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Nelson Mandela Dead At 95

Posted by timothy on from the specials-song-now-in-my-head dept.

New submitter Emilio Hodge writes "Nelson Mandela, the revered statesman who emerged from prison after 27 years to lead South Africa out of decades of apartheid, has died, President Jacob Zuma announces. He was 95." Mandela's death is covered by lots of news sources, of course, including The New York Times and The Washington Post.

24 of 311 comments (clear)

  1. What a great man by Finallyjoined!!! · · Score: 4, Insightful

    He will be sadly missed. Huge respect.

    --
    If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
    1. Re: What a great man by amiga3D · · Score: 4, Insightful

      People are a product of their times. While true that Mandela embraced violence he felt that he had no choice at the time. Terrible acts were being committed against his people by the government of South Africa. I think most telling was that when he finally overcame and was elected president he did not use that power to trample the former oppressors but instead used his power to heal his country. I think I was most impressed by how instead of imprisoning and executing former secret police he had them confess on video their crimes and then pardoned them. Some criticized him for this but they miss the beauty and power of the act. By having them confess on video he broke these men and made them small. If he had executed them in a wave of bloodshed then the backlash would have caused South Africa to take decades to heal, if ever. The legacy of these men will be forever shame and disgrace as is that of the apartheid regime. No hero is perfect and I feel that Mandela genuinely deserves the term.

    2. Re: What a great man by Alain+Williams · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You can't make an omlette without breaking eggs. He might not have been an angel 100% of the time, but overall he did the right things. He did much more good with his life than I have in mine, and more good that I suspect you have done.

    3. Re:What a great man by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Reagan & Thatcher opposed "sanctions". They didn't support apartheid.

      They supported the apartheid government, which is the same thing. It's like saying you support the German government in 1939, but you don't support Nazis.

      Both Reagan and Thatcher called Mandela "terrorist" well after the world could see the truth. They were trying to hold on to the last vestiges of white colonial Africa. May their names be erased from the Book of Life.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    4. Re:What a great man by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If sanctions are not effective, why are they used so avidly against Iran?

    5. Re:What a great man by bmajik · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I hesitated to respond to you because we live in entirely different worlds, and I don't think any number of Slashdot posts is going to fix that.

      However, to be clear, I wasn't implying that Reagan or Thatcher had a problem with violence.

      On the contrary; they had a problem with South Africa becoming a communist satellite. When the communist agitators resort to violence, that just makes it easier to convince the domestic public that the communists are bad. Obviously when it is bin Laden fighting the Soviets, violence is just fine. We both understand how it works.

      Regarding your last point: South Africa of today is one of the most dangerous and violent places on earth; Mandela did next to nothing to address black on white or even black-on-black violence. There was a huge white-flight out of SA during the 90s.

      Perhaps you think this is a positive outcome. I don't.

      No racial reconciliation is perfect, of course. I would say that the US probably didn't do enough to help re-enfranchise blacks, and that South Africa may have done a bit too much.

      The bottom line is this: I very much enjoyed living in the Reagan years America. I very much would NOT have liked living in the Mandela years SA.

      I think Reagan and Thatcher were both great, as far as people who have actually held office go, and I am disappointed that the Reagan we got was nowhere close to the Reagan that campaigned. I was all for abolishing the Depts of Ed, Energy, and the ATF. Very disappointed with Reagan on that score...

      The other transgressions in his career (military adventurism) bother me, but I don't think they actually bother Reagan detractors that much. The people who bitterly hate Reagan tend to hate him for reasons that his supporters like him. Similarly, if you accuse Thatcher of being a union buster or for cleaning up free loaders on the dole, people like me will say "bravo Thatcher".

      The bottom line is that you and I probably agree that Reagan/Thatcher supported a bunch of wars and terrorists that they shouldn't have. But you shouldn't pretend like that is the basis for your displeasure with them. Especially not when every other US and UK leader since (some of which you've certainly hated LESS, if not mildly supported) has done the same exact shit...

      --
      My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
    6. Re: What a great man by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Mandela was working against a government who developed such things as the 'street sweeper' ultra-high capacity shotgun for crowd control

      When a freaking beast has their boot on your throat it is impossible to play nice

      The greatest credit to Mandela is that when he did gain power he did not succumb to stupid behavior (land grabs, nepotism and economic decline) like his neighbor Mugabe

    7. Re:What a great man by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If sanctions are not effective, why are they used so avidly against Iran?

