November 22, 2013|Johannesburg |Twitter: @MukoniR
Replying to the debate on the Presidency’s Budget Vote in June this year, President Jacob Zuma said something which those who are interested in a credible narrative of our past, present and future should say louder than the decibels permitted to a sitting President.
Prompted by the comments of the Democratic Alliance’s parliamentary leader, Lindiwe Mazibuko, Zuma protested the distortion of President Nelson Mandela’s image and politics.
He told Mazibuko that she and her party, should also “support what he (Mandela) stood for and what he went to prison for and what he said over the years” and objected to the projection of Mandela as “the only nice ANC man,” arguing that appraisal “must not focus only on Madiba the first President of a democratic South Africa who implemented ANC policies of reconciliation and transformation.”
Instead of a disconnect, there was and is consistency between “Madiba the volunteer-in-chief of the defiance campaign, Madiba the Umkhonto weSizwe commander-in-chief, Madiba the revolutionary, Madiba the long-serving prisoner” and the post 1994 Madiba whose “rich legacy and history must not be distorted.”
The truth is that Mandela’s rich legacy of struggle has, over the years, been distorted and depoliticised by two convergent and mutually reinforcing tendencies.
The first is an overtly political tendency which is propelled by sections of professional politicians, academics, commentators, journalists – the ‘persuasive industries’ more broadly.
The second tendency is commercial and rides on the back of the first tendency while at the same time aiding the objectives of that tendency.
The first tendency:
- places emphasis on aspects of our politics, particularly the ANC’s policy of reconciliation;
- contrasts reconciliation and social transformation as mutually exclusive in theory and in practice;
- individualises reconciliation as Mandela’s private property from whence comes the notion of “the only nice ANC man;”
- individualises the struggle for liberation from which the notion of Mandela “the only ANC man” whom it is said singlehandedly waged the struggle against apartheid; and,
- promotes the corrosive idea that politics is a public game for private gain and that Mandela represents himself, his individual interests and family. Politics becomes a career in the labour market which has nothing to do with serving humanity. If and when it does, it is supposedly a non-conflictual affair, with Mandela alleged to be the embodiment of it. Measured against its seemingly benevolent rhetoric, this tendency amounts to the metaphorical adorning of the sheepskin of which the proverbial wolf is famed.
More than a distortion, this narrative is a desecration of our history and struggle which impacts on the present and the future. (This is to say nothing of the political oxymoron of Nelson Mandela’s name cohabiting peacefully together with that of Cecil John Rhodes, a subject I do not discuss in this article.)
The result is that the revolutionary Mandela is atomized and packaged as a benign, quasi religious (a)political figure, the champion of a racially blind non-racialism, a reconciliation that is at best indifferent and at worst ambivalent to the task of redressing the legacy of colonialism and apartheid.
As a distortion, it does not reflect the reality of our history. Mandela has always acted within the framework of agreed policy positions, including during the period when he served as President of the Republic. Nation Building was one of the six basic principles of the Reconstruction and Development Programme. But ANC policy, Nation Building predates 1994. It exercised the minds of its founders in 1912!
The narrative of Mandela, the “only” liberator, undermines the fact that there was Albert Luthuli, Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu, Moses Kotane, Govan Mbeki, JB Marks, ZK Matthews, Yusuf Dadoo, Mark Shope, Thomas Nkobi and many many others.
Mandela himself never saw himself in this distorted view. When he was released from prison on February 11 1990, he addressed a rally in Cape Town in which he said, among other things: “I stand here before you not as a prophet but as a humble servant of you, the people. Your tireless and heroic sacrifices have made it possible for me to be here today. I therefore place the remaining years of my life in your hands.” When he addressed parliament for the last time as President of the Republic on March 26, 1999, Mandela, said, among other things: “If I have been able to help take our country a few steps towards democracy, non-racialism and non-sexism, it is because I am a product of the African National Congress, of the movement for justice, dignity and freedom that produced countless giants in whose shadow we find our glory.”
Mandela as the “only” ANC man is a phenomenon deeply rooted in classical liberal thought from which emerged the “cult of the individual” – the separation of the individual from community. (Needless to say that in our context, some of those who present him in this light today are the same people who previously referred to him as a “terrorist.”)
