Nelson Mandela has passed away>>>MOD WARNING<<<

I'm sure the families of the 3000+ White farm families that have been butchered over the past few years find it "unfortunate" as well......

 

I'm digusted at the number of Americans at this political forum trying to dismiss Mandela as a terrorist, who would never dismiss Ethan Allen or Gen William Tecumseh Sherman as terrorists, and often defend the likes of Lt William Calley and Sgt Bales on the grounds of psychological stress or whatever, while in SA the secret police were "disappearing" and murdering emerging black leaders fighting for equal opportunity, and claiming that the murders were committed by rival black factions. Shame on you.

 

I don't speak French , but can you translate the part of their national anthem which calls for killing anyone ?

pls give both French + English lyrics

thx ,

...

 

Certainly:

The whole thing is a pretty bloodthirsty call-to-arms, but the chorus is particularly clear about its meaning:

I don't speak French either, and there are various direct translations available, but they aren't much different:

I would certainly venture to suggest that it ain't exactly about 'reconciliation' or 'diplomacy'! It's about violently killing the 'enemies of the people', just as the ANC's song is ('the people' being, in the ANC's case, the vast majority of the downtrodden population who were being oppressed by their brutal authoritarian rulers, just as with the French song). It was originally actually written about foreign enemies, but specifically used most notably as a revolutionary song and rallying cry for the French Revolution before being adopted as the National Anthem shortly afterwards (and then banned, used as a revolutionary song again, and reinstated, that being the general nature of French politics in the nineteenth century!). It may not be quite as specific about naming exactly who it was that was supposed to get killed, as in the ANC's song, but I don't think anybody was under any illusion about the intended target as it was used in the revolution!

Obviously, one significant difference is that the French did actually mostly kill the people at whom the revolutionaries were targeting the song when they sang it during the revolution - something very much endorsed by their leader at the time (in contrast to the attitude of Mandela in South Africa). They are still showing no signs of stopping its use, though, perhaps just in case they missed any of them! Or perhaps just because they understand that it was once a great rallying cry, and remains a traditional and rousing anthem despite the fact that the actual suggested killing is no longer either relevant or desirable.

 

La Marseillaise


Arise children of the fatherland
The day of glory has arrived
Against us tyranny's
Bloody standard is raised
Listen to the sound in the fields
The howling of these fearsome soldiers
They are coming into our midst
To cut the throats of your sons and consorts

To arms citizens Form your battalions
March, march
Let impure blood
Water our furrows

What do they want this horde of slaves
Of traitors and conspiratorial kings?
For whom these vile chains
These long-prepared irons?
Frenchmen, for us, ah! What outrage
What methods must be taken?
It is us they dare plan
To return to the old slavery!

What! These foreign cohorts!
They would make laws in our courts!
What! These mercenary phalanxes
Would cut down our warrior sons
Good Lord! By chained hands
Our brow would yield under the yoke
The vile despots would have themselves be
The masters of destiny

Tremble, tyrants and traitors
The shame of all good men
Tremble! Your parricidal schemes
Will receive their just reward
Against you we are all soldiers
If they fall, our young heros
France will bear new ones
Ready to join the fight against you

Frenchmen, as magnanimous warriors
Bear or hold back your blows
Spare these sad victims
That they regret taking up arms against us
But not these bloody despots
These accomplices of Bouillé
All these tigers who pitilessly
Ripped out their mothers' wombs

We too shall enlist
When our elders' time has come
To add to the list of deeds
Inscribed upon their tombs
We are much less jealous of surviving them
Than of sharing their coffins
We shall have the sublime pride
Of avenging or joining them

Drive on sacred patriotism
Support our avenging arms
Liberty, cherished liberty
Join the struggle with your defenders
Under our flags, let victory
Hurry to your manly tone
So that in death your enemies
See your triumph and our glory!

 

When we remove all the mythology and propaganda from the history of greater South Africa, what we see is that a bunch of indigenous, Stone Age-primitive warring tribes were dislodged by a bunch of White Europeans who transformed the area after discovering and developing an immense treasure trove of diamonds, gold and agricultural production. The Whites, rightly or wrongly, considered the primitive native people to be inferior, suitable only as beasts of burden in mining operations, and on vast plantations which Whites introduced to an area that had only known primitive "slash-and-burn" agriculture for millennia. Blacks were consequently deemed ineligible for inclusion, and were segregated by a political rationalization called "apartheid". That about cover it?

