South Africans, did you know who Nelson Mandela was before he was released from prison?

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Itâ€™s understandable that you and others could have not known much to anything about himâ€¦â€¦there was little said about him at white schoolsâ€¦.most whites started hearing and knowing much about him, Biko, ANC, PAC etc at university levelâ€¦â€¦.I believe it would be thick of anybody who knows South African history to accuse you and the children of your time to be ignorantâ€¦â€¦thatâ€™s how the system was designedâ€¦â€¦.but for some of us, we knew who he and others were and the events like Sharpevilleâ€¦..granted were we not born when the likes of Sharpeville happenedâ€¦â€¦but because we lived in the townships, we knew about it and the June 16â€¦â€¦.these were not taught at school but we knew them from the township school of lifeâ€¦â€¦.

Slacker

I kind of had a clue what was going on at the time, but I never really knew. We didn't learn much about it at school those days. And it was a taboo subject in my grandfathers house, so my parents didn't speak about it a lot. I got up to speed when I went to college. I'm still not sure if I really know the guy, because there are so many questions he left unanswered. Most of it being why a peaceful man like himself could have done the things he did. And many other questions surround his 'aura of peace'.

Pixel

I was all of 7 when Nelson Mandela was released.

So honestly, I don't know.
I do know he fought for a free SA while others sat in other countries and got ivy league educations, then came back to SA and reaped the rewards of what Mandela fought for.

thumba

All the names you mentioned and many more I grew up with. Nelson Mandela my childhood hero. I have also met him personally a few years ago
There is a whole generation of people who are ignorant ( Don't know)of that generation or time in our history of South Africa.

Snorkie

No but if I remember correctly my parents told me no photos of him were allowed to be published .....I didn't know who any of those people were and I come from Cradock.....Remember Ford Calata and the rest from Cradock? I met his wife Pearl later in my life, what a great woman. I was in my 20ties when Nelson was released. The NATs kept everything so secretive. Die Veiligheids polisie was everywhere. My father was "watched" because he defended some of these people and wrote letters to enquire about the where abouts of the missing. I and my brother knew nothing about it until later ....

cheri

No i did not and i remember when kids were asked what his name was they replied Free Mandela

Slipper man

You r spot on - I was also 19 at the time - the first time I heard of Mandela was upon news of his release -

I remember it like it was yesterday - was outside good old Masquerades in JHB, when there was pandemonium in the street upon news of his release...

I remember asking - what's all the commotion about - "Mandela is getting released..." - it meant absolutely nothing to me at the time - so proceeded to go back in side and order another drink to the "funky sounds" of London Beat!!!

working gal

I was 6 at the time. It was my big sister's birthday party, and I remember all the adults crowded in the kitchen watching a small tv. They told me Mandela was being released. I didn't know who Mandela was. Because of censorship, the presenters were not used to doing live broadcasts, and were running out of things to say. "Sunny day here in South Africa," said the one. Long silence. "The sun always shines in Africa," said the other.

All I remember is a wide open space and someone walking across it, waving.

Darth Vader

Yes I did. I was reading newspapers from very early on in my life. I always wondered why the world chose him and not one of the other ANC leaders as their favorite.

Pammie

These stories are not old enough to have been absorbed into the current school curriculum. One day they probably will. He has written a book that you may want to read

Mandela had a legal degree but he was also an activist in the ANC. It would be a good idea if you are interested in the history to read the following book.

Link : http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=pNyiAAAACAAJ&dq=Nelson+Mandela&hl=en&prev=http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=mandela+%2B+book&btnG=Google+Search&sa=X&oi=print&ct=result&cd=3&cad=author-navigational

cakes4africa

I was around at that time. The problem was that the newspapers did not give much info about such things. We did not have TV and Internet then, so getting info was limited. In school such things were definitely not mentioned. Worcester was a National Party stronghold. We United Party people had many fights with the verkramptes. I do remember the sensation when Mandela was moved to Victor Verster prison.

And Sharpeville was in the papers. Also Steve Biko. When the Oliver Tambo incident hit the news, I was in Germany, and there it hardly caused a ripple. Just mentioned on the news and finished and klaar.

