Nelson Mandela: the great man
Posted a week ago
The world today is a much fairer and more just place than it was in the past, but there are still areas of injustice, prejudice, intolerance, and discrimination. From time to time there appear great people whose lives’ work is to change all of these and to bring justice to all people.
Nelson Mandela (1918—2013)
Image source: Google
Mandela is a black African lawyer, politician, and statesman who brought independence to the black people of South Africa. After World War | the government of South Africa was in the hands of the white Boers, descendants of the early Dutch settlers, who set about making the black people, who outnumbered them four to one, little more than slaves.
Image source: Google
After World War II, the pressure intensified with the introduction of the policy of apartheid ( apartness, or separate development). Laws were passed forcing black people to live in settlements outside the white towns. The black people had to carry a special pass otherwise they were arrested and banished to the poor tribal lands, or in many cases, to work as slaves for the white farmers. Black people were not allowed to use the same buses, trains, or cafes as the whites; their schools were pathetic without books and? equipment, with one poorly-trained teacher for every 80 pupils; they were banned from all skilled work, and in the places where they were doing the same jobs as whites, they were paid much less. Watch below interviews of Black and White people of South Africa after World War II.
Not much could be done politically: fourimillion whites elected 165 white MPs, while thirteen million blacks could choose only three (white) MPs to represent them—and even these were abolished in 1959. The black people under Mandela and a few others formed a political party, the African National Congress (ANC), but this was almost immediately banned. To be a member meant imprisonment.
Mandela and his companions were charged with treason in 1956, but found not guilty five years later. in 1962 Mandela made a secret trip to Algeria and then to London; on his return he was arrested, charged with treason, and sentenced to life imprisonment in the prison on: Robben Island but he managed, even from: his cell, to exert a great influence on the black freedom movement.
Image source: Google
In 1976 the Boer government decreed that all black schools must teach Afrikaans, the South African Dutch language. This sparked rebellions, the most serious in Soweto where police killed several hundred black people.
Presidents came and went, each seeming more extreme and brutal than the previous one. The United Nations passed many resolutions that were ignored. Tension built up inside the country. Then, in 1989, a new and much more liberal president was elected—F. W. de Klerk. He immediately lifted the ban on theANC and released Mandela and many other political prisoners. He repealed the last of the apartheid laws (1992), and organized elections for 1994, with blacks able to vote and to put up members of parliament. The result was as expected: the ANC won with a massive majority.
Below shared photo of Nelson Mandela when he release after 27 year from prison.
Image source: Google
Mandela was elected president, with de Klerk as a vice president. Now began Mandela’s greatest hour: after half a century of violent oppression and cruelty, one "might have expected revenge by the black people, but Mandela, with sheer force of personality and aided by people such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, made the transfer of power completely peaceful. There were immense problems of trying to right the previous fifty years of wrong, but slowly conditions improved. Things have still a long way to go, but life is immeasurably better in South Africa. In below photo de Klerk as a vice president on Right and in the middle is Nelson Mandela the president.
Image source: Google
In below shared video you will learn whole history of African National Congress and A journey of Nelson Mandela became to president.
Video source: Youtube
Nelson Mandela resigned as president in 1999 but his influence throughout Africa, and indeed the world, is as strong as :ever. He was succeeded by Thabo Mbeki who, resigned in 2008 after controversies and disagreements over the years. The current president is Jacob Zuma. Mandela continues to support the cause of the downtrodden and the poor.
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