As the historian, E.H Carr wrote in his treatise, ‘What is History?’: “The great man is always representative either of existing forces or of forces which he helps to create by way of challenge to existing authority. But the higher degree of creativity may perhaps be assigned to those great men who, like Cromwell or Lenin, helped to mould the forces which carried them to greatness, rather than those who, like Napoleon or Bismark, rode to greatness on the back of already existing forces.
Thus, in the South African case as with elsewhere, there was not only the leadership (the great men and women) who kindled the revolutionary spirit and potential of the masses but there were the masses who understood that with or without the great men and women, they were their own liberators. In other words, the leadership as an integral part of society, as a social phenomenon, needs the masses in as much as the masses need the leadership.
The second tendency is a relatively small but lucrative industry which (ab)uses Mandela’s name in the guise of promoting ‘The Mandela Brand.’ It relegates Mandela to a commercial item and, like its political accomplices, devalues him.
But historical distortion is hardly surprising. It is part of the struggle between contending social forces which occurs in every society. In our case, it is about defining the nature of post-apartheid South Africa in the image of contending national (and global) social forces.
Karl Marx wrote that: “It is not History, as if she were a person apart, who uses men as a means to work out her purposes, but history itself is nothing but the activity of men pursuing their purposes.”
The American historian, Howard Zinn, was more direct when he said: “The historian’s distortion is more than technical, it is ideological; it is released into a world of contending interests, where any chosen emphasis supports (whether the historian means to or not) some kind of interest, whether economic or political or racial or national or sexual.”
If Mandela is presented only as a figure of reconciliation, one that is antithetical to social transformation, it follows that all of us too must abandon the latter for the former as Mandela is alleged to have done.
Similarly, if collective efforts come to be viewed as having no import, there will be no need for resort to collective responses to social challenges today and tomorrow.
If heroes and heroines of the struggle are reduced and repackaged as commodities to be traded, fashion symbols, and their ideas distorted, then their stature is diminished, and the history of collective struggle, to which they bear witness, and our vision of our present and future will be distorted.
The contending ideological forces in South Africa have come to understand the political and moral authority of the values and ideals on which the ANC is founded, and are determined to cash in on these while at the same time seeking to re-shape them to serve their own interests. The kidnapping of Mandela’s image is part of this scheme.
For progressives of all hues, a credible presentation of history is a vital navigational beacon in the journey towards tomorrow.
On March 2, 1966, OR Tambo wrote to Joe Matthews, then Administrative Secretary of the ANC detailing concerns which required the collective attention of the ANC leadership. Among other things, Tambo wrote: “the solidarity and cohesion essential in our struggle is missing.”
In his latest novel, Rumours, Wally Mongane agonizes at length about the erosion of the social solidarity and cohesion which brought us this far: “If such weighty things as the funerals of others’ children no longer meant much, what then did matter? What meant anything?”
Add “forgetting” to the indifference which exercises Serote and you have all the hallmarks of a society literally going nowhere slowly: “If it could be forgotten that fifteen million people were enslaved so that cotton could be planted, what mattered?”
One way of recapturing the solidarity and cohesion necessary for our present and future is a credible narrative of and about our past. It’s time to recapture Nelson Mandela.
Ends.
Mukoni Ratshitanga 
Mr Ratshitanga
I hope you are in good health. Your article was enlighting. I share the same sentiments as you have outlined in your article. It is indeed a great read.
The youth of this country need educative articles like this one otherwise the highjackers of our struggle will succeed. This article successfully crushes the evil intentions of reducing our struggle to one person. The intented impact is of a psychological nature , that all others must have an inferiority complex and doubt their contribution towards our liberation so that we all forever piggy-bag on Nelson Mandela’s legacy.
Thanks, Mukoni. I forward this to my kids as it articulates what I have been saying to them about Madiba and what he stands for. How come we are prepared to accept Nelson Mandela but not Robert McBride!!
In a letter to the current president, Former President Mbeki wrote amongst other things that: “In the context of the global struggle for the release of political prisoners in our country, our movement took a deliberate decision to profile Nelson Mandela as the representative personality of these prisoners, and therefore to use his personal political biography, including the persecution of his then wife, Winnie Mandela, dramatically to present to the world and the South African community the brutality of the apartheid system.” This decision, I think, played into the hands of those who, as you rightly described them Mukoni, subscribe to the “… phenomenon deeply rooted in classical liberal thought from which emerged the “cult of the individual” – the separation of the individual from community.” In this logic the collective moral struggle of the ANC is reduced to an individual who in his bodily death will also represent the death of that struggle. This is evidenced by apocalyptic stories of blacks killing whites after Mandela’s death that are told and spread in our country. In addition, Mandela is viewed through this lens as a struggle hero without history in that progressive ideals that he believed in are conveniently white washed, a phenomenon Cornel West calls Santa Clausification. Our deeds and actions are a good place to start in recapturing Mandela.
