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Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela

 
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Hi,

I recently finished reading Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom. The German edition is around 800 pages long and it took me several weekends between work and family to get it finished .



Has anyone read this book? What was your feeling?

I must say that this man really impressed me. I'm living next to the Dutch and Belgian border so the Afrikaans language of the apartheid regime of that time is very familiar to me, because it's spoken over here by the Dutch and part of the Belgians. I always asked myself while reading the book what was it that made these Afrikaans so proud of . Their place of origin and their heritage lay next to my doorstep. These people are simple people nothing special with them, like all of us. So what was it that made them feel to be something better than their black countrymen and even go so far as they did, handling other people like thrash like they did with Indians, Blacks or Mixes of all.

Has anyone visited the places where Mandela was kept during his trials or imprisonments? What was your feeling?

Regards,
Darya
 
Darya Akbari
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Interesting to me is that remnants of the old apartheid regime see Frederik Willem de Klerk, the apartheid's regime last president, as a traitor.
 
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Interesting to me is that remnants of the old apartheid regime see Frederik Willem de Klerk, the apartheid's regime last president, as a traitor.


That's not really surprising, is it? Whoever still supports apartheid would naturally see a man who once supported it, but then did a lot to end it, as a traitor to that cause.
 
Darya Akbari
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But there was an election where up to 70% of the electorate (only white people were allowed to vote) stood behind De Klerk and his decision to end apartheid.

I'm not sure how strong this group are who feel betrayed by De Klerk, but it astonish me that some still dare to stand behind the apartheid system. To my opinion they should be thankful to De Klerk and Mandela that the vision of an anti-apartheid South Africa saved their lives. I don't want to know what had happened if Mandela hadn't silenced his own people who were thirsty for revenge.

Ironically it is Mandela's vision that allow these remnants of apartheid to publish their minds. A right that they denied to anyone when they were in power.

Another interesting aspect I remember is that a number of people, from prison guard to minister, of the apartheid system belonged to religious groups like Jehovah's Witnesses or the Huguenots. How could that be? With all the tragic history that these groups themselves had, they now were supporter of an apartheid system.
 
Darya Akbari
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Here an apartheid prisoner's menu:



They even used their apartheid system in prison.
 
Darya Akbari
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A bed at Robben Island prison ...



Think you must lay your next 20 years on such bed.
 
Ulf Dittmer
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I can heartily recommend the movie A Dry White Season as an introduction to some of the complexities and feelings especially of the white side in this issue. (Well, the film deals with both sides, but it should be obvious what the position of the black side is...) It was made during Botha's presidency, though, not de Klerk's, so it shows a hardline white regime with no "perestroika" yet, so to speak.
 
Darya Akbari
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Mandela's prison cell at Robben Island.



I think our bathrooms are bigger than this cell.
 
Ulf Dittmer
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Originally posted by Darya Akbari:
But there was an election where up to 70% of the electorate (only white people were allowed to vote) stood behind De Klerk and his decision to end apartheid. ... I don't want to know what had happened if Mandela hadn't silenced his own people who were thirsty for revenge.



I don't want to get too philosophical about it, but I think the change in thought that got started by the 1989 revolutions all over Eastern Europe was a very powerful catalyst in this. To witness that issues as fundamental and seemingly insoluble as these can be changed without much -if any- bloodshed was quite astonishing. A few years later there was even progress in Northern Ireland and -for a while- in Palestine. Who would have thought any of these possible ten years earlier?
 
Darya Akbari
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Originally posted by Ulf Dittmer:
I can heartily recommend the movie A Dry White Season as an introduction to some of the complexities and feelings



Thanks Ulf, I'll try to get more info on that one.

 
Darya Akbari
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Originally posted by Ulf Dittmer:
I think the change in thought that got started by the 1989 revolutions all over Eastern Europe was a very powerful catalyst in this.



I agree with you, one of the apartheid system pillar was their anti-communist stand which they build up to defend and cover their apartheid system. Now with communism fallen apart they lost this cover and their pure racist ideology surfaced again in a broader light.

Obviously this was not acceptable anymore in a civilized world.
 
Darya Akbari
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More photos of the prison condition can be seen at: Robben Island Prison Museum



This gallery of images are from Robben Island which is now World Heritage Site of the Apartheid era prison.
 
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So what was it that made them feel to be something better than their black countrymen and even go so far as they did, handling other people like thrash like they did with Indians, Blacks or Mixes of all.