South African Blacks, no longer content with their pre-invasion paradigms of ritual tribal slaughter, slavery, and a dead-end, primitive existence, saw what the White Europeans had been able to do with the land and they wanted it for themselves instead! Perfectly normal, understandable human reaction....

Which takes us to Nelson Mandela. He was a violent, rather narrow-minded man who simply wanted what the Whites had achieved, and he would commit acts of terror, violence, and murder to achieve his goals -- again, a perfectly normal reaction by a "have-not" to the exclusivity of White "haves", who saw no value in people like him except to toil away on farms and in mines under universally brutal conditions. The Whites kept him in prison until international pressure forced the South Africans to abandon apartheid and release Mandela. That about cover it?

The point? One man's opportunist liberator is another man's opportunistic rebel... Quid pro quo. Mandela was very much like the White ruling class he rebelled against, using force, violence, and a keen sense of race-hatred as the raison d'être for his beliefs and actions. He was therefore really no different from dozens of other violent men, before and after, who rule by force while pursuing their own self-interests. That about it...? &#8203; Then bury him and be done with it.... Next!?

 

Total and complete nonsense, from beginning to end. Total lack of understanding about both Africa and Mandela.

Just the kind of stuff that the oppressors would have come out with to try justify their evil regime. Absolute rubbish, with almost no basis in fact.

 

That is my take on it.

There are some half truths in there, but most of it is partisan rationalization.

 

It's the same old Victorian history bollocks that's been used by people to rationalise what they have done to native peoples the world over. The good old white European came in to a stone age land of brutal, murderous, primitive, warmongering, savage tribes with no culture or decorum, kindly civilised them with their obviously superior culture and cups of tea (and superior fire-power, obviously), and then those dashed ungrateful natives decided they wanted to be treated as some kind of equals with the white man! How dare they! Some vulgar, violent thug from their midst had the temerity to suggest that they were worthy to be considered as human beings, refused to take no for an answer when they asked nicely, and then led a fight against them even though their masters were kind enough to let them know they were wrong by overwhelmingly brutal demonstrations of force with their superior troops and weapons. The very cheek of them! In the case of South Africa, to think those savages won the day in the end and defeated the decency of the benevolent rulers and their kindly demonstrations of violence and murder - shocking!

Same old crap - same nonsense propaganda lies spread about the Native Americans by the settlers, same old nonsense propaganda lies spread by the British about the Irish, same old nonsense propaganda lies spread about the Anglo-Saxons by the Normans, same old nonsense propaganda lies spread about the Romano-British by the Anglo-Saxons, same old nonsense propaganda lies spread by the Romans about most of the people they conquered, and so it goes on throughout history - same old story of the victor trying to rewrite history to make themselves look better and justify their own brutality and violence. Only thing is though, such lies are still lies. Thankfully most sensible people now recognise them for what they are, because the study of history is now more generally based on proper research of real evidence, and evidence taken from all perspectives, not just the perspective of the victor seeking to justify their own brutal actions.

Most people. Clearly not yet all people. Some sections of society have become so blinded to reality by their own ideologies that they simply can't believe that those old Victorian-style fairy-tales might not be entirely true, and that the invaders might not have been the benevolent and kindly cultural superiors that they made themselves out to be, and that those ungrateful natives might actually have had a point when they asked to be treated equally and as nothing more than fellow human beings. In the specific case of Mandela, accepting the reality that he wasn't just some nasty, 'narrow-minded', 'violent' little thug out to kill people for the fun of it would be to accept that he was actually right in what he always believed, and actually a better individual person than those who were oppressing his people, and that would simply never do.

'When we remove all the mythology and propaganda from the history of greater South Africa', in reality we actually end up with pretty much the polar opposite of what was described in that previous post, but that reality doesn't fit with some people's twisted ideas about history, and political self-justifications about how wonderful those civilised and benevolent invading 'civilisers' were throughout history.

 

No, that doesn't quite cover it. Jackie Robinson was breaking the US baseball color barrier in 1947 and in 1948 South African white labor unions were getting apartheid laws passed that made it illegal for whites to hire blacks as cab drivers, construction workers, etc, striking a blow against individual liberty for both blacks and whites.

 

Are you talking about Jackie Robinson and America or about Nelson Mandela and South Africa? There is a difference you know, with different histories in each country. I have no problem with Mandela being a terrorist to bring about what he thought was justice for his people because I would probably have done the same thing. But it is ridiculous to make a saint out of the man now because he did this and was successful at it.

