Quote: (12-08-2013 04:25 PM)cardguy Wrote:
I dislike the smugness of the West when they look down on those people who have to pay the price in blood for the things that others have imposed. From the comfort of their homes thousands of miles away.
But that's exactly what you're doing - being an "armchair nation builder" from thousands of miles away. By your own admission, you haven't even read any books on Mandela or South Africa to hold a reasonably informed opinion, and you certainly haven't been there nor have you engaged in any dialogue with black South Africans to gauge whether they are better off after Apartheid, yet you have the gall to make sweeping statements about people you know little to nothing about.
As for Mandela, he did many things that were anomalous for an African leader. For one, he stepped down from power after one term. Look at his counterpart in Zimbabwe - Robert Mugabe - who happened to go to the same high school as Mandela; he's the longest serving leader in Africa and an iconic dictator by many accounts. That's one reason why many in the American media refer to Mandela as "South Africa's George Washington."
Mandela also didn't imprison or murder his own oppressors, which many leaders in many other places have done immediately upon seizing power for the first time from an oppressive regime.
No person who has spent time around the man says he harbors an iota of vindictiveness or bitterness about what his tormentors did to him. On that very basis, he is truly unique.
The fact that his death is honored across the world, from countries as different as the US and Cuba, Russia and the UK, and elsewhere, is a testament to his great character.
Considering that capital flight that ensued upon the end of Apartheid and the seething racial tension, Mandela had no easy choices to make as a leader, but he made the best ones available to him. The alternative would have been a race war, or going in the path of Mugabe by kicking out whites and seizing their property, or Idi Amin in kicking out Indians and doing the same, but what did those policies do for those places?
Unlike South Africa in 2010, Zimbabwe and Uganda aren't even remotely ready to host a World Cup; not in our lifetimes.
Nelson Mandela is simply a great man. You would be hard pressed to find another individual that receives wide praise from people around the world on all sides of the political and ideological spectrum.
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Nelson Mandela: a noble reminder that those declared "criminals" by an unjust society are often the most just. - Glenn Greenwald