Hard News: Mandela
219 Responses
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When I was first arrested during the tour the cops called my Mum .... she was livid .... and joined us on the next march
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So many beautiful feelings and reminiscences have been shared. He was a truly courageous and inspiring human being.
I am however in two minds about this Herald front page. To show respect, why not find some of Nelson Mandela's own words?
"Our worst fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'who am I to be so brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?' Actually, who are we not to be? You are a child of God: Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There is nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It is not just in some of us, it is in everyone and as we let our own light shine we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
~Marianne Williamson
Widely mis-attributed to Nelson Mandela
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Posted by Marianne Williamson on July 21, 1996 at 09:56:08:
In Reply to: Mandela's speech posted by Bill Cecil on July 20, 1996 at 17:57:49:
Dear Bill,
Yep, that writing is two paragraphs from my l992 book "A RETURN TO LOVE."(In the WORK section, in a chapter called PERSONAL POWER) Seeing it printed everywhere as a Nelson Mandela quote has been a rather strange experience .. he definitely did not quote it in his inaugural, by the way. I have heard that he used the material in a lesser speech (so said his office), but I have never seen the text, so I don't know what the context or attribution was.
Thanks for the compliment.
Please keep visiting.
My best,
Marianne"No one is born hating another person because of the colour 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
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Note; that same quote has now been moved from the front page to here.
"Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world"
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Only Matthew Hooton could use Mandelas' death to give respect to Regan, Thatcher and de Klerk.
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Matthew Hooton, in reply to
Only Matthew Hooton could use Mandelas’ death to give respect to Regan, Thatcher and de Klerk.
You really have missed the point.
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Hilary Stace, in reply to
Pattrick has written about it here in the Herald.
A colleague remembers wagging school from Wellington Girls to go and see Mandela at parliament too.
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I guess one of the things about him is the way he brings out the best in people (de Klerk, Bolger, Matthew for example). Some folks just do that.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
I did ask you to ahow respect for each other.
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Only Matthew Hooton could use Mandelas’ death to give respect to Regan, Thatcher and de Klerk.
You know what, William, I know a lot of expat South Africans who were absolutely convinced that apartheid’s end was inevitable – in an unspeakably brutal civil war. (I’d recommend doing some reading, and try to grasp that a peaceful transition from apartheid was very far from inevitable. That's down to the good faith and political courage of both Mandela, de Klerk and many others on both sides.) Mandela was no plaster saint – he was a flawed human being who made plenty of mistakes, and its going to take some time and distance to see his complex, ambiguous exquisitely human legacy clearly – but everyone who played a part in avoiding what would have been a humanitarian disaster deserves our gratitude. And a little of Mandela’s grace.
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BenWilson, in reply to
Or why Public Address seems the right place to post it.
Thanks for it. It's an important confession to say one was pro-Tour to people who are likely to be hostile to that position, IMHO, it makes any change of heart more hard-won. I was anti, but in a much more reflexive way at the same age, practically everyone I knew was anti. It was my first real political conviction, that Apartheid was wrong in an important way. I remember vividly the face of the wild African youth yelling triumphantly that the ANC had been unbanned when I found out it had ended, and really felt his joy, and quite a powerful echo of it years later to see Mandela being cheered by a roaring crowd of South African rugby fans, as I watched the All Blacks play them without feeling ashamed to just enjoy a game. It's amazing that it's been 18 years since then and Mandela has been a Ghandi to South Africa, that whole time. I wish his family well, hope they are able to continue as symbols of unity, and that the nation grinds steadily toward greater equality and prosperity.
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Gaynz.Com's obituary...http://www.gaynz.com/articles/publish/34/article_14287.php
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Hebe earlier posted a link to the video for the Special AKA song "Free Nelson Mandela". I discovered yesterday that New Zealand was the only country where the song reached #1 in the pop chart. It was a top 10 hit in the UK, Ireland and a few European countries,, but New Zealand was the only country that managed #1 - three weeks straight in the winter of '84.
The song was the first time I became aware of Nelson Mandela. I was only nine at the time, and even though I lived in Hamilton and had been aware of the Springbok tour protests (and the dad of the boy at my school who rang up anti-tour supporters and blew a whistle at them), I still didn't know what it was all about.