 

which is simply what I said except ignoring where that has importance...and that is an importance which has consequences for the current world both at home and abroad. For a start the Israeli Government keeps it's system of apartheid going by offering free holidays to Politicians, media and business - something which has gone down well with Cameron and changed his original position as that of criticising Gaza for being a prison camp to being a supporter of Israel right or wrong. Likewise he has a home secretary as has been already mentioned who wants to get rid of human rights in the UK and who takes away British citizenship from people when they leave the UK and gives their names over to the US for droning. His government has also been engaged in such things as sending vans round immigrant neighbourhoods with Go Home on them and texting everyone with a 'foreign' sounding name, that they are illegal immigrants - regardless of how long they have had citizenship.

He is basking in the glory of a respected person but he did not change on any level. In that way he missed the message. The 'conservative' party learnt nothing. It did not change.

As I said before and you ignored, unless people are totally honest about their position, they do not work through their attitudes. This is similar to the people who talk about racism being pc. It is pc to all the people who never stopped being racist. As you can see from what I have written this time, this can easily be seen by their actions today.

 

I talking about South Africa being on the wrong side of history. While Jackie Robinson was breaking the baseball color barrier, and Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. were breaking the laws regarding segregated schools, buses, public water fountains, and such, the white South Africans were imposing new restrictive laws.

In this same way, while most countries in the world are breaking down barriers to travel, the US and Israel seem to be on the other side of history, requiring more paperwork and building more check points and new higher walls and fences with all the modernity of The Great Wall of China.

Imagine there's no countries, it's easy if you try, or at least it was for John Lennon.

 

Where do you get the idea he was a terrorist? The Huffington post had a full article on nutters still believing he was a terrorist. The ANC originally believed in totally peaceful resistance. However the Sharpeville Massacre where around 69 peaceful protesters were shot, changed his mind. I have seen a video of him saying that if it is impossible to get change by peaceful means then they will need to consider other. He was not even arrested and charged with being a terrorist, so lets stop that rubbish.

Oh, and one of the first South African's I heard speaking about him after his death began with 'he was not a saint but' .... you do not need to be a Saint to do good.

On his freedom from jail, he managed through his words, gestures, intellect and charisma to calm down a situation which was explosive and divided to create instead one which was about inclusion and forgiveness. He surprised many including me. Not often do we get such a person.

 

You're not moving with the times. The ANC were successful in defeating the oppressors (white Europeans). Mandela's (figurehead of the ANC) struggle was and is being vindicated. The victors of that struggle are now rewriting history in their own image. Happens all the time.
The losers (white Europeans incl. the white population of the US) are being tarnished by the epithet of "racist".
And first to go are their leaders. This is merely the socialist ideal in action. &#9829;

 

This is absolutely the key point that some people seem to be missing, especially when they refer to him as being simply a 'terrorist' or 'freedom fighter' who ultimately won his battle. This is why he is so highly regarded by the world - not that he 'defeated apartheid', but that at the moment when victory became more-or-less inevitable he did not meet it with crowing, or with revenge, or with recriminations for the evils that had been done in the past, but he met it with entirely open arms of forgiveness to embrace ALL of the people, whatever side they had been on in the past, to try to build one unified nation. In a sense you could say that he was perhaps one of the greatest and most magnanimous victors that the world has ever seen, even before his victory in ending apartheid was complete. The incredible thing about Nelson Mandela was not that he won against an evil regime, but it was the nature of his victory, and what he subsequently tried to do with it.

It seems to me that there is some misinformation going on here - that some people simply do not comprehend the nature of what happened in South Africa at the end of the apartheid era. Nobody is claiming that South Africa is a perfect, model state today, of course, but what would have happened without Nelson Mandela and his attitude at that time would have been a bloodbath on a far greater scale than anything we have seen in Zimbabwe, or even what has been happening more recently in Syria. Mandela was the peacemaker-in-chief - he was the man who prevented the country descending into utter chaos and bloody civil war. He was the man who brought the people together in peace and reconciliation, and averted what was otherwise an inevitable catastrophe. He was the man who let go of all of the bitterness of past injustice and oppression, and all of the bitterness of his own imprisonment and treatment at the hands of the old regime, and forced others to see that that was the way forward for the country, and prevented them from going to war with each other. When he was released from prison, the whites of South Africa were afraid of what he would do to them - what he did was embrace them in friendship and reconciliation so that they could try to move forward together as one 'Rainbow Nation'. THAT is his achievement, and a monumental achievement it was, and that is why is is so highly regarded around the world, not simply because he was a freedom fighter who eventually won his war.