Isn't it anyways known as the white man's burden...? The reason which gave rise to superiority complex and in some ways carried forward even today.
[ September 24, 2007: Message edited by: Devesh H Rao ]
 
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In the menu. I notice the Bantus get lesser meat and no Jam, lesser sugar compared to the Coloreds? Any reason given in the book why? And in all fairness, Besides Nelson there were other prisoners that stayed just as long with him who were members of his party. None ever gives any credit to them. Like Neil Armstrong. Noone ever mentions Buzz Aldrin. Same with Tenzing Norgay who climbed Mount everest along with Edmond Hillary. Or our own Vinod khosla who co founded Sun Microsystems and co provided all those great java jobs. Or paul Allen of Microsoft, or Steve Wozniak of Apple. Some times it makes me so mad yo.
[ September 24, 2007: Message edited by: Chunnard singh ]
 
Darya Akbari
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Hi Devesh,

Originally posted by Devesh H Rao:
the white man's burden



I don't think that's a white man's problem. You can find this phenomenon in any non-white world either. I could bring you lot of examples from India, the Arab or the Chinese societies how they treat others like trash. But there it's more done in traditional way and not like the apartheid system manifested in a state as it was in South Africa.

The interesting point is, that I know the Afrikaans' forefather's quite good because we live here together with them in their place of origin. When you follow some Afrikaans family trees you can find that a lot of them go back to very simple seamen. Nothing proud of to be to suppress others.
 
Darya Akbari
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Originally posted by Chunnard singh:
In the menu. I notice the Bantus get lesser meat and no Jam, lesser sugar compared to the Coloreds? Any reason given in the book why?



The reason was that Bantus (Blacks) don't now what bread or jam is and hence don't need to provided with.

Originally posted by Chunnard singh:
And in all fairness, Besides Nelson there were other prisoners that stayed just as long with him who were members of his party. None ever gives any credit to them.



That's true. Maybe because Mandela was the leader of the ANC and everyone else coordinated himself with Mandela. There are lot's of others who had similar sentences, by the way lot of Indian South Africans were with him namely Ahmed Kathrada:



Originally posted by Chunnard singh:
None ever gives any credit to them. Like Neil Armstrong. Noone ever mentions Buzz Aldrin. Same with Tenzing Norgay who climbed Mount everest along with Edmond Hillary. Or our own Vinod khosla who co founded Sun Microsystems and co provided all those great java jobs. Or paul Allen of Microsoft, or Steve Wozniak of Apple. Some times it makes me so mad yo.



Why not, you mentioned them now . And thanks god in our ages no one can delete these information and start legends.
 
Arvind Mahendra
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Originally posted by Darya Akbari:

The reason was that Bantus (Blacks) don't now what bread or jam is and hence don't need to provided with.


Oh I thought Bantus were Whites and Coloreds/Asiatics were Blacks.


I don't think that's a white man's problem. You can find this phenomenon in any non-white world either. I could bring you lot of examples from India

The problem in India was the same problem though of Whites and non Whites. this is just known as the caste system.
 
Darya Akbari
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Originally posted by Chunnard Singh:
known as the caste system.



You say it . The indian caste system is pure apartheid.
 
Devesh H Rao
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Originally posted by Darya Akbari:
Hi Devesh,



I don't think that's a white man's problem. You can find this phenomenon in any non-white world either. I could bring you lot of examples from India, the Arab or the Chinese societies how they treat others like trash. But there it's more done in traditional way and not like the apartheid system manifested in a state as it was in South Africa.

The interesting point is, that I know the Afrikaans' forefather's quite good because we live here together with them in their place of origin. When you follow some Afrikaans family trees you can find that a lot of them go back to very simple seamen. Nothing proud of to be to suppress others.



Rephrasing my reply.

Defn of white man's burden: Any society (just any society)which thinks it has a moral high ground and with the aim of spreading its own morals or qualities to the other society which it has come across (through migration, conquest or plain coincidence) without respecting the local culture can be said to suffer from the above phrase.

By the way the phrase is not something of my creation...

Poem by kipling



And you are very much right in saying that almost all the societies have suffered from this complex at some point in their lifecycle.

It may have to do with the herd mentality in humans where when they find the group they belong to in a majority, they get into the alpha mode and try to subjugate the beta's. This is a animalistic behaviour prevelent in pack animals where a alpha group always tries to lord over the beta by show of strength.

With maturity (hopefully) in human society these tendencies would be curbed by self realization that superiority complex begets superiorit complex.
 
Darya Akbari
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Hi Devesh,

Originally posted by Devesh H Rao:
It may have to do with the herd mentality in humans where when they find the group they belong to in a majority, they get into the alpha mode and try to subjugate the beta's. This is a animalistic behaviour prevelent in pack animals where a alpha group always tries to lord over the beta by show of strength.



Wow, that is exactly what I feel about this whole issue. This herd mentality shocks me always. Not only in an apartheid system but sometimes also in our business culture? It really must have something to do with your statement.

