Thanks for writing this. And for once I was glad that the only coverage I watched was Rachel Maddow's where she did mention that Mandela and the ANC had decided sabotage was the only way after the Sharpeville Massacre and that Mandela was chosen to go underground and start that fight. She got the history right. And I appreciated her for it. B'c there are those today who have not lived during those years and plenty of those who did with shorter memories.
Perhaps it is b;c people only want to remember the very good things about a person that they sanitize them? Much of history does get sanitized for reasons I can never fathom. Ease of passing down the story? Life is too messy to get it all down? I don't understand. But I do think that if a balance of a person's life is more good than bad the bad tends to get removed. To keep the memory only for the good I guess.
I read about SA and Mandela and the ANC when I was 15. It was my first taste of social activism. Nelson Mandela and the ANC were my first heroes. I was deeply pleased when he was released when I was a senior in high and even more pleased when he became president when I was a senior in college. My grandmother was a immigrant to the US from SA when she was young (3? 5?) and I have tried very hard to understand the country she came from and the choices they made.
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Date: 2013-12-06 03:42 pm (UTC)Thanks for writing this. And for once I was glad that the only coverage I watched was Rachel Maddow's where she did mention that Mandela and the ANC had decided sabotage was the only way after the Sharpeville Massacre and that Mandela was chosen to go underground and start that fight. She got the history right. And I appreciated her for it. B'c there are those today who have not lived during those years and plenty of those who did with shorter memories.
Perhaps it is b;c people only want to remember the very good things about a person that they sanitize them? Much of history does get sanitized for reasons I can never fathom. Ease of passing down the story? Life is too messy to get it all down? I don't understand. But I do think that if a balance of a person's life is more good than bad the bad tends to get removed. To keep the memory only for the good I guess.
I read about SA and Mandela and the ANC when I was 15. It was my first taste of social activism. Nelson Mandela and the ANC were my first heroes. I was deeply pleased when he was released when I was a senior in high and even more pleased when he became president when I was a senior in college. My grandmother was a immigrant to the US from SA when she was young (3? 5?) and I have tried very hard to understand the country she came from and the choices they made.