Nelson Mandela RIP

[Dave2002]

R4 is broadcasting a programme - Making Mandela - tonight at 8pm - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03nxvfh

Apparently NM came to the UK in 1962, and there were some secret visits and meetings, or so it is said. Should be interesting to hear this one.

[Bryn]

You can find out more about the trial here - http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/project...ndelahome.html It is interesting to note that the judge declared that he would not sentence any of the men to death beforehand.

In my earlier post I also omitted to mention the Sharpeville shootings - which Mandela refers to in his trial speech. They were in 1960. Over 60 people were shot. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharpeville_massacre

Attitudes have changed. Thatcher and others in the UK for a long time held that NM was a terrorist - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...n-1327902.html and in the US, where attitudes later changed, NM was still on a list of terrorists until 2008.

Hmm, this "terrorist" label is a bit dodgy coming from the leaders of a country which employed gangs like the Military Reaction Force back in Edward Heath's day. Seems to me the label better suits him and his ilk than it does those engaged in sabotage against the South African apartheid regime.

[Cornet IV]

Someone you can say changed history. A very great man indeed. In the same mould as Gandhi.

Come of it ff, one of Gandhi's principal tenets was one of non-violence and if you avoid the revisionist and obsequious flooding of the ether by the BBC and, I regret to say, similar excess from The Telegraph, you will remember that Mandela's earlier years were anything but an espousal of non-violence. His cause may have been just but his pursuit of its aims in many respects was reprehensible. The current fawning not only by political types but also by those who should know better is unseemly. This constant media exposure of his apotheosis is unnecessary and irritating; no doubt the Pope will set him on the fast track to mega-beatification and any amount of gongs posthumously will be awarded by those seeking added self-aggrandisement. I'm astonished I am not yet aware of any ex cathedra statement from Tony Blair.

Enough is a great deal more than enough. Whatever happened to our national sense of proportion?

[ahinton]

Come of it ff, one of Gandhi's principal tenets was one of non-violence and if you avoid the revisionist and obsequious flooding of the ether by the BBC and, I regret to say, similar excess from The Telegraph, you will remember that Mandela's earlier years were anything but an espousal of non-violence. His cause may have been just but his pursuit of its aims in many respects was reprehensible. The current fawning not only by political types but also by those who should know better is unseemly. This constant media exposure of his apotheosis is unnecessary and irritating; no doubt the Pope will set him on the fast track to mega-beatification and any amount of gongs posthumously will be awarded by those seeking added self-aggrandisement. I'm astonished I am not yet aware of any ex cathedra statement from Tony Blair.

Enough is a great deal more than enough. Whatever happened to our national sense of proportion?

Having read your post here, I must confess to having no idea whatsoever.

You write that "Mandela's earlier years were anything but an espousal of non-violence" - which is indeed true to some extent. You add that "his cause may have been just but his pursuit of its aims in many respects was reprehensible". His cause was indeed just and the initial pursuit of its aims might in some respects be reasonably regarded as the questionable actions of a young firebrand - but what you seem intent on avoiding (where your own "sense of propotion" is cast aside, indeed) is due recognition of the fact - and it is an undisputed and provable fact - that he decided quite early on to change tack on this and adopt a quite different approach to the achievement of his and others' desired goals for reform in South Africa; that the vast majority of his supporters and his one-time opponents have testified to his refusal thereafter to act vengefully, to blame and criticise and the rest during many of his years of incarceration and even more so following his release demonstrates that he was indeed in a similar mould to Gandhi throughout his maturity.

All that is "unseemly" here, then, is your attitude to Mandela and, by association, to most if not all of those who have spoken so highly not only of his achievements themselves and their desirability but also of how he went about making them a success.

A solid victory was anticipated for him and his government-to-be in thr run-up to his assumption of office, but the fact that it was such a landslide one was largely down to the white South Africans who voted for him and his party in their droves.

The Pope will of course do no such thing as you suggest and any "gongs" posthumously awarded to Mandela would have been quitely appreciated by by no means expected by him as he did not want to be regarded as some kind of saint or saviour.

As to Tony Blair, I've already heard too many statements from him on the subject - too many being more than about -1, that is.

If your views are anything to go by, I shudder to imagine what those of Cornets I, II & III might be but hopefully we will be spared them here and, if this turns out unfortunately not to be the case, I can only hope that they will be off-stage and muted.

[Flosshilde]

Well of course ....a mundane statement of fact ....not a reason for disagreement or escalation....

Sorry - wasn't intending to escalate anything. But your original statement did sound (to me, anyway) a bit disapproving.

[Cornet IV]

If your views are anything to go by, I shudder to imagine what those of Cornets I, II & III might be but hopefully we will be spared them here and, if this turns out unfortunately not to be the case, I can only hope that they will be off-stage and muted.

Well ahinton, this is not the first occasion in which your views have failed to parallel mine but you shouldn't expect always to be correct. The purpose of my earlier submission was not to engage in any debate of the relative merits of Mandela's life or works; I thought french frank's comparison with Gandhi somewhat inapposite and said so. However, this was incidental to the purpose of my submission which was to rail at the wholly disproportionate media coverage given to NM's passing. I make no apology for sharing this widely-held view.

Since writing, cant and hyperbole have multiplied and media involvement has increased to saturation level. It is that which exercised me then and continues so to do now. You well may think saturation too little for the great man but I don't think I deserve to be exiled to the wings in dumb confinement for thinking otherwise.