This is a view on Mandela from the last President of the old apartheid regime, and the man who released him from prison, and then had to negotiate the end of that regime with him (and subsequently a member of Mandela's transitional government):
[video=youtube;NaA6GR6Bl1Y]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaA6GR6Bl1Y[/video]

If you watch nothing more of it, listen to what he says in the last minute or so about the big debt that South Africa owes Mandela. Perhaps that will help some people to understand why he is so highly regarded by both black and white people in South Africa, and around the world.

 

Except for the simple fact that history is now written by historians based on facts and evidence, thankfully no longer based on outdated Victorian imperial prejudice about 'the natives'.

Here is another video - tributes from South Africans of all different colours:
[video=youtube;3KUYMorM9ug]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KUYMorM9ug[/video]

 

I'm going to comment more specifically on this accusation about Mandela. It is entirely false, and is a complete misunderstanding about who Mandela was and what he stood for throughout his life. How such a misunderstanding can arise I do not know, although I could speculate about the intentions of certain information outlets in the way that they feed information out to encourage others to believe in their agenda. Still, that isn't really the point - the point is that it is simple untrue.

Let's start by considering this document, the speech made by Nelson Mandela at his trial in 1964:
http://www.rfksafilm.org/html/speeches/mandela.php

I would recommend reading the entire speech in order to really get a picture of what the man was saying, and what it was he stood for, but I'll pick out a few significant quotes.

This is the one part - the final sentence - that often gets quoted, but usually out of context:

When put in the context of the preceding paragraph, it's full meaning becomes clear:

It was, for Mandela, never about 'black power' or 'throwing out the whites' - his ideal was always simple one of a free and democratic society for everyone, regardless of race.

Let's look at a few other significant passages:

A 'violent man'? Far from it - a man who was left with no alternative but to fight for what he knew to be right, and to do so reluctantly by the only available means while also persuading his fellows that they should do so only in a limited campaign of sabotage, and not resort to outright terrorism and murder.

A man intent on pursuing 'self-interest' at the expense of the former oppressors? Hardly!


A 'violent man', 'with a keen sense of race-hatred', pursuing his own 'self-interest'? That kind of characterisation of Mandela was never, ever true - those who believe it now have simply been misinformed. He was drawn into violence only when there was no alternative left, and in order to try to head of violence that would have been far worse. He was never a 'black supremacist' of any kind, and fought against any such ideas consistently, seeking only to make South Africa a place for everyone, regardless of race, equal under the law in a free society.

Let's consider him in the light of some other highly regarded historical figures - the Founding Fathers of the USA. Like Mandela, they were mostly educated (Mandela was a lawyer with a Bachelor of Arts degree, of course) and peaceful men who turned to violence to attempt to bring about change only when they felt they had no alternative. Like Mandela, they then set about creating a constitution of freedom for all of the people, regardless of birth, and set the principle that the authority of government is derived from the consent of the governed (unfortunately theirs did not include racial equality, of course, but in that they were a product of their time). He did for South Africa what George Washington et al. did for the USA. Neither example has been followed perfectly by everyone who came after, of course, and neither country immediately became a permanent utopia for all, but that does not minimise the achievements made or the stature of the men who made them.

That is the true context in which Mandela should be considered. That was the kind of man he was. That is why he is so highly regarded around the world.

 

Cenydd, you have put this well but I would need to say that while it would take an unusually bigoted person to deny how he brought the country together and saved it descending into a Syria or some such thing, it would be a very superficial interpretation of the man to only see that. The very reason he was able to work in the way he did was because his interest had always been for a multi racial society with equal rights for all. Both black and white domination repulsed him. As far as him personally being involved in armed resistance &#8211; although he did come to believe that that was the only thing which would move the Apartheid Government, I do not believe he was ever involved in any killing, though he certainly was involved in sabotaging of infrastructure. If one gets involved in looking at the terrorising, it is not difficult to see where that began and it was not the non white South African's who for so long practised only peaceful protest to be met with brutal result. If we remember Mandela do we forget such things and their importance to how we act in the world now? Do we support such practices now? If so we learned nothing.

