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Ruining a country, is Mandela the father of the nation of South Africa, or the sinner of South Africa?
As the first black man in South Africa's history and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Mandela's life is full of legends.
From prisoner to supreme leader, he consistently opposed apartheid and worked to promote national integration, earning worldwide respect and praise.
But after his death, all kinds of controversies are difficult to stop.
Some people say that he is the father of the South African nation, a great man in the world, who gave black people equal status and painted a strong stroke for the world equality movement, while others say that he is a disaster for South Africa, which caused South Africa to decline rapidly from a quasi-developed country.
So, what kind of person is the real Mandela? Why is his life so controversial?
When talking about Mandela, we have to mention his country, South Africa.
Like most African countries, South Africa was once a colony of European countries and was one of the first African colonies pioneered by European colonizers.
At the beginning of the 17th century, the Netherlands, known as the coachman of the sea, concentrated the power of its own trading houses and established the Dutch East India Company, as the country's colonial ** institution, monopolizing the ** with China and India.
Because merchant ships between the Netherlands and the East had to drift at sea for ** months at that time, the Dutch East India Company occupied the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean and built it into a transit and supply station for merchant ships.
However, with the increasing popularity of the East, the island of Mauritius, which has harsh natural conditions and deviates from the main route, is gradually unable to meet the supply needs of a large number of merchant ships.
As a result, the Dutch East India Company decided to establish a larger-scale transit supply base to supply and service the incoming and outgoing merchant ships.
The Cape of Good Hope is not only close to the main route, but also has a livable climate and sufficient development hinterland to provide all kinds of materials needed by merchant ships, so it has become the best choice for the Netherlands.
So in 1652, the Dutch East India Company, with its own employees and armed forces, ascended the Cape of Good Hope and established the first Dutch colony in South Africa, the colony of Cape Town.
There, the employees of the Dutch East India Company cultivated land, cultivated crops and raised livestock, and the various materials produced were purchased and sold by the East India Company and supplied to the first merchant ships.
Later, as more Dutch and European oppressors settled, the colony continued to expand into a large colony, eventually expanding from a simple supply point for merchant ships into a large colony.
In order to ensure adequate supplies, local European settlers began to occupy the lands of indigenous tribes on a large scale, and captured indigenous blacks for forced labor, forming an economic model similar to that of the Americas.
The aborigines became labor slaves who lost their freedom, and the colonists became slave plantor owners.
With the continuous exchange and integration of immigrants from European countries, a unified nation with regional cultural characteristics has gradually formed.
They speak a Dutch dialect with different linguistic characteristics, known in Europe as Boers or Africans, and compared with the Netherlands itself, they are similar to the Americans in the eyes of the British, but they are of the same lineage, but there are obvious differences.
In this way, thanks to centuries of multiplication and unique civilization, the Boers gradually recognized themselves as the native people of South Africa, and their population grew to tens of millions.
But then, something happened in the Netherlands. In 1789, the Great Revolution broke out in Paris, and the revolution gradually evolved into a full-scale war in Europe in which France exported revolution.
The Netherlands, which was close at hand, bore the brunt of the conquest by Napoleon's France and became a vassal state of France, while the original Dutch had to go into exile.
In order to prevent French influence from encroaching on the continent, Britain took over the colony of Cape Town at the behest of the Dutch exile**.
In the subsequent Vienna Peace Conference, in order to thank Britain for helping it recover, the Netherlands officially sold the Boer homeland to Britain for only 6 million pounds ** and became a colony of the British Cape Town.
However, after the change of rule, the Boers could not bear the British intervention, and the relationship between the two sides was tense for a while, and even a full-scale war broke out.
So, what did South Africa experience after the British takeover? How did South Africa become an independent country today?
Undaunted, South Africa finally won its independence, but the black community still suffered from injustice.
After acquiring the Cape Colony from the Netherlands, the British pursued liberal policies there. The so-called liberalism essentially turned all the colonies and semi-colonies into markets for industrial goods and raw materials for the overlords.
Under the guidance of this policy, the British not only replaced the local Boer self-government assembly with direct appointments**, but also nationalized the terra nullius and abolished slavery.
This series of policy changes severely undermined the economic basis of the Boers' long-standing slave estates, and at the same time, a large number of British immigrants poured into the Cape Town colony.
Faced with the British, who occupied the magpie's nest, the Boers could not sit still at all. So in 1936, the Boers took everything they could with them and embarked on a great migration, heading north to the interior of Africa in search of a new homeland.
After four years of migration, the Boers eventually established the Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republic in northern South Africa, two Boer autonomous states.
But after that, super diamond mines and ** mines were discovered in the Boer countries of the two countries.
At this time, the British were anxious again, and in the face of real ** and diamonds, the British immediately left behind the decency of the so-called British gentleman.
Tyrannical enough to demand the possession of diamonds and the mining business, the Boers had no choice but to defend their last homeland in the face of repeated British persecution.
The Anglo-Boer War broke out in 1899 when the two Boer states and the Boers who remained in Cape Town joined forces to fire the first shots against the British colonial army.
In order to suppress the Boer revolt, Britain mobilized nearly 450,000 troops from its homeland and various colonies around the world, and the Boers sent almost all adult males in both countries into battle.
However, this war of great disparity in strength lasted for nearly three years, and the British were not only miserable, but also often overwhelmed by the sneak attacks of the Boer guerrillas, and all kinds of military expenditures eventually amounted to 220 million pounds.
The situation of the Boers in the war was even more difficult, under the scorched earth policy of the British ** army, a large number of Boer civilians were imprisoned in concentration camps, countless houses and farms were razed to the ground, and the Boer armed militias and guerrillas in various places who had no supplies could only rely on seizures to maintain supplies.
