to hate it when famous people die

[2rebecca]

OK I'm in for a flaming, but I'm in my late 40s, I lived through the ANC/apartheid/ "free Nelson Mandela"avoiding S African fruit in supermarkets/ being delighted when he was released and became an excellent president, sad when his successor was an HIV denying plonker,and the fact that S Africa is developing corruption levels like the rest of Africa and still has a huge violence problem (mainly black on black), but find the wall to wall media coverage completely OTT.
Obituaries are interesting when they are brief and concern someone whose story you don't know. When they are endless and cover someone whose story has been extensively documented it just makes me avoid the media.
It's nothing against Nelson, when the queen dies it will be even worse , and every time a media luvvie dies the media goes into overdrive.
All I needed to hear today was "Nelson Mandela has died", not everyone and their dog repeating stuff I've heard before, especially as I heard it last night anyway.
Someone famous dying is news, endless anecdotes and preprepared staements aren't news.

[tinmug]

Feminine "I certainly wouldn't have killed anyone"

With the greatest respect - genuine respect, not sarcastic or passive aggressive respect! - I don't think you can say that. I truly don't. I believe that we are all terrifyingly malleable, and any one of us would be capable of doing unthinkable things if we were under enough pressure. I also think that it's very hard to believe that something like apartheid or the Holocaust or any number of other incomprehensible outrages can actually happen - but they DO happen, and the people involved are just like you and me. Just like us. Imagine government forces coming into your village or your part of town tonight (I mean your own government, not an invading force) and kicking your door down, dragging you all out of bed and screaming at you, taking your partner and any male adult children away. You see them beating your partner and your neighbours around the head before they push them into the back of the van. You never see the male child/ren again. No one will help you. The police won't speak to you. They laugh at you, they spit at you. They call you "girl." You get fired because you've taken time off from your job to go and queue at the prison to try and find out if your family is there.

This was what people's lives were like, and not because they were criminals. Because they were black. We like to believe in a just world but apartheid era SA was not just. It was insane. It was literally crazy.

I don't know what I would do if I woke up tomorrow morning and I was the equivalent of a black South African, but I can tell you what I hope I'd do, and that is fight.

[CaterpillarCara]

Feminine - actually, I said something a bit different. I abhor violence which means that I regard it with disgust and hatred. I would like to see as little violence as possible in this world, and ideally I would like the world's problems to be solved through peaceful means.

However, I am not a complete pacifist. I do not (as you suggest) disagree with violence in any form, I think that sadly it is sometimes justified - when it will prevent further loss of life.

I think it is interesting to look at the internationally defined conditions which get defined for a "just war":
(1) The war must be for a just cause.
(2) The war must be lawfully declared by a lawful authority.
(3) The intention behind the war must be good.
(4) All other ways of resolving the problem should have been tried first.
(5) There must be a reasonable chance of success.
(6) The means used must be in proportion to the end that the war seeks to achieve.

Nelson Mandela and his comrades had no chance of achieving (2) - that was the whole point, they were totally disenfranchised. Though they did have a formal structure around their actions. But you could probably argue that their struggle met the other points.

[ExcuseTypos]

Well I'm haven't watched much of the news coverage as I knew it would be a repetition of the same thing every 15 mins. but I have been listening to Radio 4. There have been some fantastic pieces today about Mandela. Unique and interesting.
A person who stood trial with Mandela when they were sentenced to life imprisonment spoke about how they reacted to it. They had all been expecting to be given the death sentence so they laughed with relief when they heard the sentence of life imprisonment.
Also a programme on Mandela's diaries - written and voice recordings, it was fascinating to hear his voice talking about everything from his trial to his prison guards.

His to do list on becoming president was -
Phone Kofi Annan
Phone Oprah Winfrey
Buy new elastic socks

Fascinating details. Switch the TV off and switch the radio on, I say.

[Feminine]

tinmug also with great respect :) thank you for such a detailed post.

I do understand the point you are making,thank you for it :)

catterpilla thank you also, very interesting points to digest and think about a bit more.

[FraidyCat]

tinmug I certainly wouldn't have killed anyone.

But you are right , that he probably felt (at the time) that he had little choice perhaps?

Since apparently you missed my earlier post, I'll repeat it. He didn't kill anyone. I don't believe he was personally involved in any decisions that led to anyone being killed. I don't think you can call him a killer or a terrorist, without being factually wrong. The organisation he was a figurehead for did do both of those things, while he was in prison and unable to communicate with them.

Maybe he would have been involved in killing if he hadn't been in prison. Maybe he would have been justified in being involved. It's all academic. He was in prison, he couldn't do anything, whether he wanted to or not.

[tinmug]

is the reality of apartheid thinking.

There's evidence of the San and the Bantu having lived in South Africa since since about 500BC.

The Dutch arrived in 1652.

[CaterpillarCara]

Yes, fraidycat, my understanding was that most "terrorist" acts he chose to take (e.g. ordering the bombing of railway lines) were designed to disrupt and not kill. There is some dispute about how much say he got when in prison e.g. over the Church Street bombing.

[tinmug]

Caterpillar this is probably a stupid question, but how are the apartheid laws themselves not a declaration of war, effectively? Is there a specific procedure that needs to be followed to make it a "real" war?

[SoonToBeSix]

Yanbu I feel the same op

[wordsmithsforever]

There's evidence of the San and the Bantu having lived in South Africa since since about 500BC.

The Dutch arrived in 1652.

