'Rest in peace, Madiba. Thank you for everything.'

My youngest son called me today to tell me that Nelson Mandela had died. I didn't know.

I'd been almost totally tuning out all TV (except for The Dog Whisperer twice a day) because of all those, "Buy this! Buy that!  Get yourself knee-deep in debt you can't afford!" ads since the Black Friday madness began.  I thanked him, and then sat with myself to reflect on what I deemed my then, very small voice for divestment and revolution in South Africa after graduating from college in 1978.

My headline above, taken from The Daily Maverick, encapsulates Mandela's life for those younguns and others unfamiliar but, my most favorite take-away from the piece, comes from the Madiba I loved the most!:

On 12 June 1964 the judge found all but two of the prisoners guilty and sentenced them to life imprisonment. Mandela was sent to Robben Island, where he would remain for the next 18 years. During his time there his mother and son died, his second wife Winnie was banned and subjected to relentless harassment by the apartheid police, and the ANC became a movement in exile. In March 1982, along with Sisulu, Andrew Mlangeni, Ahmed Kathrada and Raymond Mhlaba, Mandela was transferred to Pollsmoor Prison. President PW Botha offered him conditional release in 1985, in return for renouncing the armed struggle, but he refused, saying: "What freedom am I being offered while the organisation of the people remains banned? Only free men can negotiate. A prisoner cannot enter into contracts." (emphasis mine)

The Changeling will, no doubt, be in attendance at the funeral, totally oblivious to what that last emphasized sentence above even means -- much less, "taking history in his hands and bending the arc of the moral universe towards justice!"  Too bad.  Unlike the Emeli Sandé we see below, his half-white/half-African self was NEVER as socially conscious as she:



In this special edition of IDEAS, entitled "The Mandela Tapes" (a podcast which this old-head has still not figured out how to post!), Rick Stengel, a young reporter chosen to record Mandela's life story, was working in South Africa for Rolling Stone magazine. From 1992 to 1996, Stengel shadowed Mandela, using his small cassette machine to record the stories which would help in the writing of Mandela's autobiography, 'Long Walk to Freedom'.  Listen to it Family, then, draw your own conclusions.

Peace...

Related:
- Mandela: a Dissenting Opinion
- Telling the Truth About Nelson Mandela
- NELSON ROLIHLAHLA 'MADIBA' MANDELA: AMANDLA!
- U.S. Lionizes Mandela In Death … But Treated Him as a Terrorist While Alive
- Celebrating a life fully lived: Rest in power brother Madiba
- NYT Takes Mandela's Death as a Chance to Mock His Fight to Free His Country
- ANC on Mandela: 'The Large Baobab Tree Has Fallen'
- Nelson Mandela: Obama, Clinton, Cameron, Blair – Tributes of Shameful Hypocrisy
- Mandela will never, ever be your minstrel.