South Africa: Mandela

Mandela: The sense of crisis subsided a few days later with word that Mandela had started to respond well to treatment. That Mandela is likely to be discharged from hospital soon has not stopped South Africans from thinking about national life without him, according to The Star. Mandelas leadership transcended disparate groups opposed to apartheid. Though he held formal leadership positions within the ANC, he was a key player who united factions within and outside the party when divided on big questions like whether communism was the only path to freedom and whether whites should be allowed to participate in the struggle. Granted, there were structures that served as talk shops bringing together a multiracial opposition with divergent ideologies. But Mandela was the public face and symbol of resistance even while imprisoned and It is impossible to discount Nelson Mandelas significance to South Africa. Proof came with his latest hospitalization for a chronic lung infection. An anxious nation parsed official characterization of his condition as serious as this descriptor had not been used during prior hospital stays. Uncertainty prompted a longtime friend and fellow inmate on Robben Island to urge the former presidents family and, really, the nation to release him so that God may have his own way. To South Africans, Mandela represents closure marking the transition from the colonial and apartheid past to something else dreamed by generations. Not just representing closure, Mandela helped to bring about the formal end of white supremacy. He did this with his leadership of the African National Congress ANC and his command of the armed wing of the liberation movement from 1961 until his arrest in 1962. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.