”. It is a cultural proclivity which can not be dumped despite all the intellectual load acquired in US.

Post #18

Yes it is a statement of the obvious and applies to all time. But has SA stopped exporting Uranium-236 to US?

 

[prasad1]

MKG was the first to take up non-violence and satyagraha as weapons against establishment. He proved that they can be successfully used to achieve goals. MLK took a leaf from MKG’s theory and was successful. Mandela admitted that Gandhi was his role model. Now we know who was luminescent.

Thank for reinforcing the obvious which seems to have eluded "learned" few.

Gandhi also reached out to African-Americans, spreading seeds of nonviolent protest that King would ultimately harvest. In 1929, he authored a short article in the NAACP magazine, The Crisis, and in 1935 he met with a group of African-American leaders visiting India, including Benjamin Mays, who later became president of Morehouse College in Atlanta, which King attended.As a mentor to King, Mays encouraged him to read Gandhi’s writings, which informed King’s leadership of the bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955. King later wrote that Gandhi’s teachings were “the guiding light of our technique of nonviolent social change.”
Mandela Wrote:

Both Gandhi and I suffered colonial oppression, and both of us mobilized our respective peoples against governments that violated our freedoms.

Gandhi's Tolstoy Farm

 

[Nara]

Vaagmi and prasad1 -- take a look at the posts of this thread carefully and you will see it was vgane who brought MKG's name first in post #2 saying "He is the equivalent of Mahatma Gandhi!", and then he claimed in post #5 "I would call him as the greatest person of 20th century, next only to Gandhiji".

My response in post #10 was, first and foremost, "It is jarring to see Mandela compared to MKG." I further stated, "If a comparison is to be made Mandela is more like MLK."

Please note the emphasized phrase, let me repeat, "If a comparison is to be made " This is the context of my comments in post #10.

I am aware these pesky facts are of no concern to either of you. <edited to remove personal references - praveen>

Let me state for the record one more time, I have no intention of comparing anyone to anyone else. My intention here is to expose the attempts of the establishment people to redefine the man and co-opt him as one of them. This is a blatant lie. The man was a revolutionary, he stood with the common people and the oppressed. The quotations I am posting will make it clear where his sympathies were.

 

[prasad1]

Vaagmi and prasad1 -- take a look at the posts of this thread carefully and you will see it was vgane who brought MKG's name first in post #2 saying "He is the equivalent of Mahatma Gandhi!", and then he claimed in post #5 "I would call him as the greatest person of 20th century, next only to Gandhiji".

My response in post #10 was, first and foremost, "It is jarring to see Mandela compared to MKG." I further stated, "If a comparison is to be made Mandela is more like MLK."

Please note the emphasized phrase, let me repeat, "If a comparison is to be made " This is the context of my comments in post #10.

I am aware these pesky facts are of no concern to either of you, particularly to prasad1 -- for him anybody who has an opinion different from his own is an enemy. prasad1 is stuck on the same record, repeating the same absurdity at every opportunity. He has no ability or facts to stand up and argue his case, so he, as usual, sneaks behind somebody else's post, this time it is vaagmi's, and has taken a potshot at me. I have ignored these idiocies so far, but now, since he keeps saying the same inanity repeatedly I just wanted to put the record straight.

Let me state for the record one more time, I have no intention of comparing anyone to anyone else. My intention here is to expose the attempts of the establishment people to redefine the man and co-opt him as one of them. This is a blatant lie. The man was a revolutionary, he stood with the common people and the oppressed. The quotations I am posting will make it clear where his sympathies were.

Your facts are as straight as a corkscrew. You have no reason to call anyones opinion as "idiocies". This is a free forum and we all have our opinion. your opinion on a scale of 0-10 counts as 0(zero), so stop advising others, and please keep a civil tone.

You are hate monger and generally you like people who are hated by majority (Except Mandela, MLK as they are not Indian). Your aim in life has been to disparage others purely out of jealousy, you can not measure up to greatness in any Indian (Except the nameless one).

