[BilboBagend]

RIP

A good man.

[RealJustme]

He was a man with many faults but much of that was a result of leading a hard life...he deserves to now rest in peace.

[RealJustme]

Mandela was much like our current President, he was no angel. The only difference is Mandela dumped his hate filled racist wife, Obama has held onto his. May Mandela rest in peace.

The problem is that Mandela, apart from having a likeable personality, achieved next to nothing in his political career which saw South Africa rapidly decline to the status of the world's most violent and crime-ridden country, and, to add to the confusion, his greatest friends were communists and dictators like Fidel Castro, Moammar Qaddafi, Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein. His ex-wife Winnie Mandela, whom he quickly jettisoned when it became clear she was a considerable embarassment to his political career, is a self-confessed advocate of terrorism and violence and has even committed murder.

In his public statements and speeches Mandela was always critical of the democratic countries of the west, but has nothing but praise for the remaining communist dictatorships of the world. He condemns mistakes and controversial policies of the west, but refuses to publicly condemn the genocides and brutal repression of current or former communist countries; he is supposedly a "champion of freedom and democracy", the "hero of oppressed people everywhere" but considers dictatorships like Cuba and Libya shining beacons of freedom and justice...
Perhaps this is what makes Mandela such a revered statesman - chameleon-like he can advocate democracy and freedom as the highest ideals one day and hold up Cuba or Libya as shining examples for the world to follow the next day. And his admirers do not even notice the contradiction, or worse, they agree with him...
Many of his apologists optimistically claim that Mandela may well have had "communist leanings" in his past, but that he has since put all that behind him and become a moderate in his political beliefs. They are perhaps unaware of his fulsome praise of a communist dictatorship as late as 1991 when he and Winnie went to what they called their "second home" - Cuba

[RealJustme]

Obama admitted this morning he "modeled himself" after Mandela and when confronted with tough situations often asked "what would Mandela do?"