R.I.P the big man Mandela

[Sir X]

Nelson Mandela, South African Icon of Peaceful Resistance, Is Dead


Play video



By Jigar Mehta
Kim Ludbrook/European Pressphoto Agency
The Life of Nelson Mandela, 1918-2013: Nelson Mandela, who led the emancipation of South Africa from white minority rule and served as his country’s first black president, died at 95.




By LYDIA POLGREEN



Published: December 5, 2013

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Google+
• Save
• Email
• Share
• Print
• Reprints
• 

JOHANNESBURG — Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first black president and an enduring icon of the struggle against racial oppression, died on Thursday, the government announced, leaving the nation without its moral center at a time of growing dissatisfaction with the country’s leaders.




Multimedia



Photographs
Mandela as Dissident, Liberator and Statesman








Connect With Us on Twitter

Follow @nytimesworld for international breaking news and headlines.
Twitter List: Reporters and Editors




Mr. Mandela spent 27 years in prison after being convicted of treason by the white minority government, only to forge a peaceful end to white rule by negotiating with his captors after his release in 1990. He led the African National Congress, long a banned liberation movement, to a resounding electoral victory in 1994, the first fully democratic election in the country’s history.
Mr. Mandela served just one term as South Africa’s president and had not been seen in public since 2010, when the nation hosted the soccer World Cup. But his decades in prison and his insistence on forgiveness over vengeance made him a potent symbol of the struggle to end this country’s brutally codified system of racial domination, and of the power of peaceful resolution in even the most intractable conflicts.
Years after he retreated from public life, his name still resonated as an emblem of his effort to transcend decades of racial division and create what South Africans called a Rainbow Nation.

[Islandman]

One of the greatest there ever was and ever will be.

#thatisall

[Sir X]

2nd dat,Sir !

[Don1]

I was privileged to see him at Yankee Stadium on his first to NYC... a great moment

RIP Big Man... you're right up there in status with Marcus

[Rudi]

RIP Black King. Chalice have fi lick.

[Islandman]

I saw him at The Office.

It was an experience to cherish for a lifetime, well everything except for Beenie Mans contribution about "green arm" people. Sigh.

[Rudi]

some a we no know betta. and that goes for those on the varandah.

[HL]

A great life lived indeed!!

RIP

[Assasin]

yeah man. RIP the big man. Life well lived.

[Hortical]

RIP Mandela, one of the greatest leaders of our time.

[Mosiah]

Tired fi bawl. Don't even know what to say...

[Sir X]

Nelson Mandela, Fidel Castro: A Relationship Built On Mutual Admiration

The Huffington Post | By Hirania Luzardo Posted: 06/27/2013 3:48 pm EDT

238
63


20
181


GET LATINO VOICES NEWSLETTERS:SUBSCRIBE





FOLLOW:

South Africa, Fidel Castro, Latino Politics, Nelson Mandela, Nelson Mandela Health, Cuba Nelson Mandela, Cuba South Africa, Fidel Castro Africa, Fidel Castro South Africa, Nelson Mandela Critical Condition, Nelson Mandela Fidel Castro, Nelson Mandela Fidel Castro Friendship, Nelson Mandela Political History, Latino Voices News



After being released from prison in 1990, one of the first things Nelson Mandela did was visit Cuba to express his admiration and respect for Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
“Who trained our people, who gave us resources, who helped so many of our soldiers, our doctors?" Mandela asked Castro during a public appearance in Havana. "You have not come to our country -- when are you coming?"
Fidel Castro responded, "I have not visited my homeland South Africa, but I love it as if it were my homeland."
Fidel Castro and Nelson Mandela developed such a close relationship that it’s impossible to forget when speaking about the African leader in Latin America. The triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 inspired a young Mandela. Later in life,Mandela credited Cuba's military support to Angola in the 1970s and 1980s with playing a role in debilitating South Africa's government enough to result in the legalization of his party, the African National Congress, in 1990.
Nelson Mandela visited Cuba in 1991, months after his release from prison. After his trip to the Communist island he visited Argentina and Brazil -- the beginning of his relationship with Latin American countries that had recently lived under dictatorships, like Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and Peru.
South African business leader and philanthropist Bertie Lubner, in an interview with TeleSUR, explained that it shouldn’t be forgotten that many South African leaders had already visited Latin America in the past while Mandela was in prison.

“Members of the African National Congress party had already visited foreign countries with socialist components like Cuba, East Germany, Russian and in that way embraced socialism, equality,” Lubner explained.
When Mandela arrived to Cuba in 1991, Cubans were summoned onto the streets of Havana to receive the African leader who was awarded the country’s highest honors.
“If you ask any Cuban who Mandela is, they will place him among the greatest men who have ever lived,” Havana journalist Maria Elena Calderín told TeleSur.
In 1994, Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s first black president and Fidel Castro was the guest of honor at the inauguration ceremony.
"What Fidel [Castro] has done for us is difficult to describe with words," Mandela said."First in the struggle against Apartheid he did not hesitate to give us all his help and now that we are free we have many Cuban doctors working here,"
Formal diplomatic relations between Cuba and South Africa began after May 11, 1994, though a friendship already existed between Castro and Mandela.
Cuba also agreed to celebrate Nelson Mandela International Day on July 18.

For Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday, Fidel Castro sent a congratulatory message to the leader:

“Glory to you, Nelson, who while in prison for 25 years defended human dignity! Slander and hatred could do nothing against your endurance of steel. You were able to resist and, without knowing or looking for it, you became a symbol of what is most noble in humanity. You will live in the memory of future generations, and in your memory the Cubans who died defending the liberty of their brothers in other lands of the world,” Castro wrote Juventud Rebelde, on the island’s state newspapers.

In 1975 Cuba began sending troops to southern Africa to support independence, over300,000 soldiers set foot on Angolan soil alone, according to Cuban state newspaper Granma.
Nelson Mandela was arrested and sentenced to life in prison in 1962. He spent 27 years in prison. He was released on February 11, 1990.
In 1994, Nelson Mandela won South Africa’s first democratic elections and remained in office until 1999.
With the creation of the South African National Party in 1948, the policy of racial segregation, known as apartheid, went into effect. Mandela became a figure of civil disobedience in 1952 within the African National Congress.
On June 8, Mandela was admitted into a hospital in Pretoria, South Africa and iscurrently in serious but stable condition. Nevertheless, the 94-year-old leader’s lung infection has gradually worsened.

[Sir X]

Mandela visit to Miami Beach sparked black boycott, caused change

BY CHARLES RABIN

CRABIN@MIAMIHERALD.COM

When Nelson Mandela announced he would visit Miami only four months after spending 27 years as a political prisoner in South Africa, it sparked a series of exchanges in Miami-Dade County between the black and Cuban-American communities that made national headlines and caused economic hardship, but eventually led to significant economic change.
“We really were looking for something to ignite and unify us,” attorney H.T. Smith, who spearheaded a three-year boycott of Miami by black businesses and organizations, said Thursday.
It began in May 1990 when Mandela, who had spent almost three decades in prison, announced he would visit Miami a month later. Miami politicians planned a proclamation.
But a week before his planned June 28 visit, Mandela appeared on ABC TV and acknowledged his support for Moammar Gadahfi, Yasser Arafat and Fidel Castro — setting off a string of events that people still recall more than two decades later.
The day after Mandela’s comments, Miami Commissioner Victor DeYurre demanded the city rescind its proclamation. Other commissioners agreed.
“It was an unfortunate situation because here you have someone that stood for so many positive things. You see the struggle he went through, and that is something Cuban-Americans can relate to,” DeYurre said this past summer.
Three days later, five Cuban-American mayors — including Miami Mayor Xavier Suarez — signed a letter saying Mandela’s comments were “beyond reasonable comprehension.”
The same day the head of the local chapter of the NAACP warned that “to reject Mandela is to reject us.” Two days later, a day before Mandela’s visit, Smith warned Miami commissioners he would call for a boycott if Mandela wasn’t honored not only with a proclamation, but with a key to the city. After local politicians rejected his demands, Smith began Boycott Miami, which affected Miami Beach and Miami-Dade County as well.
Boycott Miami demanded more black representation in the tourism industry and for single-member districts in Miami.
On June 28, 1990, Mandela spoke before 6,000 people at the Miami Beach Convention Center.
Smith later admitted he had been looking for a reason to call for a black boycott of Miami because of its treatment of the black community, and the snub of Mandela gave him the opportunity.
A month later an organization of black lawyers, the National Bar Association, cancelled a convention planned for 1993 in Miami. Other organizations followed suit, and many black-owned businesses refused to come to Miami.
Six months after issuing his initial statement, Suarez backtracked, saying that the “pain that our actions or omissions may have lessened the pride or affronted the dignity of our black brothers.” On Thursday, while in a meeting at Miami-Dade County Hall, Suarez, said he was unavailable for comment.
The greater Miami area ended up losing millions of dollars in convention and tourism business.
Almost two years after Mandela’s visit, on April 27, 1992, Miami declared Nelson Mandela Day. Smith called it the first significant step since the Mandela snubbing and called off planned pickets. When a court ordered the county to create single-member districts, Smith persuaded the lame-duck commission to vote for a proclamation for Mandela.
The boycott finally ended on May 12, 1993. Smith credits the boycott for the rise of business entrepreneurs like Robert L. Johnson, a hotel developer, and Andy Ingraham, president and chief executive of the National Association of Black Hotel Owners and Operators.
Yet, only a few months before Mandela’s death, DeYurre said he could never forgive Mandela for supporting Castro.
“I see him as somebody who stood for something we stood for,” DeYurre said this summer. “I respect the struggle he went through, the pain that he went through, and he got to be the kind of thing that movies are made of. He became president. You have to respect that.”
Shortly after Mandela’s death Thursday, Miami-Dade Commission Chairwoman Rebeca Sosa announced his passing from the dais, and called for a moment of silence.

• 
  Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/12/0...#storylink=cpy

[Tilla]

Fly away home boss! One bright morning when your work is over. . .

You have lived an exemplary life and you are an inspiration to many.

[MdmeX]

The only Politician that the WORLD will miss

Watch this youth - South Africa has talent

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5xhWXzRFks