"'Now I Can Die in Peace'" .. forgive me for just repeating two paragraphs from yours, for now ..
----- "No other contemporary political leader insisted so regularly that he was just an “ordinary man” who’d simply done his duty as he understood it. Few world leaders were as relentlessly self-critical, either. In diary notes, collected in Conversations with Myself [ http://www.amazon.com/Conversations-Myself-Nelson-Mandela/dp/0312611684 ], Mandela regularly emphasized his “weaknesses, errors, and indiscretions,” as if arguing against the more heroic version from his bestselling autobiography, which is also the basis of the feature film by Anant Singh that virtually sanctifies him. In an entry in 1998, he ended on a stunningly self-lacerating note: “One issue that deeply worried me in prison was the false image that I unwittingly projected to the outside world; of being regarded as a saint. I never was one, even on the basis of an earthly definition of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.” Mandela felt particularly aggrieved about the myriad ways he felt sure he’d failed his own family, and also his countrymen.
His talk to the small crowd in the village of his birth underscored this message. Many political leaders remain stubbornly sure of their singularly heroic qualities and indispensable roles in society, in life, in history. In effect, the man celebrated as the father of modern South Africa kept insisting, instead, upon his own dispensability. Of course, his periodic expressions of such humility had the opposite effect of the one he apparently intended, inspiring even more ardent waves of admiration. The last time I saw him, after the World Cup in 2010, Mandela greeted my son and me with a little joke: “Ah, it’s nice that the young people still come around to see an old man even though he has nothing new to say.” We laughed, but I thought there was a nice needle wrapped inside the quip. He seemed to be saying that his contribution to the creation of a new kind of society—non-racial, non-sexist, anti-homophobic, and more egalitarian—was over, but his visitors ought to feel free to ask themselves what they’d done recently to move the world closer to that ideal." -----
as they say so much about the man, and about so many of us who sometimes spend too much time thinking we could have done more .. it's wonderful to think that such a great man died is his very own space of personal peace .. actually, lol, i'm just thinking now that is one place which would be a good place for all of we lesser mortals to be aiming for ..
GOOD BYE NELSON MANDELA .. it is good to know so many people will remember you for what your essence was .. inclusiveness, kindness, goodness and reconciliation .. reconciliation with others, as well as with yourself ..
Palast's Vultures and Vote Rustlers - Official Trailer
GregPalastOffice
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Published on Dec 13, 2013
BBC's gonzo investigative reporter Greg Palast busts the billionaires and ballot bandits who would pick our next President--in his new 1-hour film on DVD (or download): Vultures and Vote Rustlers. (Get it at www.GregPalast.com) The no-BS reports for BBC and Democracy Now--undercover, under arrest, under the skin of the ultra-rich. "Great fun" (New Yorker). "Courageous reporting" (Michael Moore). From underneath the Deepwater Horizon to the bogus ballot boxes of Ohio, in disguise and in hot water, Palast and his detective crew will make you laugh as hard as you scream in anger. Download it or get the DVD from the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund. www.GregPalast.com Katherine Harris says, "Palast is twisted and maniacal" -- so let's twist again with Palast.
I can't take it anymore. All week, I've watched Nelson Mandela reduced to a Barbie doll. From Fox News to the Bush family, the politicians and media mavens who body-blocked the anti-Apartheid Movement and were happy to keep Mandela behind bars, now get to dress his image up in any silly outfit they choose. It's more nauseating than hypocrisy and ignorance. The Mandela Barbie (CONTINUED BELOW)
[...]
tells us in a squeaky little doll voice, not his own, that apartheid is now "defeated" - to quote the ridiculous headline in the Times.
Poor Mandela. When he's not a doll, he's a statue. He joins Martin Luther King as another bronzed monument whose use is to serve a new version of racism, Apartheid 2.0, worsening both in South Africa - and in the USA.
The ruling class creates commemorative dolls and statues of revolutionary leaders as a way to tell us their cause is won, so go home. For example, just six months ago, the US Supreme Court overturned the key parts of the Voting Rights Act, Dr. King's greatest accomplishment, on the specious claim that, "Blatantly discriminatory evasions are rare," and Jim Crow voting practices are now "eradicated."
"Eradicated?" On what planet? The latest move by Florida Republicans to purge 181,000 voters of color - like the stench from the shantytowns of Cape Town - makes clear that neither Jim Crow nor Apartheid have been defeated. They're just in temporary retreat.
Nevertheless, our betters in the USA and Europe have declared that King slew segregation, Mandela defeated apartheid; and therefore, the new victims of racial injustice should just shut the f$#! up and stop whining.
The Man Who Walked Beside Mandela
To replace the plastic and metal Mandelas with flesh and blood, I spoke to Danny Schechter. Schechter knew Mandela personally, and more deeply, than any other American journalist. One of the great reporters of our generation, Schechter produced South Africa Now, a weekly program seen on PBS, from 1988-91, bringing Mandela's case to Americans dumbed and numbed by Ronald Reagan's red-baiting.
Schechter notes that George W. Bush kept Mandela on the Terrorist Watch List — no kidding — even after Mandela was elected President.
Schechter has just completed the difficult job of making the official documentary companion to the Hollywood version of Mandela's life, Long Walk to Freedom.
The fictional movie is about triumph and forgiveness. Schechter's documentary, Inside Mandela, and book, Madiba A to Z: The Many Faces of Nelson Mandela .. http://tiny.cc/w0a67w , has this aplenty. But knowing Mandela, Schechter includes Mandela's anger, despair and his pained legacy: a corroded South Africa still ruled by a brutal economic apartheid. Today, the average white family has five times the income of a black family. Welcome to "freedom."
The US and European press have focused on Mandela's saintly ability to abjure bitterness and all desire for revenge, and for his Christ-like forgiveness of his captors. This is to reassure us all that "good" revolutionaries are ones who don't hold anyone to account for murder, plunder and blood-drenched horror - or demand compensation. That's Mandela in his Mahatma Gandhi doll outfit - turning the other cheek, kissing his prison wardens.
Schechter doesn't play with dolls. He knew Mandela the man - and Mandela as one among a group of revolutionary leaders.
Mandela's circle knew this: You can't forgive those you defeat until you defeat them.
Despite the hoo-hah, Mandela didn't defeat apartheid with "nice" alone. In the 1980s, says Schechter, South African whites faced this reality: The Cubans who defeated South African troops in neighboring Angola could move into South Africa. The Vietnamese who had defeated the mighty USA were advising the ANC military force. Mandela was Commander-in-Chief.
And so, while Mandela held out a hand in forgiveness - in his other hand he held Umkhonto we Sizwe, a spear to apartheid's heart. And Mandela's comrades tied a noose: an international embargo, leaky though it was, that lay siege to South Africa's economy.
Seeing the writing on the wall (and envisioning their blood on the floor), the white-owned gold and diamond cartels, Anglo-American and DeBeers, backed by the World Bank, came to Mandela with a bargain: black Africans could have voting power . . . but not economic power.
Mandela chose to shake hands with this devil and accept the continuation of economic apartheid. In return for safeguarding the diamond and gold interests and protecting white ownership of land, mines and businesses, he was allowed the presidency, or at least the office and title.
It is a bargain that ate at Mandela's heart. He was faced with the direct threat of an embargo of capital, and taking note of the beating endured by his Cuban allies over resource nationalization, Mandela swallowed the poison with a forced grin. Yes, a new South African black middle class has been handed a slice of the mineral pie, but that just changes the color of the hand holding the whip.
The 1% Rainbow
In the end, all revolutions are about one thing: the 99% versus the 1%. Time and history can change the hue of the aristocrat, but not their greed, against which Mandela appeared nearly powerless.
So was Mandela's life a waste, his bio-pic a fraud? Not at all. No man is a revolution.
We have much to learn from Mandela's long view of history, his much-lauded pacific warm-heartedness as well as his much-concealed cold and cruel resolve. The crack in the prison wall of apartheid, the end of racial warfare, if not yet racial peace, is a real accomplishment of Mandela - and his comrade revolutionaries - most of whose names will never be cast in bronze.
Reading Schechter's new book Madiba (as Mandela is known to Black South Africans) and seeing Schechter's un-Hollywood film, you can take away one strong impression: From Moses to Martin to Mandela, our prophets never reach the Promised Land.
That is for us still to accomplish. The journey is long. Start walking.
* * * * * *
Greg Palast's new film Vultures and Vote Rustlers was released this week.
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Billionaires & Ballot Bandits,The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse and the highly acclaimed Vultures' Picnic.
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.. links in the last bits inside .. not that we here have to be reminded of Nelson Mandela's realistic tough side, just felt that an article with Palast's 'edge' does not go astray even here .. every once-in-a-while ..
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