Nelson Mandela dies.

Mandela made a difference. In many respects, Mandela stands alone in that he used violence because he said "non-violence is not working for us."

The apartheid regime was wily enough to secure control of the Central Bank – with crucial IMF help – and South Africa’s trade policy. Mandela secured only a (very significant) political victory. The ANC only found out it had been conned when it took power. Forget about its socialist idea of nationalizing the mining and banking industries – owned by Western capital, and distribute the benefits to the indigenous population. The West would never allow it. And to make matters worse, the ANC was literally hijacked by a sorry, greedy bunch.

Follow the roadmap
John Pilger is spot on pointing to economic apartheid in South Africa now with a new face.

Patrick Bond has written arguably the best expose anywhere of the Mandela years – and their legacy.

And Ronnie Kasrils does a courageous mea culpa dissecting how Mandela and the ANC accepted a devil’s pact with the usual suspects.

The bottom line: Mandela defeated apartheid but was defeated by neoliberalism. And that’s the dirty secret of him being allowed sainthood.

Yet, the Mandela Decade failed to achieve many of its ambitions, The idea of "forgiveness and reconciliation" was for Mandela a correct and irreversible step. This was also the conviction of church leaders who, together with exponents of a long standing tradition of Cape White Liberalism, argued that nation-building could not occur until the ghosts of the past were settled.

Such arguments resulted in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It was both a process of confession and a dramatic staging of reconciliation that would release forgiveness, toleration and reconstruction. It was to be the grand, sorrowful performance and ritual of a society re-making itself. It was to be one of the most compromised, yet significant pieces of nation-building ever imagined.

In turn, the idea of the rainbow as a narrative for nation-building and unity has proven to be a disappointment. For many younger people in South Africa, black and white, especially from the middle-classes, the concept found an easy-go-lucky resonance. But it is fair to say that its failure was extensive. The straps of racism were too close to white hearts. The refusal of the white population to own the past frightened and angered Mandela. The backlash from the African intelligentsia and the emerging black middle classes brought back the rain clouds; there was no space in their status scripts for such a notion.

Future historians will have to bring their own factual scales - from the perspective inside this unfolding transition, the hope for a nonracial and diverse culture of tolerance seems to have failed. South Africa is not a society of shared norms and ideas; it is, rather, a social formation still bound by need and greed and held together by new regulatory social institutions. The factual scales will have to decide on a more nuanced judgment, but they will have to weigh too the feeling that, alongside a remarkable transition, the Mandela decade left behind a profound sense of failure felt by the very people who struggled to create a nonracial and diverse nation.

The bottom line: Mandela defeated apartheid...

Quote:

The bottom line: Mandela defeated apartheid...

That's enough of an accomplishment to warrant building those monuments to him.

Hawkeye, couldn't you, just for a few days, pretend that Nelson Mandela was white, so you could feel free to give him the credit he deserved?

was his refusal to bend on equality and fairness.

It's funny how the vast majority of the people around the world hold this man to their hearts and mourn his passing, whilst couch experts with dubious political leanings like yourself seem to resent that adulation and do their best to piss on the parade.

Shame.

In most cases people like the inflexible Hawk is a waste of time, truly, except in one way, one may always use him as a sounding board to let the rest of us know how they feel morally regarding the same topic.

decent

"Behind every great man, there's a great woman".

Nelson Mandela talking about his wife Graça Machel:

"I cannot describe my joy and happiness to receive the love and warmth of such a humble but gracious and brilliant lady," Mandela wrote at the time. "It gives me unbelievable comfort and satisfaction to know that there [is] somebody somewhere in the universe on whom I can rely, especially on matters where my political comrades cannot provide me."

What about Winnie?