Originally posted by Devesh H Rao:
With maturity (hopefully) in human society these tendencies would be curbed by self realization that superiority complex begets superiorit complex.



But we are not animals and we have to get around this herd mentality, I hope you are right and that mankind realize it the sooner the better.

Regards,
Darya
 
Devesh H Rao
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Originally posted by Darya Akbari:
Hi Devesh,



But we are not animals and we have to get around this herd mentality, I hope you are right and that mankind realize it the sooner the better.

Regards,
Darya



Science does not think so, we are still animals. The only difference is a spark of consciousness in our midst. If it is able to evolve with us as we progress we would be at a stage where we can call ourselves not animals... but then would'nt that be not true... after all at a cell level we are a

Eukaryote

Herd mentality is also a survival instinct in some cases, like when you are faced against a stronger opponent only a herd can take care of the individual. A weak single animal is not able to care for itself and stays in a pack. The problem is humans have somehow extrapolated the group stuff to almost every sphere of the lifestyle which leads to clashes.... avoidable but not unpredictable....
 
Devesh H Rao
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Originally posted by Frank Silbermann:
It wasn't just a cover. The ANC was openly communist, and the Soviet Union would most certainly have taken over had the whites relinquished power during their era.

The removal of this threat gave hope that the end of Apartheid might no necessarily end in disaster. It became a risk worth taking. And a risk it was, nonetheless. (There is still no guarantee that what happened to Zimbabwe won't yet come to South Africa.)



That is no excuse to enslavement.
 
Darya Akbari
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Mandela himself says that the ANC was not a communist organization. I refuse to accept the thought that he lies.
 
Devesh H Rao
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Originally posted by Darya Akbari:
Mandela himself says that the ANC was not a communist organization. I refuse to accept the thought that he lies.



And even if he lied(hypothetically), it was for him and his countrymen to decide on their path down the history lane.
 
Darya Akbari
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Originally posted by Devesh H Rao:
after all at a cell level we are a
Eukaryote



That is real shocking to know that at some level we are not more than this:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Animal_cell_structure.svg
 
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Originally posted by Darya Akbari:
Mandela himself says that the ANC was not a communist organization. I refuse to accept the thought that he lies.

There is no doubt that the ANC had Communist members (Joe Slovo for example). And there is no doubt that the ANC worked together with other revolutionary organizations in Angola and Mozambique which received support from the Communist bloc -- that was all part of the proxy war that the US and the Soviet Union fought in southern Africa in the 1980s and 1990s. So okay, maybe Mandela classified the ANC after the fact as "revolutionary" rather than "communist"; perhaps that's more of a stretch than a lie.

There aren't too many examples where a successful revolution has avoided the aftermath of violent conflict in the ranks of the winners. I hope South Africa can be one of the few that survives.
 
Darya Akbari
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Originally posted by Paul Clapham:
There is no doubt that the ANC had Communist members (Joe Slovo for example). And there is no doubt that the ANC worked together with other revolutionary organizations in Angola and Mozambique which received support from the Communist bloc -- that was all part of the proxy war that the US and the Soviet Union fought in southern Africa in the 1980s and 1990s. So okay, maybe Mandela classified the ANC after the fact as "revolutionary" rather than "communist"; perhaps that's more of a stretch than a lie.



Ahmed Kathrada was another communist member. I don't know Paul whether you have read Mandela's autobiobiography, he never made a secret of the fact that some members were communists. There were also other radical non-communist members who wanted to kill all whites. The point is that Mandela was able to calm all these people down. Otherwise you wouldn't have seen the smooth change from an apartheid to a non-apartheid system.

I don't think, and there is not one evidence in Mandela's autobiography that he was driven by any communist ideology. The only driving factor was to get rid off the apartheid system which handled non-whites like trash.
 
Darya Akbari
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Originally posted by Paul Clapham:
There aren't too many examples where a successful revolution has avoided the aftermath of violent conflict in the ranks of the winners. I hope South Africa can be one of the few that survives.



What about the industrial revolution in England or the French Revolution, Frank mentioned before? Weren't they successful?

I would say that the revolutions in South Africa of the Afrikaans (Dutch) against England for the only reason to get an independent state where they can suppress any non-white and put their apartheid system in place is not the same like the revolution Mandela organized.
 
Ulf Dittmer
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Originally posted by Darya Akbari:
What about the industrial revolution in England or the French Revolution,



The industrial revolution was not a political revolution of the kind discussed here. It didn't change the system of government.

The French revolution was quite bloody indeed. Whether it was successful depends on what one perceives as it aims. It got rid of the monarchy, but paved the way for Napoleon, and various restorations of the monarchy before ultimately the republic prevailed.
 
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