The song made me aware of things, with the "Sun City" protest song by supergroup Artists United Against Apartheid keeping the momentum going and filling in more gaps the next year. ("We're rockers and rappers united and strong / We're here to talk about South Africa we don't like what's going on" - Run DMC)
It's easy to think about the 1960s as a golden age of political and protest songs, but the '80s didn't do a bad job where it counted, slowly chipping away at the badness.
Also - it says a lot about New Zealand that "Free Nelson Mandela" was followed at number one by "One Love" by Bob Marley.
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When Nelson Mandela visited NZ in 1995 he attended a reception and dinner in Wellington Town Hall. Mr. Mandela had invited journalists from the various NZ media to attend s a tribute from him to the scribes who had reported his plight as a political prisoner, the anti-Apartheid protests and later the story of his release and the end of the evil and racist regime in South Africa.
.It was a wonderful evening and one which my wife and I shall . ..never forget. Mandela was truly one of the greatest, most humble but inspirational human beings to have walked this Earth. We are all the poorer for his passing -
Russell Brown, in reply to
Phil, did you catch Sarah Daniell's interview with Cath Tizard about her memories of Mandela? Quite lovely.
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Ross Mason, in reply to
Thanks for it. It’s an important confession to say one was pro-Tour to people who are likely to be hostile to that position,
Ummm.....Mathew was only 9 at the time. To be "Pro Tour" at that age was probably along the lines of "Mum and Dad were so I must be".
When I was younger and foolisher I gave "what ho" to a Canadian South African (from the British SA side) at the time the Olympics were being boycotted. The realisation that there were/are two white worlds in South Africa came as a revealing shock when I delved deeper.
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SteveH, in reply to
In the way I view the world, being a child of the 1980s, he was alongside Reagan, Thatcher and Gorbachev in the sense of bringing tyranny to an end
It's interesting that both Reagan and Thatcher were strongly opposed to Mandela. Both of them labelled him a terrorist.
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Chris Waugh, in reply to
Both of them labelled him a terrorist.
And it was Bush the Younger who removed him from the US list of terrorists in 2008.
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SteveH, in reply to
And it was Bush the Younger who removed him from the US list of terrorists in 2008.
Yes, I was quite surprised it took so long.
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BenWilson, in reply to
Ummm…..Mathew was only 9 at the time. To be “Pro Tour” at that age was probably along the lines of “Mum and Dad were so I must be”.
I was the same age and it was a highly formative time. Also, Matthew said his parents had differing positions.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
The pitch invaders were brave: I watched the live broadcast at the old Railway Tavern on Wellington's waterfront, surrounded by wharfie rednecks with my friend who was the barman. We kept very, very quiet. The rednecks were murderous in a non-recreational way.
Which was a reflection of the NZ union movement's wider split over the Tour, and also a reason why it didn't become NZ's French May moment. At least according to veteran union leader Ken Douglas.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
It's interesting that both Reagan and Thatcher were strongly opposed to Mandela. Both of them labelled him a terrorist.
While bollocks is being called on those who originally blacklisted Mandela but now memory-hole/rewrite history and suddenly revere him, there are still the Trevor Loudon types who still regard him in the same light as Robert Mugabe. Don't Google the latter if you want to keep your monitor intact.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
While bollocks is being called on those who originally blacklisted Mandela but now memory-hole/rewrite history
Hey, let’s hope the same vitriol is being poured on Robert Mugabe’s who only this May was attacking Mandela for "being too saintly” towards “non-black communities". Just don't have words that would be fit for the occasion or this thread.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Hey, let’s hope the same vitriol is being poured on Robert Mugabe’s who only this May was attacking Mandela for “being too saintly” towards “non-black communities”. Just don’t have words that would be fit for the occasion or this thread.
Mugabe deserves contempt for so many things. But not, taken in sum, the comments in that story.
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Hebe, in reply to
... a reason why [the Tour] didn’t become NZ’s French May moment. At least according to veteran union leader Ken Douglas.
But it was in a way: the tour was, to my cohort who had left school towards the drear end of the1970s, the first real glimpse that we had any power to influence anything in this country. We were too young for the anti-war movement and had a somewhat cynical disregard of its lasting influence. The Tour protests showed we could do something. I think it's what led to the 1984 Labour government (easy to look back with disdain at that now; seeing Muldoon and National go lifted a huge cloud over us -- there was a new way and it wasn't old white men) nuclear-free New Zealand, pubs and cafes open all hours and so on through to gay marriage.
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Hebe,
....[finishing the above] Not that pubs and cafes are in any way linked to human rights.
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