[Bryn]

In the past few days I have listened to several people at my workplace claiming that Mandela had been a terrorist prior to his imprisonment. We find same sort of, to say the least, misleading claim here. Until the the horrific Sharpeville massacre of 1960, the ANC, and 'Nelson' Rolihlahla Mandela, followed a path of non-violent resistance to the South African Apartheid regime. It was only then, that in direct response to that massacre of unarmed protestors, the ANC took the difficult decision to resort to armed struggle. Until that time many, such as Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, had argued in favour of such armed struggle, and indeed had left the ANC to pursue such a course, but Mandela and his close associates successfully argued against it within the ANC. [I make no bones about the fact that in the early 1970's I identified more closely with the politics of Sobukwe than those of Mandela.]

Re. Mandela's position re. non-violence, I refer those interested to, for instance, his speech at the unveiling of the Ghandi Memorial in Pietermaritzburg in 1993.

[Padraig]

Re. Mandela's position re. non-violince, I refer those interested to, for instance, his speech at the unveiling of the Ghandi Memorial in Pietermaritzburg in 1993.

I have already committed myself to a position in this discussion - that of regarding Nelson Mandela as a personal hero. I must say though that I remember experiencing a bitter disappointment on realising that he had not stuck to the principle of non-violence. That still rankles - not that it is important to anyone but myself. I have rationalised the problem by convincing myself that if anyone could survive the blemish and demonstrate a sincere purpose of amendment, that would be Nelson Mandela. But people are right who point to his fall by the wayside, as well as those who forgive him.
Coming from Northern Ireland and living there since the Troubles began I have had reason to take a stand on the issue, and I hope that stand is clear without my ruffling any feathers.

[Serial_Apologist]

I have already committed myself to a position in this discussion - that of regarding Nelson Mandela as a personal hero. I must say though that I remember experiencing a bitter disappointment on realising that he had not stuck to the principle of non-violence. That still rankles - not that it is important to anyone but myself. I have rationalised the problem by convincing myself that if anyone could survive the blemish and demonstrate a sincere purpose of amendment, that would be Nelson Mandela. But people are right who point to his fall by the wayside, as well as those who forgive him.
Coming from Northern Ireland and living there since the Troubles began I have had reason to take a stand on the issue, and I hope that stand is clear without my ruffling any feathers.

But do the two cases compare? Being Protestant or Catholic is a matter of choice, but not being black or white.

[ahinton]

Well ahinton, this is not the first occasion in which your views have failed to parallel mine but you shouldn't expect always to be correct.

I don't; what makes you appear to assume that I might do?

The purpose of my earlier submission was not to engage in any debate of the relative merits of Mandela's life or works; I thought french frank's comparison with Gandhi somewhat inapposite and said so.

Indeed you did, as you have a perfect right to do, just as I and many so many others have a perfect right not merely to disagree with you but also to point out that your expressions seem deliberately - for whatever reason or none - to be predicated upon the eschewing of major facts such as Mandela's long-standing change of heart in terms of how best to go about marshalling support for the cause in which he so fervently believed.

However, this was incidental to the purpose of my submission which was to rail at the wholly disproportionate media coverage given to NM's passing.

Your view of its disproportionality is, again, one that you're as entitled to express just as most of the rest of us are entitled to reject it as we do, based upon factual evidence.

I make no apology for sharing this widely-held view.

Whilst no one is asking you for an apology, you would need to justify, with hard evidence, that your view is as "widely held" as you appear to claim.

Since writing, cant and hyperbole have multiplied and media involvement has increased to saturation level. It is that which exercised me then and continues so to do now. You well may think saturation too little for the great man but I don't think I deserve to be exiled to the wings in dumb confinement for thinking otherwise.

No one has "exiled" you anywhere; if you nevertheless feel that way or indeed are that way, you've done that to yourself far more effectively than anyone else could have done, even had they sought so to do.

[Richard Tarleton]

I started a couple of replies to Cornet lV in the last 2 days, along Bryn and ahinton lines, but abandoned the attempt, they both put it better. I decided it was pointless in the anonymity of the message board, as there is no point of engagement. Where does Cornet lV stand on apartheid, how did he [?] see it coming to an end? Did it need to? How significant was Mandela's contribution, in his view? What generation does Cornet lV belong to, what does [he] know about South Africa? What, in short, informs his point of view?

[Cornet IV]

No one has "exiled" you anywhere; if you nevertheless feel that way or indeed are that way, you've done that to yourself far more effectively than anyone else could have done, even had they sought so to do.

My dear fellow, might I remind you that it was yourself who hoped for my removal from the stage in mute opposition - vide earlier post. However, I shall retire from the field; as Richard Tarleton's letter so patently shows, demonstrating the probity of my position is pointless in the face of such obduracy. In answer to the wondering of to what generation I might belong, at the risk of inviting more opprobrium, I can say that I am of sufficient age to remember the last phase of and resistance to European totalitarianism.

I'm outta here.

[eighthobstruction]

My dear fellow, might I remind you that it was yourself who hoped for my removal from the stage in mute opposition - vide earlier post. However, I shall retire from the field; as Richard Tarleton's letter so patently shows, demonstrating the probity of my position is pointless in the face of such obduracy. In answer to the wondering of to what generation I might belong, at the risk of inviting more opprobrium, I can say that I am of sufficient age to remember the last phase of and resistance to European totalitarianism.

I'm outta here.

....I think it's more likely Cvi (a non successful vehicle for going anywhere)....is out there....What a victory Cvi gained against such odds - a knighthood, an OBE ????....(another poster with the voice of Bernard Igham....)....

RIP Nelson Mandela....