 

[Nara]

Mandela to Israel:

“Israel should withdraw from all the areas which it won from the Arabs in 1967, and in particular Israel should withdraw completely from the Golan Heights, from south Lebanon and from the West Bank.”​

 

[Nara]

Another one on Israeli occupation:

"My view is that talk of peace remains hollow if Israel continues to occupy Arab lands," -- Mandela​

 

[Nara]

An incisive oped about Mandela by the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek:

If Nelson Mandela really had won, he wouldn't be seen as a universal hero | Slavoj ?i?ek | Comment is free | theguardian.com

I give you just the last paragraph:

If we want to remain faithful to Mandela's legacy, we should thus forget about celebratory crocodile tears and focus on the unfulfilled promises his leadership gave rise to. We can safely surmise that, on account of his doubtless moral and political greatness, he was at the end of his life also a bitter old man, well aware how his very political triumph and his elevation into a universal hero was the mask of a bitter defeat. His universal glory is also a sign that he really didn't disturb the global order of power.​

 

[Vaagmi]

Mandela to Israel:

“Israel should withdraw from all the areas which it won from the Arabs in 1967, and in particular Israel should withdraw completely from the Golan Heights, from south Lebanon and from the West Bank.”​

An upshot asks a question from the last row reserved for "idiots":

Did SA(the country of the shining star) ban the MNC Giant De Beers from mining in SA or trading in the diamonds mined there? Who owns De Beers? Are they innocent palestinians? Answers please.

 

[Vaagmi]

Post #32:

Instead of presenting this as an epilogue this should have been the prologue before eulogising that great fighter:

If we want to remain faithful to Mandela's legacy, we should thus forget about celebratory crocodile tears and focus on the unfulfilled promises his [COLOR=#DA7911 !important]leadership[/COLOR] gave rise to. We can safely surmise that, on account of his doubtless moral and political greatness, he was at the end of his life also a bitter old man, well aware how his very political triumph and his elevation into a universal hero was the mask of a bitter defeat. His universal glory is also a sign that he really didn't disturb the global order of power.

I am one who expected that Mandela should have spoken out more boldly about his limitations and his disappointments. That would have made him still greater. When a Bharat Ratna, a Nobel laureate speaks, not about his achievements but about his bitterness, his dismay and his helplessness it would have had an impact really. He missed his opportunity. This is the reality. the great people (MKG and MLK included)-many of them- allowed their sharpness to be dulled by all the attention and pampering they received.

 

[Haridasa Siva]

In the official memorial service held today in Joburg, Mr.Obama made reference to Mr.Gandhi early in his speech. Indian President made innumerable references to Gandhiji. Interestingly, not many whites seem to be grieving. Mostly only blacks are attending the memorial service today. And there is no public holiday in the country.

On a different note, let me mention here that even today there is a clear division among different races here. And one race does not mix up with another that easily. The only two things that tend to shadow racisim ofcourse are position of power and money. SA is not a rainbow nation in true sense.

 

[Nara]

In the official memorial service held today in Joburg, Mr.Obama made reference to Mr.Gandhi early in his speech. Indian President made innumerable references to Gandhiji. Interestingly, not many whites seem to be grieving. Mostly only blacks are attending the memorial service today. And there is no public holiday in the country.

On a different note, let me mention here that even today there is a clear division among different races here. And one race does not mix up with another that easily. The only two things that tend to shadow racisim ofcourse are position of power and money. SA is not a rainbow nation in true sense.

Thanks Siva for the report from the ground.

BTW, the myth factory keeps churning our these comparisons. The only valid comparison between the Madeba and the Mahatma is on the matter of non-violence. MKG worshipped nonviolence as an end in itself, he fetishized it; but for Mandela it was only a tactic, a superior tactic nonetheless to violence. But he refused to rule out violence in his interview before he was captured and imprisoned, and during his imprisonment as a condition for release. The comparison is good to claim Mandela for the oligarchy, so they do it, again and again, and the uninformed fall for it.

Have a great vacation in India, I am sure people will love to see you and chat with you .....

 

[Nara]

An upshot asks a question from the last row reserved for "idiots":

Did SA(the country of the shining star) ban the MNC Giant De Beers from mining in SA or trading in the diamonds mined there? Who owns De Beers? Are they innocent palestinians? Answers please.

This is the failure Slavoj Žižek was talking about in his oped in the Guardian. More recently, the ANC government massacred more than 40 striking mine workers, how far have they gone from the founding principles.