#nelson mandela
Nelson Mandela, the anti-apartheid icon who emerged as South Africa’s first black President after spending 27 years as a political prisoner, passed away at the age of 95.
While human beings around the planet Earth mourned the loss of a hero, the vile repugnant slime monsters, whom also go by aliases such as “Conservatives,” “Republicans,” and the “Right Wing” had a different outlook on the passing of a man who changed a nation and inspired a world…
Don’t forget: President Ronald Reagan too thought Nelson Mandela was a terrorist commie. However, as usual, upon realizing history found them on the wrong side at the time, the right wing is now trying to co-opt Nelson Mandela and act as if they were always behind him.
Over on Ted Cruz’s official Facebook page, a post went up in remembrance of Nelson Mandela. However, while the professional right tries to fix their image, the Republican base is more than happy to pull back the curtain and show how true Conservative ‘patriots’ feel about Nelson Mandela…
From the GOP’s official Facebook page, comments left on their Nelson Mandela in memory of post:
OnReason.com’s Facebook post, because don’t let Libertarianism fool you into pretending Libertarians are anything anything but right wingers with a “hipster” look to appeal to younger people:
And of course, how can any good Conservative speak of Nelson Mandela without PRESIDENT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA coming to mind! Because, as we all know, Nelson Mandela’s death is all about Obama…
Gotta’ hand it to Shelly for the above comment, she managed to invoke Trayvon Martin in her tweet too!
Did you know that Nelson Mandela died to distract us all from the problems with Obamacare?! Why, let these patriots clue you in!…
However, after all you just saw, I think Fox News contributor Todd Starnes’ tweet takes the cake. You see, Todd here was livetweeting President Obama’s statement on Nelson Mandela’s passing. It seems Obama was a little late to addressing the nation. Todd Starnes was PISSED. How dare Obama disrespect the great Nelson Mandela!…
Todd Starnes must really respect Nelson Mandela, right?
lmao. Check out this tweet from just a year ago where Todd Starnes complains about President Obama…SHOWING NELSON MANDELA SOME RESPECT.
May 9th 1994 - Nelson Mandela Elected President
Nelson Mandela was elected the first black president of South Africa. He had previously been jailed for 27 years for actively rebelling against the apartheid government. After an international petition called for his release from prison in 1990, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.
The New York Times had coverage on the front page:
CAPE TOWN, May 9 – The power that had belonged to whites since they first settled on this cape 342 years ago passed today to a Parliament as diverse as any in the world, a cast of proud survivors who began their work by electing Nelson Mandela to be the first black president of South Africa.
Unopposed, Mr. Mandela was proclaimed president without a word of dissent or even a show of hands, then sat, strangely grim-faced, while his giddy followers whooped in unparliamentary delight.
Mandela was sworn in on April 10th and addressed his nation. You can read his whole inaugural address here.
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“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
― Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom
Artwork by Katie Paterson
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‘Each of us is as intimately attached to the soil of this beautiful country as are the famous jacaranda trees of Pretoria and the mimosa trees of the bushveld… The time for the healing of wounds has come. The moment to bridge the chasms that divide us has come. The time to build is upon us.’ – Nelson Mandela, from his inaugural speech as President of South Africa in 1994.
The man who was once the South African government’s number one enemy, imprisoned for 27 years, was now its first democratically elected president, appearing on the ballot paper alongside 18 other candidates. He was the leader of the African National Congress party, the most influential of the opposition groups in bringing about the end of apartheid in South Africa.
During apartheid, many groups outside South Africa produced political art to raise awareness of apartheid and to promote the fight against it. Through badges, t-shirts and posters the outside world came to know the faces of political prisoners such as Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu.
The badges here represent the British-based Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM), one of the most influential of the campaign groups. It was formed as the Boycott Movement in 1959 by a group of South African exiles and British opponents to apartheid and changed its name the following year. Other badges refer to SWAPO (South West African Peoples Organisation), an armed movement fighting for Namibian independence from South Africa.
See how Mandela’s inspirational story helped shape the history of his nation in our special exhibitionSouth Africa: the art of a nation (27 October 2016 – 26 February 2017).
Nelson Mandela badge. UK, c. 1984.
Nelson Mandela badge. South Africa, 1994.
Anti-apartheid badges, 1984–1987. Mixed media.
#MandelaDay:Ricordando Nelson Mandela.
«The time will come when our nation will honour the memory of all the sons, the daughters, the mothers, the fathers, the youth and the children who, by their thoughts and deeds, gave us the right to assert with pride that we are South Africans, that we are Africans and that we are citizens of the world.»
