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The Day Mandela Was Arrested, With A Little Help From the CIA

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Re: The Day Mandela Was Arrested, With A Little Help From the CIA

#71

Post by ilitirit »

moolriaz wrote: post #40

Shocked by how misinformed people are about Mandela/Apartheid, or by the amount of trolling going on here. Thousands of white people have not died in SA thanks to Mandela. Mandela was not a 'terrorist'. Apartheid was BAD, and still affects the country significantly today. Here's some context for you. This all applied pre 1994/2: I am a non white South African. The only reason I got a good education was because with t…

As a non-white South African myself (Cape Malay - a descendant of Malaysian political activists exiled to Cape Town), I can confirm the legitimacy of this post. I have several family members who have strange names because the South African government officials at the time couldn't understand them so they just made up names for them.

My dad had a dead end job because even though he was more qualified than his boss, a non-white could not be promoted to a position held by a white person. Neither my dad nor any of my uncles were allowed to participate in National Cricket, Rugby or Football teams. This led to the very interesting problem where a large portion of the population even today refuse to support any of the National sports teams. You're more likely for example to find a New Zealand Rugby supporter among the older "coloured" (the official term) community, than one who supports the National team. Even today my parents do not support South African sports teams (football was always the exception, because it was regarded as a "black" sport).

I was part of the first group of non-white people allowed to attend a "white" high school. The racism was terrible at times, and it filled me with resentment for the first few years. Afterwards though, I started noticing how my peers were becoming more open to other cultures and ethnicities, and with that the resentment faded.

Ironically, I too for many years believed Mandela was a terrorist who killed civilians, partly because the zeitgeist of my teen years was rebelliousness, and partly because I highly skeptic of anyone held in such high regard. Thankfully, my adult years proved that I was just being naive and willfully ignorant. Mandela was certainly no terrorist.

Re: The Day Mandela Was Arrested, With A Little Help From the CIA

#72

Post by moolriaz »

rhizome wrote: post #64
puller wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, he did found the armed wing of the ANC, was offered a release from prison conditional on renouncing violence which he refused to do, and afterward his group went on to carry out a number of IRA-style bombings. The apartheid regime might have justified extreme measures that killed civilians, but his hands are not as clean as you would imagine from the hagiography. We don't glorify Gerry Adams in this way a…

The hagiography is wrong. It's only in the last 20 years that people have tried to make him into a Ghandi.

Mandela is absolutely distinct from Ghandi.

While Ghandi lived in South Africa, he wrote racist slander towards black (African) people, referring to them as 'kaffirs' (the N word equivalent in SA). Here's a quote:

"Ours is one continued struggle against degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the European, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir, whose occupation is hunting and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with, and then pass his life in indolence and nakedness."

Ghandi too was not perfect, and also experienced Apartheid (most notably when he was kicked off a train in Pietermaritzburg), and demonstrated against it in SA. Though I do not think he believed in equality for Indians with Blacks.

Re: The Day Mandela Was Arrested, With A Little Help From the CIA

#73

Post by brown9-2 »

iends wrote: post #58
yequalsx wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for your contribution to the discussion. I too am shocked. That the United States actively supported the Apartheid regime is a great national shame. I'm friends with a woman who grew up in South Africa. She is white. The stories she tells about the attitudes and what happened there during the Apartheid regime are revolting. She thinks Mandela is a saint and is very grateful for his leadership. Mandela was n…

Mandela was more than happy to use violence against the government as a tool in his cause for equality (although later he seemed to regret the need for it). Using violence, he broke reasonable and justified laws. Laws such as planting bombs, destroying property, and physically harming others. Just because we can all agree that his cause was just, doesn't mean he should necessarily get a free pass from criticism or ju…

By the same argument we should criticize and negatively judge the American Revolution as well.

This path of argument seems unable to acknowledge that there are times where "the law" is so unjust that you are left with no non-violent actions whatsoever. I think it's fine if you believe this, but you should be able to clearly say that you believe in nonviolence in all situations and that any deviation from that path is immoral.

Re: The Day Mandela Was Arrested, With A Little Help From the CIA

#74

Post by brown9-2 »

jd_free wrote: post #18

Coverage of Mandela is a testament to the prevailing powers' ability to rewrite history. Millions of people think he was put in jail for protesting apartheid or something else noble. He was actually a terrorist leader - his group killed thousands of innocents in bombings and other attacks. The "activism" he's credited with while in prison was mostly arranging more killings. Read about a practice his group created whi…

Are you sure that it is fair to blame Mandela for what some parts of the ANC did while he was imprisoned? Did he have control over all of the factions then?

