They should name prisons after this man. Mandela ! Never mind this overblown humbug notion of the Greatest figure since the Crucified, his is a stunning testament to apartheid's tolerance of one of it's dissident prisoners, proof that one prison at least appeared to turned out a reformed character - Robin Island could be the model of all maximum penitentiaries.
Well, he is rightly credited with his post-penal zen, yet he still should be a penitentiary poster-boy, an icon of hope and tenacity.
Was he innocent when tried ? Well, clearly not as innocent as when he emerged, penitent, blissful and with seemingly serene sagacity from his incarceration. His majesty was further crystallised by maintaining a royal silence over the carrion calls for criticism of the ongoing and blatantly heinous antics of his ruling ANC comrades in the subsequent two decades after his release until his demise, reaching its zenith in the Marikana massacre in August 2012, not to mention the forgotten episode of the Shell House massacre in March, 1994 which he claims to have authorised*. Nelson is the opium of terrorism who gives terrorism transformative powers. He is both Spartacus and Fawkes. Yet he is, in reality, merely the vacuum which these archetypes are projected onto. Terrorism's soft metamorphosis made possible by the sublimation of prison stoicism.
The orgiastic self-serving maypole festivities of the great and the good for this chameleon's pre-funeral are an outrage to anyone with any remaining human sensibilities.
This isn't merely bad culture, this is it's successor, civilisation gone putrid with a decadent will.
Is terrorism now circumstantially justifiable ? Will Guy Fawkes be celebrated with statue outside of parliament alongside of that other, actual, regicide, Oliver Cromwell ?
"I don't think Mandela was a corrupt politician, he did after all spend 27 years in jail for his principles, maybe some of the others are, maybe not".
-Maybe
some of the others ? that's an understatement you can only make if
you're blithely ignorant. Mandela was not in an ignorant position and
yet he said nothing, for the sake of not tarnishing his Mahatma-like
living legend. I also doubt he would of, for the sake of principles, chosen to spend anytime in prison. That was imposed on him. (Sure,
he would of been willing to spend a short spell which would give dues
after, as a freedom-hero triumph (which is what happened, although 27
years was almost certainly longer than he bargained for). Don't make it
sound like a sacrifice he was willing to make. His was a gamble on a
successful revolution backed by the Soviets. A gamble he lost.
You must remember the context of 1961 - most of Africa had achieved dependence around then; he was merely jockeying for a post-colonial position. If he'd won over the Boers in a coup then, he probably wouldn't have a halo hovering over his head now.
*In June 1995, ANC and then President Nelson Mandela claimed that he had given the order to defend Shell House, even if it should require killing people.[5] In 1995 Willem Ratte laid a charge of murder against president Nelson Mandela at the Police headquarters in Pretoria[6] for the Shell House Massacre.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_House_massacre
http://www.info.gov.za/speeches/1994/230994029.htm
Marikana massacre:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/16/anc-absent-marikana-massacre-memorial
the lost prison manuscript:
the lost prison manuscript:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9116391/the-mandela-files/
