Nelson Mandela was no saint

Twitter exploded last night with the news of Nelson Mandela's death with people competing for the most sycophantic tribute. The all too familiar "I'm so upset by this" bleatings of people desperate to show just how upset they are that someone they didn't know has died. This is always pathetic and in this case made worse by either the ignorance or selective memory of some people.

Firstly I am not a Mandela hater or anything like that. He lived a remarkable life and did achieve a lot of good. Although exactly how much is open for debate given the current state of South Africa and for a supposed socialist (the lefties are working hard to claim him as one of their own) he managed to die a rich man while people starve in his country.

Young people in this country today seem to think he was locked up for purely political reasons. That the Apartheid government hated a black man with a high profile challenging their views and well, they probably did. But the reason he was locked up was the guilty plea for the 156 violent attacks, including bombings, he planned. This was a man who refused to renounce violence and Amnesty even refused to take his case;

“[the] movement recorded that it could not give the name of ‘Prisoner of Conscience’ to anyone associated with violence, even though as in ‘conventional warfare’ a degree of restraint may be exercised”

There is more as well, including some support for dictators (well he was a lefty) and more. An excellent blog by Backbencher gives the highlights. My point is that you can't choose the parts of history you like the best and ignore the rest, imagine if people said, and actually meant, the following.

"Hitler was a genius who turned around Germany's failing economy"

Was Nelson Mandela a great man? Well he did achieve great things but that doesn't make you a great man. Maybe he gets a free ride on his past because of what he was fighting against. Apartheid was disgusting but does that make the deaths of so many innocents ok? Especially given these weren't people working at a legitimate target but bombs placed in public places deliberately, Johannesburg railway station for example.

By only remembering parts of history and not all of it  we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. This what you want of Mandela but Gandhi he wasn't, lets not deify someone with so much blood on their hands. 

What he did wrong in life is as important as what he did right.

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