I love Africa but never been there

And you? What's your experience?

Nelson Madiba Mandela,  the Son of Africa and Father of the Nation. Well I am very impressive of the New South Africa sinds the apartheid is coming to an end. I have seen the DVD and it was very impressive.

Synopsis

Nelson Mandela was born in the remote South African village of Qunu; an excellent student, Mandela went on to become a lawyer and then a political activist with the African National Congress, a political party who sought to bring down South Africa's Apartheid regime, in which the minority white population denied the most basic political and civil rights to the nation's black citizens. Mandela's vocal opposition of the South African government (and his refusal to repudiate violence as a response to the brutality inflicted upon blacks) resulted in his spending 27 years at hard labor in prison -- and in time led to his release, the legitimization of the ANC, and his election as South Africa's first black president. Mandela is a documentary that traces Mandela's story from his birth to his current status as a respected political leader, featuring interviews with Mandela and his contemporaries and newsreel footage that records the turbulent past of both Mandela and his nation.

Nelson Mandela was born on 18 July 1918 into the royal family of the Thembu, a Xhosa-speaking tribe which nestles in a fertile valley in the Eastern Cape. There in the family kraal of white washed huts, the young boy spent a happy and sheltered childhood, and listened eagerly to the stirring tales of the tribal elders. His Xhosa name, Rolihlahla, has the colloquial and rather prophetic meaning “trouble-maker”, and he only received his more familiar English name, Nelson, on his first day at Healdtown, a British colonial boarding school.

The teacher apparently chose English names at random for each unsuspecting child in her class, and was possibly thinking of Lord Nelson at the time, since the famous seagull hadn’t arrived yet; but that would only be a guess. The school principal, ironically, was called Wellington, and frequently informed young Mandela and his classmates that there was no such thing as African culture, and that they, the natives, were indeed privileged to be educated by such a fine and civilized Englishman as himself.

LG

I think about Africa the way some adopted children think about their birth parents. These kids go through their entire lives carrying a reservoir of love cached and waiting to be showered on its parents if and when they ever come together. That's how I think about Africa.

But I do not think about Africa in only a nostalgic and emotional sense. I also think about Africa in a practical sense, and this latter exercise fills me with great pain. Pain that in Nations like the Congo where the natural wealth is in excess of that possessed by most developed nations, the people continue to live in abject poverty and squalor. Pain that a nation like Equatorial Guinea, unofficially called the Kuwait of Sub Saharan Africa, exporting some 300,000 barrels of petroleum each day, its half a million population live in conditions probably worse than slavery, while its leader has a bank balance exceding 700 million in these United States. Pain that while African American Political Leaders joined with Muslim Leaders in opposition to Colin Powell the then Secretary of State, and in opposition to their Government on an issue of the Palestinians arising at the Conference on Racism a couple of years ago in South Africa, these same Muslim Leaders are largely silent in their response to the genocide being carried on in Darfur Sudan. 

I would like to believe that the greatness of Martin luther King and Nelson Mandela would not have allowed them to confine their dreams for freedom to the limits of their national geographic surroundings. And until Africans are free wherever they exist in this world, in fact until people as a whole, regardless of the artificial racial grouping within we which we seek refuge are free to enjoy "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", the dreams of Martin Luther king and Nelson Mandela will remain unfullfilled.

Peace      

Do you remember the South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut movie?

BLAME CANADA