Reblogged this on Raymond Suttner.
Not so long ago, I had a lengthy conversation with one of the greatest minds of the ANC. We discussed a lot of things, but chief amongst these, was the idea of memory. Let me try to assemble my thoughts properly, and perhaps begin like this.
My earliest memory of a looming new South Africa, was around 1990. Still wet behind the ears, and with years on my side, we danced in the streets of Pimville, where the likes of ZB Molefe regaled us with thoughts, on things to come. We danced the Codesa jive because it was everywhere. As you can imagine, we did not know what the fuss/farce was about, but we know it was very important. Far from the borders of our screens, we ran and chased the wind, played with love letters and blew false hopes to the Lerato’s, Mande’s and Zodwa’s.
You will remember that in some of the earlier years, the spiralling violence of the hostel dwellers and foot soldiers, in corners of Boipatong, Thokoza, Richmond, Bekkersdal and Soweto, were the mainstay of many of us. The rattle of the gunfire, the wailing voices when we lost Puso and ntate wa Bonolo, the blood-stained shoes of ngwana wa Sanana, and Mabina. We lost many in those days of the gun, blood and fear. I suspect that we have not even begun to deal with that loss.
Of course when Mandela and many others were released, we thought that we will be at ease, that the disease of uncertainty and pain, will come full circle. We thought that this was our moment, the rise of the new, and the end of the old days whose heart we never knew.
We can take it further if you like. We can speak of that fateful Saturday morning, on the eve of Easter Sunday, when we lost Hani, we can even speak of the turning point in the face of white rule, we can speak about the day Tambo died and the tomb of hope lost, we can race and climb on the roof walls of FNB stadium when Mandela spoke if you like, or if you like it hot, we can even speak about the day we thought we will remember forever, 10th May 1994.
Now, if you have ever experienced the loss of a loved one, as I am certain that you have, you will know what happens when you pine for something, when your heart yearns, and your mind replays and plays and replays and plays, and replays and plays, all the places you have been to, in their absence, you make memory a present tense, for the future feels daunting without them. In one of my high school books, we learnt that longing is like a disease that will never leave you alone. As we grow older, we know for a fact that memory places you at dis-ease. Against all of this, if I as an ordinary man with not much but much to give, understands the weight of the past and what we had to defeat before we could stand before the eyes of fate, why would the current leadership, let things go to waste? Or put in another way, rot and burn on the broken backs of many who gave eye and heart, tooth and nail, that this country be born?
On which slate is their past written on? On whose skies, have they written their bits of history? From Which mountain top did they see what we saw? If they saw what we saw, then why, tell me, do they let ours, ride on this rickety see-saw, without a foot in the sand, a heart in the land, and a harvest of hope for a better tomorrow?
This is not the moment to rehash old stereotypes about post-colonial Africa. This is equally not the occasion to point fingers and speak of an impotent black leadership. This is not the moment, to make noise about things we lost in the fire. This is not the moment to bury our heads in the sand, clasp our hands in dismissive grunts and shake our heads at a future gone. Indeed we are told by the people of Ghana, that to look into the future, is to look at the past. Meanwhile those of the Igbo descent make it clearer, that the acts of the past will be the visited by the agbanje-abiku. Mukoni, this is a moment in which we ask ourselves, what is it, that we wish to make of the future of this land.
Now, i, young and burnt by the harrowing winds of our time, cannot lay claim to what the future should be, except perhaps, we might have to learn to dream again. But how do you dream when your sleep, slips in coma(tose) vision of our leaders?
I am not certain, but what i do know is that when we remember where we have been, we might once again, remember what we once hoped for. For now, brother of mine and descendent of the Ratshitanga,let me stop here, and hope that my senses return to me.
With love.
Your views and thoughts are worthwhile for we the youth of today don’t exactly know where our leaders those of whom we embrace as our hero’s are really leading us to…. ” my 6yr old son knows Mandela better than those he found in power when he was born and to today I can’t explain why”….Indeed it’s time to recapture Nelson Mandela.
I also want to register my appreciation of this well captured piece of art of work about our true reflection of our history without distotion.Cde you must never be discouraged or loose power,let the good work continue so that our children must know the truth about our history.
I think your submissions are spot on as they have proximity to today’ generation and the current political discourse in South Africa if not Africa in its entirety. You reminded us of the fundamental objective of our Liberation Movement which has always been to unify Africans against socio-economic and political injustices. It has not been central to an individual leader’s thoughts and actions to achieve this objective, but the masses of Africans led by those whom the masses entrusted. It was a documented mandate, which they were eentrusted to carry out, agreed upon by the collective leadership. Centralizing the achievements of our Liberation Movement to an individual leader can not only distort our history, but can also make it impossible to advance the outstanding objectives. The cause for the above argument being that those who support the centralisation of the Movement’s duties to an individual leader are also able to fund the distortion and label for the very leader they pretended to poise and thus in turn render the entire movement useless in the eyes of those who are supposed to take the struggle forward.
Mr. Mukoni, once again, you have hit the nail on its head.
It is during these tough times in our democracy that we owe such ‘umrhabulo’ to the young and old beneficiaries of a bloody struggle against apartheid.
I refer to these times as ‘trying times’ because general elections are an important measure of democracy. Also, these are trying times because, as you well articulated in this article, our history is hijacked and by all means distorted for astroturfic purposes.
One of my facebook friend, just recently, wrote “a politician is concerned about winning elections whilst a leader focuses his vision on the future generation.”
Thank you My leader. This is a very key ‘umrhabulo’.
In an informal engagement with a gathering of a variety of Africans at the University of Cape Town in 2010, I called the popular narrative of Mandela, the “Second Dispossession” and I was warned I risk deportation from South Africa. I’m happy your article expressed similar sentiment. I hope it’s widely circulated and that the current leadership of the great movement the ANC stop basking in this narrative and contesting for vote on its banner because this only reinforces the narrative.
Good read.
A good reflective piece that is quite remarkably for its sobbiness, Mukoni. It is the narrative that is scary for its trajectory, detailing just about all that is going wrong in the ideological contest over the SA legacy that be the person of that great son of the soil, Nelson Mandela; yet failing badly the juxtapose.
Moving from the premise of the argument – the only meaningful claim for one of the contending ideological forces – that “Nation Building predates 1994. It exercised the minds of its (ANC) founders in 1912!”; if the opposing emerging ideology to this seems, as you claim, to gain an upper hand in separating Mandela from the collective; that is as reflective of its strengths as it is the glaring weaknesses of the ANC in fully and constantly advancing the cause.
For this to occur in the open (democratic space) and seem to succeed (as you suggest) is not just scary but also sadly disappointing.
What’s worse is that the nature of your argument that solely depricates successes of one ideological force seem to reinforce a belief that the battle is indeed being lost on the other side – that of the ANC, and that there will be no reversing the trend.
There is no complete faulting your approach given its history. It might have been trendy for whatever reasons for the progressive forces led by the ANC to constantly fight on the backfoot for most of the decades in the run up to 1994, which is exactly what you are doing, except that there do not seem now to be a logical explanation for the position.
Much as you may have succeeded in shining the lamp on the weasel, the reality of the situation is that this is barely strategic in influencing positively needed mindsets.
As Tsepo Mamatu put it quite succintly herein above, we can’t allow ourselves as South Africans, specifically black Africans to hold onto a victim position all of our lives, generation after another. The ANC, along with many peace loving people here and elsewhere in the world, worked hard to get us over that bridge.
Our strife now should be focusing on one thing, an acknowledgment(as remarkably suitably illustrated by former ANC country president, Thabo Mbeki, with his “I am an African” speech to mark the adoption of the country’s new constitution) that we have overcome and that never again shall it be that anyone anywhere shall dominate our space in any manner or form.
it is really a mindset, one that essentially requires that we continuously demonstrate and advocate our achievements with nation building, using history as a guide than a mere justification of why others should believe in it.
Our challenge should be broader than “fighting for a Mandela legacy” but to also ensure that there constantly exists at all times an Albert Luthuli, Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu, Moses Kotane, Govan Mbeki, JB Marks, ZK Matthews, Yusuf Dadoo, Mark Shope, Thomas Nkobi, Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki etc; and that must reflect across all areas of the ideological war.
Dear Cde. Mukoni,
Not only a well written piece, as always, but a timely one as too. This is the time when the devil alliance is trying so hard to selfishly position itself for the 2014, pretending to be making what others call it “a majot policy”, of course those who know better will tell you that, this is all a smokescream.
This grouping claims to suddenly supoort “some form of redress” and BBBEE Policy but interestingly quick to point out that “…however not the ANC version…” perhaps the “Mandela version”…yet no explanation as to what that exactly?
Thank you very much Ntate, keep them coming
Amandla, Philani
Hi Mukoni,
This is a shrewd and sharp-witted narrative about our history, who we were, who we are and who we seek to become in a rapidly changing polity. This epistle, would, without any doubt, mitigate the continued attempt to falsify our history. Keep up the excellent work.
Best Wishes Nkosana
On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 2:14 PM, Mukoni Ratshitanga wrote:
> Mukoni Ratshitanga posted: “By Mukoni Ratshitanga|November 22, > 2013|Johannesburg |Twitter: @MukoniRReplying to the debate on the > Presidency’s Budget Vote in June this year, President Jacob Zuma said > something which those who are interested in a credible narrative of our > past, presen” Respond to this post by replying above this line > New post on *Mukoni Ratshitanga* > Its time to recapture > Nelson Mandelaby > Mukoni Ratshitanga > > By Mukoni Ratshitanga|November 22, 2013|Johannesburg |Twitter: @MukoniR > > Replying to the debate on the Presidency’s Budget Vote in June this year, > President Jacob Zuma said something which those who are interested in a > credible narrative of our past, present and future should say louder than > the decibels permitted to a sitting President. > > Prompted by the comments of the Democratic Alliance’s parliamentary > leader, Lindiwe Mazibuko, Zuma protested the distortion of President Nelson > Mandela’s image and politics. > > He told Mazibuko that she and her party, should also “support what he > (Mandela) stood for and what he went to prison for and what he said over > the years” and objected to the projection of Mandela as “the only nice ANC > man,” arguing that appraisal “must not focus only on Madiba the first > President of a democratic South Africa who implemented *ANC policies* of > reconciliation and transformation.” > > Instead of a disconnect, there was and is consistency between “Madiba the > volunteer-in-chief of the defiance campaign, Madiba the Umkhonto weSizwe > commander-in-chief, Madiba the revolutionary, Madiba the long-serving > prisoner” and the post 1994 Madiba whose “rich legacy and history must not > be distorted.” > > The truth is that Mandela’s rich legacy of struggle has, over the years, > been distorted and depoliticised by two convergent and mutually reinforcing > tendencies. > > The first is an overtly political tendency which is propelled by sections > of *professional politicians*, academics, commentators, journalists the > persuasive industries’ more broadly. > > The second tendency is commercial and rides on the back of the first > tendency while at the same time aiding the objectives of that tendency. > > The first tendency: > > – places emphasis on aspects of our politics, particularly the ANC’s > policy of reconciliation; > – contrasts reconciliation and social transformation as mutually > exclusive in theory and in practice; > – individualises reconciliation as Mandela’s private property from > whence comes the notion of “the only nice ANC man;” > – individualises the struggle for liberation from which the notion of > Mandela “the only ANC man” whom it is said singlehandedly waged the > struggle against apartheid; and, > – promotes the corrosive idea that politics is a public game for > private gain and that Mandela represents himself, his individual interests > and family. Politics becomes a career in the labour market which has > nothing to do with serving humanity. If and when it does, it is a non- > conflictual affair. Measured against its benevolent rhetoric, this > tendency amounts to the metaphorical adorning of the sheepskin of which the > proverbial wolf is famed. > > More than a distortion, this narrative is a desecration of our history and > struggle which impacts on the present and the future. (This is to say > nothing of the political oxymoron of Nelson Mandela’s name cohabiting > peacefully together with that of Cecil John Rhodes, a subject I do not > discuss in this article.) > > The result is that the revolutionary Mandela is atomized and packaged as a > benign, quasi religious (a)political figure, the champion of a racially > blind non-racialism, a reconciliation that is at best indifferent and at > worst ambivalent to the task of redressing the legacy of colonialism and > apartheid. > > As a distortion, it does not reflect the reality of our history. Mandela > has always acted within the framework of agreed policy positions, including > during the period when he served as President of the Republic. Nation > Building was one of the six basic principles of the Reconstruction and > Development Programme. But ANC