Former South African President Nelson Mandela once abandoned the identity of the royal family of the old era to stand with the people in order to eliminate racial discrimination, and did not hesitate to be imprisoned for 27 years, so he was called a hero by the South African people.
However, when he was sent to the temple by the people, he brought South Africa from "great governance" to "great chaos", so the outside world called him the "culprit" of South Africa's weakness.
What did Mandela bring to the people of South Africa, and how should history view this man who was called a "great man"?
Origins of racial discrimination in South Africa
The indigenous inhabitants of South Africa were blacks, and they lived peacefully on the South African continent until 1498, when a European named Vasco da Gama arrived.
After da Gama discovered the African continent, he brought the news of the discovery of the New World back to Europe, and in the days that followed, Europeans set foot on this uncivilized continent one after another.
The Dutch colonists were the most active at the time, they were the first to reach South Africa, where the Dutch colonists reclaimed their first colony, Cape Town.
When the Dutch filled their merchant ships with minerals and gold, they prepared to return to the continent.
But some of the colonists did not go back, so they stayed here and continued to live.
Over time, South Africa began to be descended from Europeans, the Boers.
Later, when the Dutch and France were at war, the British quietly came to the Boer territory in South Africa without saying hello to the Dutch, and fought fiercely with the Dutch descendants here.
After a hard battle, after an astronomical amount of attrition, the British were unable to eliminate these local inhabitants, both military and civilian, and the Boers took advantage of the favorable terrain of the mountains to constantly cause problems for the British.
The British finally thought about negotiating with the Boers, and in 1910 the two sides finally formed a federation called South Africa.
The British had hundreds of thousands of troops stationed here, so in the Federation of South Africa, the British were legally recognized as first-class citizens, the Boers as second-class citizens, and the local blacks were reduced to the lowest class for exploitation and oppression by the British and Boers.
In order to control the blacks, the white government of South Africa deliberately restricted the blacks in the economy, politics, life and other aspects, so that the blacks had no dignity in South Africa.
In 1948, the white government introduced the infamous apartheid system, which was what Mandela wanted to overthrow all his life.
Its main feature was the color of the skin that determined the identity and status of the people of the continent, and at that time there were 4 million whites and 25 million blacks in South Africa, and the power of whites was far greater than that of blacks.
Apartheid controlled all aspects of the life of black South Africans, and was even more brutal than the caste system in India, which was abolished by law in 1947 but was not abolished until 2 March 1997.
Apartheid's humiliation of black South Africans has no bottom line.
In terms of marriage and love, white people cannot fall in love with black people, even very old white men cannot walk with young black girlfriends openly, white people think that this is a great disrespect to white people, and black people will be severely punished.
In public places, blacks cannot sit with whites, blacks must be clearly distinguished from whites in education, medical care, employment, travel, and housing, blacks do not have the right to participate in political activities, and various laws against blacks issued by whites have blocked this road strictly.
South Africa has diamonds, gold and other scarce rare metals, coupled with the unique geographical location, it quickly became a paradise for white people to pan for gold, South Africa also attracted a huge amount of investment in the 70s of the last century with its rich mineral resources, and has since become a developed country in just a few decades.
However, the prosperity of the country did not bring much benefit to the black people of South Africa, and the fruits and benefits of development were appropriated by the whites.
In the case of educational resources, for example, the white South African government often spends dozens of times as much on a white student as a black student, and South Africa's top universities give preference to white students.
And those black students are often only 2% of high school graduates, and even if they can be admitted to college, they will inevitably suffer discrimination from whites in the process of school study and life, and they cannot enjoy the various incentives given by the school, because all kinds of welfare policies are formulated for whites.
Glory days
The late Hong Kong singer Wong Ka-kui once wrote a song called "Glory Days" to praise the late former South African President Nelson Mandela's lifelong efforts to eliminate racial discrimination.
Let's first recall Mr. Mandela's difficult and glorious years, which are remembered by the world.
Mandela, born in 1918 in the Tampo dynasty of South Africa, a black tribe of chieftains, his great-grandfather was the king of the Tembo dynasty, relying on this relationship, his father should have become the heir to the throne, but because of his father's tragic death when he was 9 years old, he has the title of king and naturally became the heir to the throne of the dynasty to which the tribe belongs.
He later entered Fort Har University in South Africa, but in his freshman year, he constantly struggled with the school's unreasonable policies, angered the school authorities, and was eventually kicked out of the school.
In 1944, Mandela joined the African National Congress in South Africa and engaged in a non-violent struggle, and Mandela began to fight for the elimination of apartheid through political struggle.
In his fourth year of political activism, Mandela came to power on behalf of the white and Boer South African National Party (SNN) regime, which had always supported apartheid policies, and Mandela launched the ANC Resistance and the People's Assembly Movement in 1952 and 1955 to oppose the exclusive policies of the South African National Party.
