Nelson Mandela passes away...

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/nelson-mandela-dies-214057711.html

Helluva life...

 

Yep. RIP to a truly great man.

 

Amazing he made it to 95

 

I've got some South African friends who don't speak so highly of him.

 

Some people search for the negative in everything. Mr. Mandela was not one of them.

 

+1

One of the great men of our time. Hundreds of years from now people will learn about him in school. That's a beautiful thing.

 

There are probably a bunch of brits that talk that same kind of shit about Jefferson, Washington ect.

 

Most of the people who were directly impacted by the American Revolution have managed to put it behind them.

 

Don't rain on their parade.
Most don't know that much about him, nor do they want to.
Legend sounds so much better than fact.

 

and so do creepy inbreeds from Gorgia

 

I honestly thought he had died a few years ago

 

OK, Mike. Let's hear it. Communist? Terrorist? Hedonist? Smoker?

Why the hate?

 

Oh, the irony.

 

Mandela advocated for violent means to change an intolerable political system. History will probably decide that his actions were justified. This would be of small comfort if you or your family were on the receiving end of any of the violence he espoused. He was definitely a conciliatory figure in later years.

 

Understandable however I think the country is better off now and has the best chance of continuing to improve while the old system was unsustainable. Certainly there was wrongs committed during the transition just as during the old system (and of course they continue as nothing is perfect). However one thing that impressed me with him was his stepping down after a term as president. That one act of giving up power likely kept the country from becoming a dictatorship.

 

The history is out there, you can read it.
You're old enough that you should remember a lot of it.
He wasn't the MLK of South Africa, and he wasn't just a political prisoner.
Apartheid may have been ended, but a lot of people died, and South Africa today is a corrupt, violent place.
The Mandela myth repeated these days has cleansed all of that.

 

BS. I have heard a lot in the past 24 hours about the darker side of the ANC's history, his flaws (I don't remember anyone ever saying he was Jesus, by the way) and the things he did not succeed at. I don't know what you've been watching or reading, but there is obviously a lot more available out there that you just choose to ignore.

 

History is often much more complex than the simplistic public schooling books we all read as kids.

 

As did the founders of the United States of America.

 

Naughty boy, establishing context is as verbotem as facts here....:tut: