MUCH HAS BEEN said in tribute to Nelson Mandela, some of it by self-serving politicians not fit to speak his name, who called Mandela a terrorist when he was buried alive by the apartheid regime for 27 years. It might be a moment to think about some other still-serving political prisoners. (...)
Has the time come when it might be possible to move past the well-deserved praise-song phase of the marking of Nelson Mandela’s death in order to strike a more careful balance sheet on the meaning for present-day South Africa of his storied career?
Of course, it remains extremely difficult to (...)
The question of where Mandela would be laid to rest was finally resolved in June, months before he passed away on December 5, 2013. The matter was determined by a court order indicating the exhumation and internment of the bodies of Mandela’s three children that predeceased him. According to (...)
Nelson Mandela’s passing has elicited a flood of personal memories and tributes from people he touched across the world. I am one of those people. In elementary school in Dallas in the early 1980s, I was fascinated by the televised images of mock shanty-towns on US college campuses. Questions (...)
“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them”. William Shakespeare
We do not believe in miracles. Mandela is not immortal. He has lived the fullest of lives. Amandla! stands with his family, the ANC (the organisation he lived and died for), his closest (...)
So it has finally come to pass that Nelson Mandela has succumbed to the inevitable and will be buried like every other mortal being. He is being praised, rightly, for his inspirational ability to rise above the brutal racial prejudices of his time. He is being characterised as the most famous (...)
“Mandela deserves great credit for ending racial apartheid in South Africa, but his legacy includes the continuation of mass poverty
‘The mood here in South Africa is terribly somber.
This was the day that everyone knew would come. And in the last few months Mandela’s been in hospital four (...)
Marwan Barghouthi, a Palestinian political figure convicted and imprisoned for “murder” by an Israeli court, sent a message from Hadarim Israeli jail following the announcement of Nelson Mandela’s death, as follows:
"During the long years of my own struggle, I had the occasion to think many times (...)
The death of Nelson Mandela removes a renowned political leader and world figure from the South African and international stage writes South African socialist Norman Traub. As a political leader of the African National Congress (ANC) from the late 1940s , he played a key role in the national (...)
There are many ways in which the capitalist rulers of the world manage to contain the empowering hope borne by revolutionary leaders: slander, silence, and in some cases outright embezzlement. The latter is the case today with Nelson Mandela.
Here’s, among many other samples of the same sort, (...)
We publish here a living tribute to Comrade Nelson Mandela. We, as all in South Africa, are aware that he is critically ill and that, by the time this magazine is published, his immensely productive life may have ended.
Amandla! stands with his family, the ANC, his closest comrades, especially (...)
It was all quite predictable, I suppose, that when Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was rushed to hospital for the fourth time in almost as many months, the media would flock, much like vultures around an expiring stag, to take up positions outside the hospital. That they would be joined by prayerfull (...)
NELSON MANDELA’S BEST-SELLING autobiography, published in 1994, is titled Long Walk to Freedom. It tells the powerful story of the journey of a rural Transkei boy who was a cow-herd and son of a deposed tribal chief, to guerilla fighter to decades-long prisoner on an island fortress and then to (...)
What’s the difference between a liberation movement and a terrorist organisation?
This question was brought sharply into focus recently when US President George Bush signed a Bill to remove Nelson Mandela and other members of the African National Congress from the US’s terrorist watch list. (...)
The Tribal Model of Democracy
In his speech from the dock, at his 1962 trial for inciting African workers to strike and leaving the country without a passport, Nelson Mandela described the initial formation of his political ideas:
"Many years ago, when I was a boy brought up in my village in (...)
Pretoria Supreme Court, 20 April 1964
I am the First Accused.
I hold a Bachelor`s Degree in Arts and practised as an attorney in Johannesburg for a number of years in partnership with Oliver Tambo. I am a convicted prisoner serving five years for leaving the country without a permit and for (...)
The adoption of the Freedom Charter by the Congress of the People was widely recognised both at home and abroad as an event of major political significance in the life of this country. In his message to the Congress of the People, Chief AJ Luthuli, the banned National President of the ANC, (...)
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