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Post by whollygoats on Dec 5, 2013 22:44:30 GMT
Today it was announced that Nelson Mandela has passed from this life.
We are the poorer for it, but he did what he could during his all too brief stay to make this planet a better place for humans to live with each other.
Not many obtain what he accomplished in his life. Would that we could have more like Nelson Mandela.
*sniff*
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Post by Kye on Dec 5, 2013 22:50:29 GMT
Amen!
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Post by jayme on Dec 5, 2013 23:18:50 GMT
Well done. What a life! May he rest in peace.
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Post by tangent on Dec 6, 2013 0:32:51 GMT
Well said, WG.
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Post by Moose on Dec 6, 2013 2:00:31 GMT
Yes. To have suffered what he did - nearly thirty years! - and to have emerged without bitterness, ready to forgive those who had done this to him and to help make his country and the world better - that really is remarkable. I do not think that I could have been so magnanimous. I know that I could not have been.
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Post by whollygoats on Dec 6, 2013 5:47:07 GMT
I know I could not have. I'm a bitter old man already and I haven't suffered near half what he did.
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Post by Alvamiga on Dec 6, 2013 8:02:58 GMT
Yes, amazing what he managed to achieve in spite of having so much of his life taken away from him.
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Post by tangent on Dec 6, 2013 10:02:52 GMT
Had he remained bitter, he might not have lived so long either.
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Post by JoeP on Dec 6, 2013 10:57:03 GMT
Practically the definition of dignity.
Very few leaders - African or anywhere - can match up to him. Even in something as simple as stepping down after a single term as president.
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Post by juju on Dec 6, 2013 21:13:35 GMT
Some people make the world a better place. And such dignity too. RIP Madiba.
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Post by Moose on Dec 9, 2013 1:45:56 GMT
Apparently the Phelps crew are going out there to picket the funeral, though what precisely they are picketing does not seem to have been made clear. The guy was 95, ffs. What is their pitch here? That he would have lived to be 300 had he not been 'sinful'?
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DGoeij
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Post by DGoeij on Dec 9, 2013 2:14:16 GMT
Sinful as in Communist while Black?
I do have some vague memories of my parents reacting quite emotionally to TV-images of a tall black man walking somewhere (I said it was vague). Since Mandela was released in 1990, I think that must have been it. I only learned about him a bit more (and better) in later years. Remarkable strength of character he displayed. After 27 years of imprisonment by a regime that brutally suppressed him and his people for decades, he goes for peace. Not even getting vengeful towards those western powers that for far too long supported the Apartheid bastards.
I think I can raise a glass to that man's life and legacy.
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Post by Moose on Dec 9, 2013 2:24:56 GMT
Aye (and I will shut up about the Phelps bunch as they are just polluting the thread . I remember, vaguely, Mandela's release .. I must have been fifteen or so. But I did not know really who he was or what the significance was
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Post by Moose on Dec 9, 2013 2:26:16 GMT
I'd be interested to hear from both Joe and Big Sleep, one a white immigrant to SA and one a Boer, as to how they found the years following Mandela's release..
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Post by JoeP on Dec 9, 2013 17:37:06 GMT
I only moved there after the 1994 elections. Mandela's term as president was a pretty optimistic time all round. Since then ... it's easier to see the lack of progress compared to that optimism than it is to see lots of positives.
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