Nelson Mandela Case

Mandela

Let me say this before I get to the meat of what I want to express. I have written a piece some time ago and some may have been offended by my opinion, and my experiences. I have many Facebook friends, and most of them I have known for most of my life, by grow up with and going to the same school, and other our friendship have grown over the years. I f you call me a friend, and we respect our friendship, then I can say it is genuine.

Now a great man passed, his name is Nelson Mandela, and allows me to tell you why. Nelson Mandela was born of rich blood; his father was destined to be a chief, served as a counselor to tribal chiefs for several years. In his young life Mandela participated in the ceremony with 25 other boys. He welcomed the opportunity to partake in his people's customs and felt ready to make the transition from boyhood to manhood. During the ceremony a speaker named Chief Meligqili, the main speaker at the ceremony, spoke sadly of the young men, explaining that they were enslaved in their own country. Because their land was controlled by white men, they would never have the power to govern themselves, he went on to lament that the promise of the young men would be squandered as they struggled to make a living and perform mindless chores for white men.

Now this was happening in South Africa in early 1900's , most of us were not even born , also I would like to point out that 19th centuries, slavery had been practiced in British North America from early colonial days, and was firmly established by the time of the United States' Declaration of Independence in 1776. After this, there was a gradual spread of abolitionism in the North, while the rapid expansion of the cotton industry from 1800 caused the South to identify strongly with slavery. With me saying these facts, black folk, or African Americans has been bounded by whites for such a long time in America also.

Although the international slave trade was prohibited from 1808, internal slave-trading continued apace, and the slave population would eventually peak at four million of all America Black families. Please stay with me here, now in 1939, Mandela enrolled at the University College of Fort Hare, the only residential center of higher learning for blacks in South Africa at the time. Fort Hare was considered Africa's equivalent of the University of Oxford or Harvard University, drawing scholars from all parts of sub-Sahara Africa and spent only 2 years there, and then enrolled at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg to study law.

Mandela soon became actively involved in the anti-apartheid movement, joining the African National Congress in 1942. Within the ANC, a small group of young Africans banded together, calling themselves the African National Congress Youth League. Their goal was to transform the ANC into a mass grassroots movement, deriving strength from millions of rural peasants and working people who had no voice under the current regime. Now Martin Luther king was only 13 years old at this time,