Nelson Mandela 1918-2013

Not unexpected, but still sad.

Quote :

JOHANNESBURG — Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first black president and an enduring icon of the struggle against racial oppression, died on Thursday, the government announced, leaving the nation without its moral center at a time of growing dissatisfaction with the country’s leaders.

...

Mr. Mandela spent 27 years in prison after being convicted of treason by the white minority government, only to forge a peaceful end to white rule by negotiating with his captors after his release in 1990. He led the African National Congress, long a banned liberation movement, to a resounding electoral victory in 1994, the first fully democratic election in the country’s history.

Mr. Mandela served just one term as South Africa’s president and had not been seen in public since 2010, when the nation hosted the soccer World Cup. But his decades in prison and his insistence on forgiveness over vengeance made him a potent symbol of the struggle to end this country’s brutally codified system of racial domination, and of the power of peaceful resolution in even the most intractable conflicts.

A sad day, indeed, for the entire planet.

I have to admit that when he became President I thought he would go into the whole bloodbath, socialist shithole mode that most African leaders go into when they achieve power. I am happy to say that I was completely wrong. He managed to work with his old enemies to keep South Africa as the most prosperous nation in Africa.

This was a good listen on the long ride home.

Happyhooligan2001 wrote:

I have to admit that when he became President I thought he would go into the whole bloodbath, socialist shithole mode that most African leaders go into when they achieve power. I am happy to say that I was completely wrong. He managed to work with his old enemies to keep South Africa as the most prosperous nation in Africa.

Pretty much this.

Although Socialism isn't exactly wrong, how most african leaders went about doing it, was.