Sprinkly

I am much younger and I can't relate. I grew up in a house where we spoke about things. My parents sent us to integrated Catholic Schools because they didn't want us to grow up isolated. My sister's mother lived in a coloured neighbourhood that was too far away for her to come to my school but she also went to an integrated Catholic School. So yes I knew about Mandela, Steve Biko, Donald Woods, Adelaide and Oliver Tambo, Ruth First, Chris Hani, Sharpeville, June 16 etc I only went to a public school after '94 and that was my decision.

If anybody is interested perhaps you should visit the Apartheid museum, Mandela's house, the Regina Mundi Church and the Hector Petersen museum. They are all really interesting.

redgator40

knew he was

zeanne s

nelson mandela was freedom fighter,
he was sent to jail bcoz he fought for the country for its right!!!!!!!

Alf Garnett

I did probably because I lived in the UK and we were exposed to the propaganda of the ANC and its allies in the Press. I also have vague memories of Peter "Flour Power" Hain making an a rsehole of himself at Rugby matches and getting in the news.
Sharpeville and Biko made big news in the UK but again it was the one sided slant which got a few people angry for a few days then it was forgotten.

Bluelady...

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela
http://www.anc.org.za/people/mandela.html

Mandela's words, "The struggle is my life," are not to be taken lightly.

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born in a village near Umtata in the Transkei on the 18 July 1918. His father was the principal councillor to the Acting Paramount Chief of Thembuland.Rolihlahla became the Paramount Chief s ward to be groomed to assume high office, and he determined to become a lawyer. He then enrolled at the University College of Fort Hare for the Bachelor of Arts Degree where he was elected onto the Student's Representative Council. He was suspended from college for joining in a protest boycott. He went to Johannesburg where he completed his BA by correspondence, took articles of clerkship and commenced study for his LLB. He entered politics in earnest while studying in Johannesburg by joining the African National Congress in 1942.

Mandela soon impressed his peers by his disciplined work and consistent effort and was elected to the Secretaryship of the Youth League in 1947. By painstaking work, campaigning at the grassroots and through its mouthpiece Inyaniso' (Truth) the ANCYL was able to canvass support for its policies amongst the ANC membership. At the 1945 annual conference of the ANC, two of the League s leaders, Anton Lembede and Ashby Mda, were elected onto the National Executive Committee (NEC). Two years later another Youth League leader, Oliver R Tambo became a member of the NEC.

Spurred on by the victory of the National Party which won the 1948 all-White elections on the platform of Apartheid, at the 1949 annual conference, the Programme of Action, inspired by the Youth League, which advocated the weapons of boycott, strike, civil disobedience and non-co-operation was accepted as official ANC policy.
The Programme of Action had been drawn up by a sub-committee of the ANCYL composed of David Bopape, Ashby Mda, Nelson Mandela, James Njongwe, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo. To ensure its implementation the membership replaced older leaders with a number of younger men. Walter Sisulu, a founding member of the Youth League was elected Secretary-General. The conservative Dr A.B. Xuma lost the presidency to Dr J.S. Moroka, a man with a reputation for greater militancy. The following year, 1950, Mandela himself was elected to the NEC at national conference.

The ANCYL programme aimed at the attainment of full citizenship, direct parliamentary representation for all South Africans. In policy documents of which Mandela was an important co-author, the ANCYL paid special attention to the redistribution of the land, trade union rights, education and culture. The ANCYL aspired to free and compulsory education for all children, as well as mass education for adults.

When the ANC launched its Campaign for the Defiance of Unjust Laws in 1952, Mandela was elected National Volunteer-in-Chief. The Defiance Campaign was conceived as a mass civil disobedience campaign that would snowball from a core of selected volunteers to involved more and more ordinary people, culminating in mass defiance. Fulfilling his responsibility as Volunteer-in-Chief, Mandela travelled the country organising resistance to discriminatory legislation. Charged and brought to trial for his role in the campaign, the court found that Mandela and his co-accused had consistently advised their followers to adopt a peaceful course of action and to avoid all violence.
For his part in the Defiance Campaign, Mandela was convicted of contravening the Suppression of Communism Act and given a suspended prison sentence. Shortly after the campaign ended, he was also prohibited from attending gatherings and confined to Johannesburg for six months.

