What Nelson Mandela really believed

[LongTomH]

As the world honors Nelson Mandela, there's a strong pull toward white-washing his legacy, leaving out the revolutionary part of his legacy. ThinkProgress has a more appropriate tribute today: Six Things Nelson Mandela Believed That Most People Won't Talk About

Mandela was a political activist and agitator. He did not shy away from controversy and he did not seek — or obtain — universal approval. Before and after his release from prison, he embraced an unabashedly progressive and provocative platform. As one commentator put it shortly after the announcement of the freedom fighter’s death, “Mandela will never, ever be your minstrel. Over the next few days you will try so, so hard to make him something he was not, and you will fail. You will try to smooth him, to sandblast him, to take away his Malcolm X. You will try to hide his anger from view.”

........//snip

1. Mandela blasted the Iraq War and American imperialism. Mandela called Bush “a president who has no foresight, who cannot think properly,” and accused him of “wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust” by going to war in Iraq. “All that (Mr. Bush) wants is Iraqi oil,” he said. Mandela even speculated that then-Secretary-General Kofi Annan was being undermined in the process because he was black. “They never did that when secretary-generals were white,” he said. He saw the Iraq War as a greater problem of American imperialism around the world. “If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America. They don’t care,” he said.

2. Mandela called freedom from poverty a “fundamental human right.” Mandela considered poverty one of the greatest evils in the world, and spoke out against inequality everywhere. “Massive poverty and obscene inequality are such terrible scourges of our times — times in which the world boasts breathtaking advances in science, technology, industry and wealth accumulation — that they have to rank alongside slavery and apartheid as social evils,” he said. He considered ending poverty a basic human duty: “Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life,” he said. “While poverty persists, there is no true freedom.”

3. Mandela criticized the “War on Terror” and the labeling of individuals as terrorists, even Osama Bin Laden, without due process. On the U.S. terrorist watch list until 2008 himself, Mandela was an outspoken critic of President George W. Bush’s war on terror. He warned against rushing to label terrorists without due process. While calling for Osama bin Laden to be brought to justice, Mandela said, “The labeling of Osama bin Laden as the terrorist responsible for those acts before he had been tried and convicted could also be seen as undermining some of the basic tenets of the rule of law.”

Read the rest here: http://thinkprogress.org/home/2013/12/06/3030781/nelson-mandela-believed-people-wont-talk/

[polly7]

1. Yes, and this:

7 Nelson Mandela Quotes You Probably Won’t See In The U.S. Media

http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/7-nelson-mandela-quotes-you-probably-wont-see-in-the-us-medi

[Mnemosyne]

2. On the US terrorist list until 2008 and dared to speak against racism in the US.

What a world where the good are punished and war criminals walk free.

[frazzled]

3. What he believed and what he tried or was able to implement as a leader ...

were not always coterminous. I think this is something that people don't understand about political leaders in general. And it's not that they are abandoning their beliefs in their ascent to leadership. These are simply different realms: theory and practice. It's possible to believe something, but not act on it for strategic or practical reasons, or fail to achieve the ends of those beliefs. Or sometimes the beliefs are simply too big to be able to realize in practice.

Mandela, in addition to being a revolutionary thinker and bold actor, was also a practical man, and he saw his job after release to be the reconciliation of factions in his country. He knew nothing else would be possible without that. It meant acting against his "beliefs" in a fairly literal way by including the white minority oppressors in the new democracy ... (we know this story).

He did not solve the problem of poverty for Black South Africans, or fully right inequality. (He couldn't even come close.) This doesn't mean he did not still see the fight to eradicate poverty as an essential one, or freedom from poverty a "fundamental human right."

I say this because all too often I see people criticizing senators or the president as wrong in their beliefs when in reality it is a question of their failure to accomplish something. (By extension, we often tend to laud certain people for their "beliefs"--i.e., what they say, with little evidence of their ability to implement these beliefs.) If, for example, we were to read Obama's economic speech from earlier this week 40 years from now, it would probably be seen as "revolutionary" (and a continuation of his beliefs of many years). Yet, like Mandela, he in no way has been able to implement those beliefs in reality. Some of it is because he lacks the political majorities; some if perhaps that he hasn't tried hard enough. But this is no different than Mandela.

Beliefs are important for what they inspire, not for what they do. And we shouldn't confuse the two things.

[OmahaBlueDog]

4. K & R

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

5. They hated him because he loved Malcolm X!! K&R!! Bookmarked! Thank you!

[Demo_Chris]

6. The world is not so simple that smart principled men would agree on all issues...

Nor should we expect them to do so.