Nelson Mandela has died

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We have lost one of the great Civil Rights leaders of the 20th Century – all good people weep and mourn Nelson Mandela’s passing today.

5 COMMENTS

  1. With human beings perception is everything

    When New Zealanders stopped the Springbok All Black game in Rugby Park Hamilton. Recalling that time Nelson Mandela was effusive saying that it was a like a ray of sunshine had broken into the prison. This was world news. Right across the continent, not just South Africa, where ever people had a radio or TV people reported feeling a similar electrifying effect.

    In South Africa, people felt their struggle was vindicated and approved by the international community.

    But what was the effect on white South Africans?

    Apart from resentment they were left feeling beleagured and isolated. Their carefully cultivated self image had been shattered.

    Since the fall of apartheid a lot of white South Africans have immigrated to New Zealand. I have got to know a few, several of whom at the time were in the army and the police. They told me that the fight had gone out of them. Often refusing to leave their barracks, or follow orders. You wouldn’t believe it one told me, “In the army we used to strike over everything, If our TV wasn’t big enough, or our meals weren’t varied enough, we refused to take orders at the slightest excuse.”

    With human beings perception is everything

    Who would want to fight and die for a regime in which in everyone’s eyes had lost it’s legitimacy.

    The racist regime could no longer effectively oppose its will by force.

    The liberation of South Africa from the curse of apartheid was the work of the people of South Africa themselves. New Zealand’s role should not be overstated. But we did our part.

  2. Nelson Mandela was one of the greatest humans in human history, in my view. Being able to walk out of 25 or so years in one of the worst prisons in the world, and then not to hate the people who sent him there, and who guarded him there, that is something very few humans would be able to do.

    I have greatest respect for this man, and this only grew gradually in me, as I only learned a bit about his fate, when young. South Africa was a different world then, and the years in 1989 and shortly after will be in my mind forever, as a time of great change and revolution, that went about peacefully. The cold war ended, the Berlin Wall came down, the Iron Curtain came down, and Apartheid finally came to an end, being accepted as a totally failed, hateful system, for which there was no place.

    Today I have mixed feelings of sadness, utter respect for Nelson Mandela, and also of peace, as he was able to leave this existence in the midst of his family, and with reasonable peace of mind.

    I am worried though about South Africa, as the anticipated change has not brought what most hoped for. The ANC has failed and a lot to answer, for not solving the issues of abject poverty, unemployment and an very unjust, also crime ridden society.

    I fear for times to come, where things may turn difficult or even ugly, as the numbers that lost all faith in the government and their leadership are growing, and their frustrations will not be appeased by nice words and election bribes.

    A radical change is needed, but it must be for all South Africans, and so I hope, that perhaps another leader with charisma and good ideas and support by capable women and men may show up, and deliver what the country and people there deserve.

    Rest in peace Nelson Mandela, Madiba, you were a giant, and will remain so in spirit!

  3. I see that our PM has already lined himself up for attending the funeral of this great icon. What is infuriating, that we as tax payers will be paying for this vile two faced charlatan to go to the funeral of Nelson Mandela. Everything that Mandela was and stood for, Key is absolutely not.

    • John Key, who cannot even remember if he supported Nelson Mandela’s cause, or not.

      What a charlatan, what a phoney.

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