      Well...there you go again, bringing up inconvenient questions.

      I think the answer is, sanctions work in Iran because it's just a bunch of muslims getting hurt, but they don't work in South Africa because some rich white racists lost money.

      Mandela pleaded with the world to keep the sanctions in place against the apartheid South African government. He pleaded with Thatcher and Reagan to support those sanctions, and for his troubles they labeled him a "terrorist" and did everything they could to thwart the end of apartheid.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    8. Re:What a great man by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "Reagan and Thatcher supported Apartheid", please do some research, preferably not on wikipedia, and revert.

      Did they support the apartheid government?

      Case closed.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    9. Re:What a great man by Solandri · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Reagan & Thatcher opposed "sanctions". They didn't support apartheid.

      They supported the apartheid government, which is the same thing. It's like saying you support the German government in 1939, but you don't support Nazis.

      The Nazis were democratically elected into power. If you supported democracy, you had to support the Nazis in 1939 (prior to their invasion of Poland in September). I opposed the younger Bush and voted against him both times, but I supported his government because he fairly won a democratic election.

      There's this baffling tendency for people to try to oversimplify other people's actions and motivations to one single factor. That's almost never the case. Support or opposition is usually based on a myriad of factors, and quite often one's support can be a borderline thing chosen only because it's the lesser of two evils. It's very possible to oppose apartheid, yet support the (then) current government of South Africa because you feared if they lost power the government which replaced it would be much worse than apartheid.

      If all choices were easy, politics wouldn't exist. Politics is all about having to decide between difficult (and often unpalatable) choices. Armchair quarterbacking is all about criticizing those making those difficult choices, by pretending that the negative consequences of the other choices don't exist.

    10. Re:What a great man by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I very much enjoyed living in the Reagan years America.

      Did you know that the average annual growth in GDP under Reagan was less than it was under Jimmy Carter? That doesn't figure in to your Reagan hagiography, does it?

      Of course "living in the Reagan years America" was good, especially compared to the years after his trickle-down insanity kicked in.

      Sometime, go take a look at the trend in middle-class income, starting with Ronald Reagan. In many ways, we're still living in Reagan's America. It's still his trickle-down voodoo economics. Even Pope Francis has recently weighed in on Ronald Reagan's beloved "supply-side" economics, calling it a "new tyranny".

      And it's only very recently that we're starting to see people begin to push back, as they start to understand what Ronald Reagan really did to this country.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    11. Re:What a great man by Kjella · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Regarding your last point: South Africa of today is one of the most dangerous and violent places on earth; Mandela did next to nothing to address black on white or even black-on-black violence. There was a huge white-flight out of SA during the 90s. Perhaps you think this is a positive outcome. I don't.

      What did you expect? I suspect a lot of "white flight" from certain areas of the US post-1865, it's not easy to have a man you used to have in shackles and call your property now be a free man and your equal - though I doubt most ex-slave owners ever saw it that way. We here in Norway did some very unkind things to children of Nazi soldiers and their mothers (there were 400.000 soldiers = males at the capitulation occupying a country of 3.000.000 and they'd been there for 5 years, contraception was generally not available and the Nazis had their Lebensborn program - shit happens), you don't get a toss-up like that without revenge.

      Like you say, a lot of that is black-on-black violence which is more about SA being in the same troubles as many other countries in Africa, they're 15th on the global list of murder rates but only 6th in Africa. The entire continent is so screwed up in more ways than you can count, there are still countries there with <35% literacy rates while South Africa is actually the most literate country in all of Africa, they have the highest GDP south of Sahara and so on. We're all affected by our neighbors and really they got nobody to look up to in a 5000 km radius.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    12. Re:What a great man by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I opposed the younger Bush and voted against him both times, but I supported his government because he fairly won a democratic election.

      Did he now?

    13. Re:What a great man by riverat1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's very possible to oppose apartheid, yet support the (then) current government of South Africa because you feared if they lost power the government which replaced it would be much worse than apartheid.

      And Nelson Mandela is probably the major reason RSA didn't devolve into a civil war or become like Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) after apartheid ended. His leadership in those first few years after the change held the country together.

    14. Re:What a great man by PopeRatzo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I don't believe in erasing anything from history

      I didn't say anything about erasing from history. My suggestion was to erase their names from the Book of Life, which is an ancient curse, equivalent to damning them to Hell for eternity.