I think you minimise his life when you say he is not remembered or applauded for his work against Apartheid. That was the main part of his life, so while I accept that a racist can still applaud him, thinking 'thank god, we could have really got it if it was not for him', that is only to look at things on a very superficial level. If you only think of it as him preventing death then you certainly do leave open the door for people to say Thatcher had a part of it because there are letters from her to the President suggesting they release Mandela for the very reasons De Klerk gives in the video you show. There is however no evidence to suggest she in any way disapproved of the lucrative business of apartheid.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/dec/06/conservative-party-uncomfortable-nelson-mandela



People are hoping that this will be an opportunity for South African's to remember his message. Why not us? As to whether the conservatives ever changed their opinion, here is a quote on one of their responses to Cameron saying the Conservatives had got it wrong.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/dec/06/conservative-party-uncomfortable-nelson-mandela

I found an article yesterday saying they were eventually told to shut up sbout their views on him as it was so damaging to the party.

Possibly the Guardian gets it right at the end of that article

and the words freedom and justice are not addressed simply through his ability to unite the country, momentous though that was.

So while you certainly presented a view where by the only reason to applaud Mandela was the work he did on release from prison I think a deeper reading into his life would would see such applause as somewhat hypocritical from those who still support the actions of the Apartheid regime in other parts of the world. Sadly when we do not learn from our mistakes we are condemned to repeat them.

Your reply was very good. I am not nit picking. I think this is very important for his honest legacy. While I think he would be glad to have managed to Unite his country, his lives work was to create a society which was not dominated by black or white and for that country to have equal rights. Without that interest as his focal point, he could never have united the country as he did.

 

Thank you. You describe the mechanics of the propaganda dynamic briefly, but well enough to convey the point that "one man's liberator is another man's tyrant", etc. I wasn't trying to throw "barbs", per se, at Mandela so much as I was trying to point out the obvious -- that it is human nature (White nature, Black nature, and Oriental nature) to be jealous of and envious of another group's successes and wealth, and, to want to dispossess them of it!

Could we compare Mandela with, say, Mao Tse-tung? There are certainly many similarities in the motivations of each. In China, the Europeans and Americans had barged in and taken over everything, lording it over a backward, stagnated native Chinese population. The White invaders took the many forms of wealth that had lain dormant or fallow in China during the complete ruin and decay of the Qing Dynasty and made themselves fabulously rich! Sound a little like the situation in South Africa, where a despotic tribal "royalty" (into which Mandela was born) held sway over people who had known little improvement in their lives in thousands of years...?

So, Mao revolted and rebelled against the "client government" puppets that the Europeans and Americans installed after the last of the Qing Dynasty crashed and burned. And, in Africa, Mandela revolted and rebelled against the White European invaders who had the gall to install themselves in his idyllic, indigenous Stone-age civilization of tribal warfare, slavery, slash-and-burn agriculture, and other wonders of the Neolithic period....

To sum it all up, Mandela was perfectly understandable, perfectly human, and, in the circumstances of South Africa in the 20-Century, perfectly predictable! No better, and no worse than any other opportunist who, desirous of what other people had achieved, wanted to take it by force for himself and his own people. Oddly enough, it was the pressure of White "guilt" that finally gave him what he wanted... an unusual twist in the way these things usually go. Now... that about cover it?

Good. We've got many much more important things to worry about now -- like how Mao's successors are steadily pushing us White invaders and our friends, South Korea and Japan, out of the East China Sea!

 

You are correct, of course. That post had focussed on his actions in later life, but my subsequent post was about his lifelong beliefs and motivations, and understanding that is vital to understanding the man.

 

Not even remotely. It is, once again, a complete misunderstanding of Nelson Mandela and what he stood for, and isn't remotely an even vaguely true picture of what he strove for and stood for, or of what he achieved. I would suggest reading some of the other posts on the thread about the details of Mandela's life and beliefs, and forming an opinion based on fact and based in reality.

 

My feelings stem from the fact that my city of Glasgow, Scotland, was one of the, if not the main instigators of the international free Mandela movement. We have a large square and building renamed in his honour and our fight goes right back 1981, would you believe before most people in the world knew who he was.

>>>MOD EDIT: OFF TOPIC<<<

 

So that'll sound like this then?

[video=youtube;apk5UNO48zY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apk5UNO48zY[/video]

and the French national anthem's relation to the free Africa for which Nelson Mandela stood would be this then?

[video=youtube;RoxoVX4xK68]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoxoVX4xK68[/video]

[video=youtube;I3BUH6dyz3Y]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3BUH6dyz3Y[/video]

and this

Looks like we are spoiled for choice for republican leaders to fill the shoes of Nelson Mandela then.

1. Condoleezza Rice (see post #34)
2. François Hollande

 

If you're asking me what the relationship between Mandela and the Marseillaise is you'll have to scroll back because I'm not the person who saw one.