Mandela also formed an anti-discrimination alliance with Oliver Tampo, an alumnus he met at school, and founded a law firm that specialized in providing legal advice to black activists, and as Mandela gained growing black support, he soon became a leading figure in black political organizations.
Mandela, who later served as a member of the ANC Executive Committee and vice president of the National Committee, launched a massive "contempt for injustice" campaign in late 1952.
Mandela's various political views and demonstrations aroused a high degree of vigilance and dissatisfaction among the white South African government.
But Mandela ignored the ban imposed by the South African authorities to ban him from participating in public gatherings, and the black movement continued to reach a climax.
On September 2, 1958, not long after the new prime minister of the South African government, Viword, came to power, he introduced the Bantustan Act, which was even more unfair to black people.
The bill, which is called the "black homeland system", is actually intended to completely restrict the Bantu people, the largest ethnic group in Africa, to only 12.5% of South Africa's territory.
As a result of the Bantustan Act, about 10 million blacks could not only live in the barren land and backward industry and agriculture in Bantustan, but they also had to have the "nationality" of the territory, and the aim of the South African government was to legally deprive these blacks of all the original rights of South African nationals and revoke South African citizenship.
As soon as the bill was introduced, it caused a wave of opposition and resistance from black Africans, intensified racial tensions between blacks and whites, and led to the Sharpever tragedy.
On March 21, 1960, Nelson Mandela led a demonstration against the Bantustan Act in Sharpewell.
More than 5,000 people attended the event, and the South African authorities quickly used military and police to suppress the demonstrators, shooting 69 people and wounding 180 on the spot, and Mandela was arrested and imprisoned as the founder of the movement.
Later, Mandela and the government representatives had a heated argument in court, and the government representatives had no choice but to release him.
However, the South African authorities have maintained a repressive posture against Mandela's political activities, and the ANC has become less and less open in the country, and has had to go into a state of secrecy.
The white government's crackdown on the ANC's political movement led to the flight of some of the movement's leaders for political asylum abroad, but Mandela publicly stated that he would never give in to the white government and would spend his life working to eliminate apartheid.
Mandela believed that freedom can only be obtained through long-term and unremitting hard struggle, and that compromise cannot obtain the right to national self-determination, so he led the black people to carry out armed struggle, and turned the political movement into a national armed struggle, so Mandela also became a hero in the hearts of the majority of black people who longed for the right to live.
Mandela's leadership of the black people's vigorous national liberation struggle in South Africa also attracted the attention of the United States, and the CIA colluded with the South African government to label Mandela as a terrorist and at the same time to consider the black armed forces he led as a terrorist organization.
In August 1962, with the covert support of the United States, the South African government arrested Mandela and imprisoned him for "sedition" and declared that he would serve five years in prison.
On October 15, Mandela was escorted to a prison in Pretoria, where he was placed in a dark-lit room in order to bring Mandela to submission, and in accordance with the instructions of the South African government, Mandela was denied books and newspapers, and the only time he could see the sky every day was during the 30-minute air break in the morning and afternoon.
In order to stifle Mandela's ideals, in June 1964, the South African government commuted Mandela's sentence to life imprisonment on charges of "violent rebellion against the government", in an attempt to force him to comply.
But Mandela was uncompromising, and in the face of the reality of permanent loss of freedom, Mandela continued his struggle against racial discrimination in prison, crying out for the establishment of a new free and equal South African ideal country, so the outside world called him "the soul that never gives in".
Mandela's fighting spirit and deeds soon spread all over the world, and groups and politicians in various countries who pursued equality and freedom cried out for Mandela, and the British Parliament took the lead in giving Mandela the "green light".
A coalition of 78 MPs and more than 50 politicians exerted political pressure on British Prime Minister Wilson to "intercede" for Mandela.
In 1981, tens of thousands of French citizens appealed to the then South African embassy in France to restore their freedom, and in 1982, 2,000 mayors from more than 53 countries signed a petition again asking the South African government to open up the country.
Mandela's fighting spirit to eradicate racial discrimination moved the world, and the international media dubbed him "the president of the world".
After a long campaign by numerous organizations and personalities in various countries, the South African government gave him the opportunity to see his wife every year in May 1984, 22 years after Mandela was arrested and imprisoned.
Since Mandela launched the Black Anti-Racial Discrimination Campaign, the international community has continuously pressured the South African government to restore Mandela's freedom, which triggered a decades-long withdrawal of South African funds and created a lot of pressure on the illegal rule of the South African government.
In 1976, the United Nations voted specifically on South Africa's racial system and successfully imposed an arms embargo on South Africa.