      Read twice, comment once. This way you won't make the same mistake again.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    15. Re:What a great man by phantomfive · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'm not sure where you are getting your numbers, it looks like the gdp dropped under Carter, and rose under Reagan. Maybe you forgot to adjust for inflation? You could probably give some credit to Carter because Reagen followed some of his economic policies (like keeping Volcker around), but strictly looking at the numbers, growth was higher during Reagan's presidency.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    16. Re:What a great man by Attila+Dimedici · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You missed an important point there. The poster you replied to did not say that sanctions were not effective, nor did he say that Reagan believed that sanctions would be ineffective. What he said was that Reagan believed that sanctions would cause more harm to South African blacks than whatever help those sanctions would give them. He then offered a link which lends support to the conclusion that that was actually the result of the sanctions.
      In the case of Iran, the purpose of sanctions is NOT to help one segment of the population overcome the oppression of the government. The purpose of the sanctions is to reduce the economic capability of the government to develop a nuclear weapon, and in the process cause so much economic pain to the country of Iran that it gives up the idea of doing so.

      --
      The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
    17. Re:What a great man by Smauler · · Score: 4, Insightful

      He's one of the reasons... I believe De Klerk was also massively important. I see his role as similar to Gorbachev's, at the end of the USSR. They both could have held on to power, they both could have kept the status quo to some extent.

  2. Mandela taught forgiveness by JoeyRox · · Score: 5, Insightful

    To be imprisoned for 27 years but still have the selflessness to bring peace and freedom to his country so that nobody should share his fate is the essence of compassion, generosity, and forgiveness. He is a shinning example of the human spirit.

  3. Re:Not news for nerds by CanHasDIY · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How is this relevant on /.? I mean no disrespect

    Well, you've shown it, intentionally or not.

    Anyone old enough to have at least a 10th grade education should know why Nelson Mandela was an important person, and why his death is relevant to everyone on the planet.

    IMO.

    --
    An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
  4. Really deserved his Nobel Peace Prize by dkleinsc · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress took power, they were in a position where they could well have taken revenge for a couple of centuries of repression by the English and Afrikaners. He led the effort to do something else (the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions), so that his country would not tear itself apart the way so many of its neighbors had done, repeatedly.

    I'm not saying South Africa is a paradise compared to, say, the UK, but it's doing a heck of a lot better than Zimbabwe or Lesotho, and his decisions had a lot to do with that.

    --
    I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
    1. Re:Really deserved his Nobel Peace Prize by clarkkent09 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If we are to be honest rather than PC, whites were the reason South Africa was the most developed country in Africa (by far) and not a mess of poverty, crime, war, disease, violence and disease like every other African country. I would say he was smart, not generous, when he made a deal with whites instead of trying to force them out like Mugabe did.

      --
      Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
  5. R.I.P. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Mr. Mandela, who died Thursday night at age 95, seemed to understand that the motivating force behind ethnic, religious and racial hatred is not only, or even primarily, self-interest; it is fear, distrust, a lack of understanding. In his person and his policies, he set out to show those on the other side that they had little to fear. He sought unity rather than revenge, honesty and understanding rather than the naked exercise of power. These are all fine abstractions, of course, but never so clear to us as when there is a living figure to exemplify them. That's why Mr. Mandela’s influence extended so far beyond South Africa and was felt by so many of the world's peoples other than Africans. It is the reason, now that he is gone, that it is more important than ever — in a century marked so far by frightening eruptions of terror and religious intolerance — to keep before the world the name and example of Nelson Mandela.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/nelson-mandela-brought-the-world-toward-a-racial-reconciliation/2013/12/05/4a2dfb7e-2d77-11e0-8dd8-83b74589130a_story.html

  6. Re:Case closed ? Not so fast !! by PopeRatzo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    When France supported the United States in the Revolutionary War, I'm sure there were some criminals in the US.

    The Assad regime was a brutal dictatorship. The opposition to Assad is made up primarily of people who are not at all jihadists. In fact, the freedom fighters have in many cases fought the Al Qaeda forces who came into Syria to exploit the violence.

    When Thatcher and Reagan supported the apartheid white minority government in South Africa, they were doing so to preserve apartheid.

    Mrs Thatcher profited directly from apartheid, since her husband had extensive investments in white South Africa during apartheid.

    What is YOUR answer to that?

    It's always better to oppose unjust, undemocratic regimes. 20th century American history is littered with occasions where the US supported the unjust regime and came to regret it later, in sometimes devastating ways. Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Central America, South America, Africa, Cuba...the list goes on.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.