During the early fifties Mandela played an important part in leading the resistance to the Western Areas removals and to the introduction of Bantu Education. He also played a significant role in popularising the Freedom Charter, adopted by the Congress of the People in 1955.

In the late fifties, Mandela s attention turned to the struggles against the exploitation of labour, the pass laws, the nascent Bantustan policy, and the segregation of the open universities. Mandela arrived at the conclusion very early on that the Bantustan policy was a political swindle and an economic absurdity. He predicted, with dismal prescience, that ahead there lay a grim programme of mass evictions, political persecutions, and police terror. On the segregation of the universities, Mandela observed that the friendship and inter-racial harmony that is forged through the admixture and association of various racial groups at the mixed universities constitute a direct threat to the policy of apartheid and baasskap, and that it was to remove that threat that the open universities were being closed to black students.

During the whole of the fifties, Mandela was the victim of various forms of repression. He was banned, arrested and imprisoned. For much of the latter half of the decade, he was one of the accused in the mammoth Treason Trial, at great cost to his legal practice and his political work. After the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, the ANC was outlawed, and Mandela, still on trial, was detained.

The Treason Trial collapsed in 1961 as South Africa was being steered towards the adoption of the republic constitution. With the ANC now illegal the leadership picked up the threads from its underground headquarters. Nelson Mandela emerged at this time as the leading figure in this new phase of struggle. Under the ANC's inspiration, 1,400 delegates came together at an All-in African Conference in Pietermaritzburg during March 1961. Mandela was the keynote speaker. In an electrifying address he challenged the apartheid regime to convene a national convention, representative of all South Africans to thrash out a new constitution based on democratic principles. Failure to comply, he warned, would compel the majority (Blacks) to observe the forthcoming inauguration of the Republic with a mass general strike. He immediately went underground to lead the campaign. Although fewer answered the call than Mandela had hoped, it attracted considerable support throughout the country. The government responded with the largest military mobilisation since the war, and the Republic was born in an atmosphere of fear and apprehension.

Forced to live apart from his family, moving from place to place to evade detection by the government s ubiquitous informers and police spies, Mandela had to adopt a number of disguises. Sometimes dressed as a common labourer, at other times as a chauffeur, his successful evasion of the police earned him the title of the Black Pimpernel. It was during this time that he, together with other leaders of the ANC constituted a new specialised section of the liberation movement, Umkhonto we Sizwe, as an armed nucleus with a view to preparing for armed struggle. At the Rivonia trial, Mandela explained : "At the beginning of June 1961, after long and anxious assessment of the South African situation, I and some colleagues came to the conclusion that as violence in this country was inevitable, it would be wrong and unrealistic for African leaders to continue preaching peace and non-violence at a time when the government met our peaceful demands with force.

Bull 8

He was and remains a vile soviet inspired and trained terrorist who is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent women and children, through his authorisations on attacks against South Africa's civilian population, due to the ANC's cowardice when confronted by the once efficient and world class SADF (The Church Street Bombings etc).
He was and is unremorseful for his refusals to renounce violence which were afforded to the thug on numerous occasions and had the CIA not kept him on a short lead the treacherous dog would no doubt have instigated mass genocide against South Africa's white population in the early 1990's.
The Nats should have lynched the bastard after the Rivonia Trial when the despicable criminal was correctly convicted of treason and terrorism.

chickyboo222

One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist. Mandela went to jail because he tried to blow up the NP's head Quatters. He was in jail for the attempted assignation's of many white political leaders.

Imagine this.. 9/11 is thanks to Muslim terrorists. But in Iraq, they are seen as freedom fighters. So 27 years later Osama Bin Laden is released from jail because of the pressure the Muslim community is putting on the current government. He becomes president. He loves children. 9/11 gets remembered as part of 'the struggle' and he becomes a world icon for peace and love.

That's basically the Mandela story. Funny how things change when the ruling party changes...

conservation chris

Yes I knew about mandela while he was in prison, he was jailed because he was a terrorist that planned the violent overthrow of the legitimate South African goverment of the time, for his own selfish ambitions and greed.
Wasn't he also on trial for having weird sex with animals as well?

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