Re: The Day Mandela Was Arrested, With A Little Help From the CIA

#75

Post by iends »

scarmig wrote: post #62
iends wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mandela was more than happy to use violence against the government as a tool in his cause for equality (although later he seemed to regret the need for it). Using violence, he broke reasonable and justified laws. Laws such as planting bombs, destroying property, and physically harming others. Just because we can all agree that his cause was just, doesn't mean he should necessarily get a free pass from criticism or ju…

Weren't those laws only really enforced when non-white people broke them, though? After all, the apartheid state was more than happy to bulldoze thousands of people's homes and not pay restitution; it was more than happy to shoot hundreds or thousands of peaceful protestors and not prosecute anyone for it; it was more than happy to take political prisoners, break their limbs, and throw them out of airplanes a hundred…

I don't know anything about the laws being enforced. My point was, it's hard to argue that "the moral thing to do" is to harm others or destroy property.

Re: The Day Mandela Was Arrested, With A Little Help From the CIA

#76

Post by iends »

moolriaz wrote: post #69
scarmig wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weren't those laws only really enforced when non-white people broke them, though? After all, the apartheid state was more than happy to bulldoze thousands of people's homes and not pay restitution; it was more than happy to shoot hundreds or thousands of peaceful protestors and not prosecute anyone for it; it was more than happy to take political prisoners, break their limbs, and throw them out of airplanes a hundred…

"Weren't those laws only really enforced when coloured people broke them, though?" What? 'Coloured' people also refers to a very specific subset of South Africans It doesn't mean what you think it does here.

Can you elaborate? When I visited South Africa, a few white people used it to refer to the non-whites. I do not know if they were just trying to be descriptive or discriminatory. Perhaps it didn't mean what I thought it meant.

Re: The Day Mandela Was Arrested, With A Little Help From the CIA

#77

Post by nashequilibrium »

moolriaz wrote: post #40

Shocked by how misinformed people are about Mandela/Apartheid, or by the amount of trolling going on here. Thousands of white people have not died in SA thanks to Mandela. Mandela was not a 'terrorist'. Apartheid was BAD, and still affects the country significantly today. Here's some context for you. This all applied pre 1994/2: I am a non white South African. The only reason I got a good education was because with t…

The problem is that in the age of TL;DR, nobody here is going to take the time to read "A Long Walk to Freedom". So they will listen to snippets of info, mostly taken out of context. Yes Mandela did create the "spear of the nation" but most people do not understand the background of this or the reason, instead they resort to reading a few snippets and posting here.

You get two types of people here, one group is liberal and support alomost anything against racism, women abuse, welfare reform, you name it, if it promotes freedom they are for it.These are called the Democrats. On the other side of it the people who love racism but deny it exists, they donated to george zimmerman, they hold onto their guns at all cost, believe all minorites are on welfare etc. These are the Republicans. A lot of people who are posting negative things come from this group and they are no different than Apartheid type whites, they even be worst, but this style of thinking has been passed down from their parents and they will pass it down to their kids, thats life. Don't let their lack of evolution sway your understanding of what Mandela stood for as most of them have not taken the time to educate themselves, but just read snippets and focus on something slighlty negative.

If Mandela had ceated a civil war, this country would not have been blessed with "Elon Musk", "Emmanue Dherman" and people Like "Roelof Botha" would not be living the cozy VC life even though his family were high ranking members in the apartheid government.

Re: The Day Mandela Was Arrested, With A Little Help From the CIA

#79

Post by ZoFreX »

jd_free wrote: post #18

Coverage of Mandela is a testament to the prevailing powers' ability to rewrite history. Millions of people think he was put in jail for protesting apartheid or something else noble. He was actually a terrorist leader - his group killed thousands of innocents in bombings and other attacks. The "activism" he's credited with while in prison was mostly arranging more killings. Read about a practice his group created whi…

> Coverage of Mandela is a testament to the prevailing powers' ability to rewrite history.

I agree. It's quite amusing to see politicians that were definitively not on his side coming out after all these years in favour of him: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/06/follow-...

In response to the rest of your comment: wow such edgy.

Re: The Day Mandela Was Arrested, With A Little Help From the CIA

#80

Post by iends »

brown9-2 wrote: post #73
iends wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mandela was more than happy to use violence against the government as a tool in his cause for equality (although later he seemed to regret the need for it). Using violence, he broke reasonable and justified laws. Laws such as planting bombs, destroying property, and physically harming others. Just because we can all agree that his cause was just, doesn't mean he should necessarily get a free pass from criticism or ju…

By the same argument we should criticize and negatively judge the American Revolution as well. This path of argument seems unable to acknowledge that there are times where "the law" is so unjust that you are left with no non-violent actions whatsoever. I think it's fine if you believe this, but you should be able to clearly say that you believe in nonviolence in all situations and that any deviation from that path is…

War is terrible, no matter what.

The laws Mandela broke were not the same ones he thought were unjust, at least, it seems he broke a superset of the laws he thought were unjust. He did this as a means to an end.

I'd like to say I believe in non-violence, but it's one thing to say it, it's another thing not to punch you after you've just pushed my wife.

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