– Nelson Mandela
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On This Day In History
May 10th, 1994: Nelson Mandela is inaugurated as South Africa’s first Black president.
March 21st 1960: Sharpeville massacre
On this day in 1960, police opened fire on peaceful anti-apartheid protestors in the South African township of Sharpeville, killing 69. The over 5,000 strong crowd gathered at Sharpeville police station to protest the discriminatory pass laws, which they claimed were designed to limit their movement in designated white only areas. The laws required all black men and women to carry reference books with their name, tax code and employer details; those found without their book could be arrested and detained. The protest encouraged black South Africans to deliberately leave their pass books at home and present themselves at police stations for arrest, which would crowd prisons and lead to a labour shortage. Despite the protestors’ peaceful and non-violent intentions, police opened fire on the crowd. By the day’s end, 69 people were dead and 180 were wounded. A further 77 were arrested and questioned, though no police officer involved in the massacre was ever convicted as the government relieved all officials of any responsibility. The apartheid government responded to the massacre by banning public meetings, outlawing the African National Congress (ANC) and declaring a state of emergency. The incident convinced anti-apartheid leader and ANC member Nelson Mandela to abandon non-violence and organise paramilitary groups to fight the racist system of apartheid. In 1996, 36 years later, then President Mandela chose Sharpeville as the site at which he signed into law the country’s new post-apartheid constitution.
“People were running in all directions, some couldn’t believe that people had been shot, they thought they had heard firecrackers. Only when they saw the blood and dead people, did they see that the police meant business”
- Tom Petrus, eyewitness to the Sharpeville massacre
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Desmond Mpilo Tutu (7 October 1931 – 26 December 2021)
Desmond Tutu, the cleric and social activist who was a giant of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, has died aged 90.
It is impossible to imagine South Africa’s long and tortuous journey to freedom - and beyond - without Archbishop Desmond Tutu. While other struggle leaders were killed, or forced into exile, or prison, the diminutive, defiant Anglican priest was there at every stage, exposing the hypocrisy of the apartheid state, comforting its victims, holding the liberation movement to account, and daring Western governments to do more to isolate a white-minority government that he compared, unequivocally, to the Nazis.
When democracy arrived, Tutu used his moral authority to oversee the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that sought to expose the crimes of the white-minority government. Later he turned that same fierce gaze on the failings, in government, of South Africa’s former liberation movement, the ANC.
Many South Africans today will remember Tutu’s personal courage, and the clarity of his moral fury. But as those who knew him best have so often reminded us, Tutu was always, emphatically, the voice of hope. And it is that hope, that optimism, accompanied, so often, by his trademark giggles and cackles, that seems likely to shape the way the world remembers, and celebrates, Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Known affectionately as The Arch, Tutu was instantly recognisable, with his purple clerical robes, cheery demeanour and almost constant smile.
Ordained as a priest in 1960, Tutu went on to serve as bishop of Lesotho from 1976-78, assistant bishop of Johannesburg and rector of a parish in Soweto. He became Bishop of Johannesburg in 1985, and was appointed the first black Archbishop of Cape Town the following year. He used his high-profile role to speak out against oppression of black people in his home country, always saying his motives were religious and not political.
After Mandela became South Africa’s first black president in 1994, Tutu was appointed by him to a Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up to investigate crimes committed by both whites and blacks during the apartheid era.
He was also credited with coining the term Rainbow Nation to describe the ethnic mix of post-apartheid South Africa, but in his latter years he expressed regret that the nation had not coalesced in the way in which he had dreamt.
Rest in Power!
Words by Andrew Harding
Photo By Stephen Voss/Redux/eyevine
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Happy Mandela Day!
Today, July 18, marks the international celebration and 100th birthday of Nelson Mandela. This day of service was created in 2009 by the United States along with 192 United Nations member states to commemorate the life and legacy of the former president of South Africa and Nobel Peace Prize recipient.
In 2011, First Lady Michelle Obama met Nelson Mandela at his home during an official visit to South Africa and later shared her experience with a group of attendees at the Young African Women’s Leaders Forum in Soweto, South Africa.
On Board: Mrs. Obama speaks about meeting Nelson Mandela
-from the Barack Obama Presidential Library
My deepest, darkest secret is that when I’m reciting Invictus, by William Ernest Henley, I pronounce “bludgeonings” as “bologna”.
That’s a bullshit word, don’t you try and tell me–
“May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.”— Nelson Mandela