But with respect tinmug, that's not what Madiba's message is about. If not about whether your ancestors have been here only 350 years or 2500 years. It's about "forgiveness, inclusiveness and reconciliation" to quote *PacificDogwood". That's what makes NM and his legacy great.

[CaterpillarCara]

I think there are all sorts of "rules" e.g. you are supposed to be a nation state, I think. I am not an international law expert. But I personally think that if those rules show what a "just war" is between nations, then the ANC's struggle was a "just war" within its own nation.

I find them a useful checklist when thinking about what I think about particular war / armed struggle.

It is very easy to say "I am against violence". But I, for one, am grateful that Hitler was stopped. I mourn the many deaths on both sides which stopped him, but feel there would have been even more without them.

I feel the same about the Apartheid struggle. The white leaders were not exactly offering the ANC leaders tea, cake and a bit of a chat!

[tinmug]

wordsmith COMPLETELY! I agree completely. My point was that the NP and the AWB very, very forcefully argued that SA "belonged" to the whites, to the exclusion of the blacks, and in my opinion it absolutely did not.

I wasn't trying to make a point about Mandela at all, it was more a post about the impossible and overwhelmingly hostile attitudes facing black South Africans at the time.

[mrsspagbol]

feminine your posts have made me want bang my head on my desk. You call Mandela a murderer but have no matching sense of injustice for the victims of apartheid?!

How do you reconcile this?

You talk of your grandmother and ruined lives. My mother was denied access to medical treatment to save her eyesight until it was too late. Both my parents and grandparents were denied access to education or the right to vote. My parents were forced to cross roads and use different buses and water fountains so as to keep others "clean" for white people.

With all due respect, you have no fucking idea what impact apartheid had on the lives of black southern africans. Impact that is still not reversed today.

[tinmug]

It is very easy to say "I am against violence".

Yeah, exactly. It's a very easy thing to say when you are not facing extermination by very violent means by people who will not speak to you. I think that I'd rather fight back personally.

[wordsmithsforever]

For sure! And Eugene Terreblanche was sadly promoting his very own unique brand of apartheid nastiness in that video. There is no doubt that apartheid was grim, grim, grim.

[AbbyRue]

If ignorance is bliss who am I to take you away from your happy place?

You don't need to have experienced apartheid to understand how evil a system it was.Mandela, like many, fought for political freedom in SA and that should be celebrated. He even says that he hated the notion of him being some kind of a demigod!

[HettiePetal]

The ANC were committed to peaceful protest - defying laws that were put in place by people they hadn't voted for (because black people were not allowed to vote).

They followed this path resolutely for years, and in return their peaceful actions (like strikes etc) were met with violence from the government time after time.

NM said it himself at his trial - what were they supposed to to? Submit and accept their "inferiority"?

MK was set up in acknowledgement of the fact that peaceful protests were not working & never would. Their violence was not aimed at individuals and not intended to kill or harm, but to sabotage government by targeting buildings and infrastructure.

This is a tremendously important part of the history of SA & NM and shouldn't be brushed under the carpet.

It's something we should talk about in a wider context - is terrorism ever justified? We have a tendency to say "no", but really - what else had black people in South Africa been left with?

The great achievement of NM's life is the way in which he was able to move SA into a post-apartheid era and avoid the civil war which seemed almost certain under a less assured leader.

Choosing a path of forgiveness & reconciliation for yourself is one thing - inspiring an entire nation of people, all of whom have recent memories of despicable injustice meted out to themselves & their families, is something else altogether.

I think the wall-to-wall coverage in this case is rather more justified than it was for Michael Jackson or Princess Diana, frankly.

[theyoniwayisnorthwards]

Tinmug you have articulated all the things I didn't have the patience or eloquence to.

[PacificDogwood]

I think the wall-to-wall coverage in this case is rather more justified than it was for Michael Jackson or Princess Diana, frankly

Oh my, yes to that!

Another problem is the very nature of 24 hr news coverage - there is only so much they can say which then gets repeated and repeated and repeated. I have found the 'off' button on the TV remote v useful recently.

[Feminine]

mrsspagbol I don't think you have quite got what I have been talking about.

I'm not going to compare our families awful situations ( for want of a better word)

I have my opinion, that is all.

[usualsuspect]

Jesus christ, I bet some of you banging on were laying flowers and buying candle in the wind when Diana died.

[mrsspagbol]

And i statedmine feminine

[SantaIKnowHimIKnowHim]

He's not just a 'dead but famous person' though, is he?
He stood up for something he believed in, that benefited a whole race of people, and not just himself.
He wanted freedom for all, not just those who deemed themselves more important as they were white and therefore automatically superior.
WTAF does skin have to do with it? A person is a person is a person.
He's proof that a voice CAN stand up amongst all the odds and make a difference, however futile that may seem.
Yes. he was in his 90's and his death was inevitable. His achievements should live on and be remembered though and it's only right he is honoured in the news reports as he has done so much for shaping the world as it is today.

[whitesugar]

I think you YABU, just switch the telly off if you don't like it. I love the decent coverage of his life not the crap celebrity best friends and reporters making stupid statements to fill a slot. Like most people I think it was a release for him to go at 95. I think the coverage is great for younger people who haven't lived through the times us older folk have. I thought it was even more worthwhile when my two teenagers told me when they got in from school that some of their friends had no idea who he was. Some of their friends thought he was a wide range of people including for some unknown reason Colonel Sanders who 'invented' Kentucky Fried Chicken!