I am 24 years old, and perhaps far too young to comprehend the conditions of those who lived in the 17th, 18th century and the decades leading to the final days of apartheid. I am perhaps far too young to comprehend the South Africa of the 60s and 70s and 80s and 90s. I can, however, comprehend the profound sacrifices Mandela made in sacrificing a potentially lucrative career in law, a family life of social respect and comfort, and decided that he was going to devote his life to fight the system of apartheid. He decided that his life was going to be devoted not to the material and social comforts that his career guaranteed him, but for a higher ideal, a South Africa where all South Africans, black and white, lived together in harmony and shared prosperity. I do not understand, therefore, the lunatic rantings of the self-appointed revolutionaries, Bikoists, Pan Africanists who constantly insult the path Mandela chose. Do they have the benefit of experiencing what it was like for a black man in the decades above, the social, political and material position of the black man, the same conditions that shaped Mandelas path? Or are they basing their entire judgment of the man on the political literature they have chosen to read? The problem with criticizing or judging a person such as Mandela, is that they wrote their own legacy in deeds, they wrote and shared their own thinking and proceeded to live it. People who criticize a luminary figure such as Mandela while they build their entire repertoire of rhetoric on the legacies of others, such as the multitudes of Bikoists who have suddenly sprung up, are nothing but attention seekers who have no achievements of their own to build an aura around. I have no time to listen to them.
Posted on: Sun, 20 Apr 2014 07:24:34 +0000
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