POWERED BY REAL TIMES MEDIA
Volume 77 – Number 14
michiganchronicle.com
December 11-17, 2013
Commemorative Edition
Nelson Mandela 1918-2013
Farewell, Madiba World gives final bow to Nelson Mandela, last 20th century liberator By Bankole Thompson CHRONICLE SENIOR EDITOR
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n his classic “The Brothers Karamazov,” Fyodor Dostoevsky renders the moral and epic battle of faith and perseverance for mankind, where the forces of good and evil came to meet and were forced to face the ultimate question: Will good triumph over evil? And when we think about a conflict between good and evil, about good triumphing over evil, we think of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela’s battle against apartheid in South Africa, one of the greatest evils in human history. The critical Black social thinker W.E.B Du Bois was correct in labeling apartheid in South Africa as “a medieval slave-ridden Bankole oligarchy,” that sought to dehumanize, casThompson trate and render men and women in their own land politically, socially and economically impotent. The world stood by for a long time and others sat on the sidelines refusing to intervene in the moral and political battle before unrelenting activists, advocates and sympathizers of the African National Congress (ANC), including students on college campuses around the world, shamed double-talking leaders including former Republican President Ronald Reagan and former conservative British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who were engaging in so-called “constructive engagement” with a racist regime that was enforcing slavery while dismissing and castigating the ANC’s righteous battle to end apartheid.
Monica Morgan Photo
“I have fought against White domination and I have fought against Black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if need be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.” — Nelson Mandela from the dock at the 1964 Rivonia trial
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Today as we mourn the passing of this political lion and liberator we are accustomed to calling “Madiba,” who has touched millions of lives, we look at how ultimately he and his colleagues in the liberation movement with the support of human rights defenders finally removed this scourge on history. Like Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” reminds us that despite the whirlwind of changes facing our time we must seize the day, Mandela’s demise marks the death of democracy’s greatest salesman of this era, providing us another chance to not only seize the day but to articulate a new vision for a new generation, especially those who are not familiar with the battle that Mandela waged in the last century. Mandela’s pilgrimage on this earth, defending the rights of ordinary South Africans uncompromisingly as he sought to sell democracy as the best political tool to empower any society, is a strong reminder of his commitment to the
See MANDELA page A-4
NELSON MANDELA during his historic visit to Detroit. The human rights icon often listened to Motown music, such as that by Marvin Gaye, while in prison. With Mandela are Rosa Parks, Mother of the Civil Rights Movement, Winnie Mandela and then-Mayor Coleman Young. — Bishop P.A. Brooks Collection