In 1977, Leon Sullivan, director of General Motors of the United States, proposed the Sullivan principle of black and white equality, which was accepted by most American companies investing in South Africa, and South Africa's divestment action set off a new climax.
Before apartheid was abolished, 125 U.S. companies had completed their withdrawal from South Africa.
By 1984, a wave of South African divestment had reached schools and local governments in the states, which had also made large-scale divestments of South Africa's apartheid system and raised the tax rates paid by American companies in the country to force the South African government to back down.
In 1985, the United Kingdom and the United States imposed economic sanctions on South Africa.
In the face of a series of international sanctions, the then President of South Africa, Peter Porta, promised to carry out the necessary reforms to the apartheid system, but he did not budge on the fundamental issues, and Mandela was not released, which led to the split of the South African National Party.
In 1989, the newly inaugurated South African President De Klerk repealed various decrees on apartheid for a short period of time.
In 1990, Mandela was finally released from prison by the government, and Mandela, who had been imprisoned for 27 years for racial discrimination, finally looked forward to the day when he would be free.
After being released from prison, Mandela and De Klerk, a white man, exchanged goodwill, and after negotiations, the two redrafted a new South African constitution aimed at racial equality on behalf of all ethnic groups, so the two were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.
The end of apartheid gave unprecedented rights and freedoms to black South Africans, and Nelson Mandela was elected president in the 1994 national presidential election, the first black president in South Africa's history.
But does the realization of ethnic equality mean being able to lead the country in economic construction and realize national peace and security?
The debilitation of South Africa
After Mandela became the president of South Africa, due to a series of improper governance measures, South Africa directly played "a good hand of cards".
Mandela was released by the South African government in large part because Western countries believed that his claims fit the Western definition of freedom, and therefore supported his restoration of freedom.
After Mandela became a free man, he began to compromise with Western countries, giving the green light for various Western forces to enter South Africa.
The first thing Mandela did was to abolish his martial arts.
At that time, South Africa had already developed nuclear weapons and had the strength to become the largest power in Africa and a regional power in the world, but Mandela began to carry out nuclear disarmament and the elimination of nuclear warheads, citing the excessive burden on the country's finances and the pressure of the international community.
In 1990, South Africa embarked on nuclear disarmament operations, in July 1991, South Africa completely destroyed its nuclear warheads, in 1993, South Africa publicly concreted test wells used for nuclear tests, and in 1996 South Africa signed the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, becoming a complete non-nuclear State.
Without nuclear weapons, South Africa will no longer be tough on the international community.
In terms of economic construction, South Africa has generalized the concepts of freedom and equality, completely ignoring the interests of the state and enterprises, causing various social problems, leading to economic recession and frequent social crises.
The glory of Mandela's first half of life stems from his pursuit of freedom and equality, so in order to show his support for blacks, he requires enterprises to be open to blacks in all walks of life in the process of development, ignoring the logic of enterprise survival and development is "selecting talents and appointing talents".
Mandela's policy of supporting blacks has allowed various positions in enterprises to be occupied by some blacks whose abilities do not meet the requirements for a long time, thus seriously hindering the long-term development of enterprises, resulting in a decline in business efficiency, a large number of resources are occupied and wasted, and over time, the economy gradually loses its vitality, and a large number of enterprises begin to flee South Africa.
On the issue of trade, Mandela ignored the demands of domestic enterprises and rashly eliminated trade barriers without protecting the interests of national enterprises, resulting in a large number of foreign goods entering the domestic market, seriously damaging the interests of domestic enterprises, and South Africa soon became a dumping market for low-priced foreign goods.
At the same time, Mandela also vigorously promoted low-carbon environmental protection policies, but the way to achieve this was to increase tax rates for enterprises, reduce support for technological innovation of enterprises, and carry out a large number of de-industrialization actions, leading to de-industrialization in South Africa, which caused the country's economic momentum to stall and weaken its national strength.
In terms of government capacity building, Mandela also adopted a policy of employing a large number of black people, who simply did not have the ability to lead the country's economic construction, which further deteriorated the country's business environment, leading to an escalation of social security problems and into riots.
Mandela's excessive pursuit of pure liberal and equal policies has greatly encouraged European and American countries, and they continue to recruit high-end technology and management talents from South Africa, providing them with preferential treatment and housing policies, thus gradually hollowing out South Africa's development potential, and leaving the mess of maintaining social order to the South African government.
epilogue
Mandela's life was a life of mixed reputations, the first half of his life was brilliant and he was regarded as a people's hero, but in the second half of his life, he made a mess of the country and became a "sinner" again.
There is an old Chinese saying that "it is easy to fight the country, but it is difficult to defend the country", national independence, equality and freedom are only the beginning of national development, and national prosperity and long-term peace and stability are the ultimate goals.