policy, Nation Building predates 1994. It > exercised the minds of its founders in 1912! > > The narrative of Mandela, the “only” liberator, undermines the fact that > there was Albert Luthuli, Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu, Moses Kotane, Govan > Mbeki, JB Marks, ZK Matthews, Yusuf Dadoo, Mark Shope, Thomas Nkobi and *many > many others*. > > Mandela himself never saw himself in this distorted view. When he was > released from prison on February 11 1990, he addressed a rally in Cape Town > in which he said, among other things: “I stand here before you not as a > prophet but as a humble servant of you, the people. *Your tireless and > heroic sacrifices* have made it possible for me to be here today. I > therefore place the remaining years of my life in your hands.” > > Mandela as the “only” ANC man is a phenomenon deeply rooted in classical > liberal thought from which emerged the “cult of the individual” the > separation of the individual from community. (Needless to say that in our > context, some of those who present him in this light today are the same > people who previously referred to him as a “terrorist.”) > > As the historian, E.H Carr wrote in his treatise, *What is History*?: > “The great man is always representative either of existing forces or of > forces which he helps to create by way of challenge to existing authority. > But the higher degree of creativity may perhaps be assigned to those great > men who, like Cromwell or Lenin, helped to mould the forces which carried > them to greatness, rather than those who, like Napoleon or Bismark, rode to > greatness on the back of already existing forces. > > Thus, in the South African case as with elsewhere, there was not only the > leadership (the great men and women) who kindled the revolutionary spirit > and potential of the masses but there were the masses who understood that > with or without the great men and women, they were their own liberators. In > other words, the leadership as an integral part of society, as a social > phenomenon, needs the masses in as much as the masses need the leadership. > > The second tendency is a relatively small but lucrative industry which > (ab)uses Mandela’s name in the guise of promoting ‘The Mandela Brand.’ It > relegates Mandela to a commercial item and, like its political accomplices, > devalues him. > > But historical distortion is hardly surprising. It is part of the struggle > between contending social forces which occurs in every society. In our > case, it is about defining the nature of post-apartheid South Africa in the > image of contending national (and global) social forces. > > Karl Marx wrote that: “It is not History, as if she were a person apart, > who uses men as a means to work out her purposes, but history itself is > nothing but the activity of men pursuing their purposes.” > > The American historian, Howard Zinn, was more direct when he said: “The > historian’s distortion is more than technical, it is ideological; it is > released into a world of contending interests, where any chosen emphasis > supports (whether the historian means to or not) some kind of interest, > whether economic or political or racial or national or sexual.” > > If Mandela is presented only as a figure of reconciliation, one that is > antithetical to social transformation, it follows that all of us too must > abandon the latter for the former as Mandela is alleged to have done. > > Similarly, if collective efforts come to be viewed as having no import, > there will be no need for resort to collective responses to social > challenges today and tomorrow. > > If heroes and heroines of the struggle are reduced and repackaged as > commodities to be traded, fashion symbols, and their ideas distorted, then > their stature is diminished, and the history of collective struggle, to > which they bear witness, and our vision of our present and future will be > distorted. > > The contending ideological forces in South Africa have come to understand > the political and moral authority of the values and ideals on which the ANC > is founded, and are determined to cash in on these while at the same time > seeking to re-shape them to serve their own interests. The kidnapping of > Mandelas image is part of this scheme. > > For progressives of all hues, a credible presentation of history is a > vital navigational beacon in the journey towards tomorrow. > > On March 2, 1966, OR Tambo wrote to Joe Matthews, then Administrative > Secretary of the ANC detailing concerns which required the collective > attenti
He’s our own icon and living legend
Very interesting piece of work.
Profound…
Informative and on point. That can Always be expected from your articles, thank you for keeping us informed and writing with an open rather than authoritative mind.
A very enlightening read. What do you think of the recently released movie (biopic) on Mandela? I attempt a review here:
http://jumabahati.blogspot.com/2013/12/mandela-long-walk-to-freedom.html
Mr Ratshitanga
I regret me delaying to read this well articulated piece. I am sharing this with every1 I know. I will surely appreciate you sharing more of similar pieces