The protracted tug-of-war exhausted the forces of both sides, and the Boers were no longer able to defeat the British army, and the British army also lost confidence because of the pressure at home and abroad.
Eventually, the two sides returned to the negotiating table, and the Boers made it conditional on recognizing British suzerainty in exchange for autonomy and compensation for damages.
In 1910, in accordance with the terms of the peace treaty, the British merged the four colonies, including the Boer states of the two countries, into the Dominion of South Africa, replacing the direct British colonial rule with representative self-government. South was established informally.
However, the war and game between the Boers and the British ignored the interests of the main part of the South African population, the black aborigines. These former Boer slaves, who made up a significant proportion of the population in the new Dominion of South Africa, had no political power.
The Boers occupy almost all the ** sectors and state power in South Africa, while the blacks not only live in poverty, but are also discriminated against at every turn.
This racist rage, with the increase of oppression of all kinds, intensified in the hearts of the South African people, until the emergence of Mandela.
So, how did Mandela go from prisoner to prisoner, and how did he reshape a new South Africa?
The star of history, the sin of South Africa, Mandela's merits and demerits have their own posterity.
Mandela was born in 1918 in the Cape province of South Africa, the son of a local tribal chief. As the only educated young man in his family, Mandela was not willing to inherit the chieftain and continued to repeat the life of his father.
Mandela's school career was not smooth. After being forced out of Fort Hall University for his affirmative action campaign, he moved to Johannesburg, where he worked in mines and law firms before completing his studies at the University of the Witwatersrand.
In 1944, Mandela joined the African National Congress of South Africa, or ANC, a party that advocated non-violent non-cooperation and learned from Gandhi to achieve racial equality in South Africa.
But the situation in South Africa is not the same as in India, where the Boers have multiplied for centuries and do not see themselves as colonizers and will never cede power.
In 1958, racial tensions were sharpened in the eyes of Chapeville**.
In 1960, in Sharpeville, the South African military and police marched against tens of thousands of demonstrators of apartheid policy, causing serious incidents.
Although the reason for the recent police assassinations afterwards was that they would otherwise take the initiative, hundreds of people completely ignited the flame of protest.
This not only shocked South Africa and the international community, but also taught Mandela and other ANC leaders a painful lesson, and also contributed to a change in the direction of the affirmative action movement in South Africa.
Mandela and the ANC's top brass realized that under the high-handed policy of **, the form of non-violent non-cooperation of struggle has failed.
In the absence of democracy at home and support from outside, racial equality can only be achieved through violent resistance.
Thus, Mandela established the ANC's military armed forces, the Spear of the Nation, and served as commander-in-chief.
Under Mandela's leadership, the main task of the Spear of Nations was to destroy the city's infrastructure and force the authorities to lift apartheid by causing social and economic chaos.
Later, Mandela explained to the public that when violent struggle is necessary, the way of destruction can protect ethnic relations to the greatest extent, avoid innocent deaths, and strive for democracy at the lowest cost.
However, sabotage activities are a great rebellion in the eyes of ethnic segregation. They began to think of ways to find a way to hunt down the members of the Spear of Nations and find out the leader behind it.
With the help of the CIA, the South African authorities raided an important stronghold of the Spear of the Nation, uncovering evidence of Mandela as the leader of the Spear of the Nation.
In March 1962, Mandela, who had just returned to South Africa, was arrested by South Africa**, and the authorities charged Mandela with numerous charges and imprisoned him for life.
With this, Mandela began his 27-year prison life.
Despite Mandela's imprisonment, the struggle never stopped.
The policy of apartheid imposed by South Africa has not only met with stubborn resistance from the domestic people, but also put South Africa under tremendous pressure and severe economic sanctions.
The bullets that once went to the British oppressors ended up on the Boers themselves.
Finally, in 1990, apartheid was abolished in South Africa, and Mandela regained his freedom and once again led the ANC and South African affirmative action movements.
In 1994, South Africa held its first non-racial **, and Mandela was unsurprisingly elected the first black man in South Africa with an overwhelming majority of more than 50% of the vote.
Mandela, who has been in prison for 27 years, is eager to realize his ideal country in the face of great changes in the world.
Under Mandela's leadership, South Africa first held high the banner of pan-Africanism, accepted a large number of African refugees, and unconditionally granted refugee status and full social welfare benefits.
In order to solve the employment problem of refugees and black compatriots, South Africa then used coercive force to promote the so-called fair employment, requiring departments and enterprises to employ a certain proportion of blacks in certain positions.
As a result, South Africa's social economy has become very chaotic, and many whites have higher quality and better labor skills, but they are not able to get jobs.
This one-size-fits-all approach to skin color, coupled with the wrong approach of neoliberalism and deindustrialization, has led to a situation in which South Africa is plagued by corruption, weakened corporate competitiveness, and stagnant development.
Generations of settlers and other whites have left South Africa in search of alternatives.
Slowly, Mandela also discovered the loss of control and alienation of the national reconciliation and affirmative action movement in the country, so after only one term in power, he announced that he would not run for election and retired bravely.
This fighter for democracy, who has fought for racial equality all his life, has also been accused of letting the country decay in just a few years.
In fact, throughout Mandela's life, he never gave up his original intention of striving for national equality, and at the same time made great contributions to the cause of world peace, worthy of the reputation of the father of the nation of South Africa and the light of the world.
However, after his tenure as **, he failed to choose the right way to truly push for national reconciliation, but instead replaced an old one with a new one, exacerbating centuries of racial rifts.
South Africa has taught us a profound lesson at a painful price, and the basis of equality has always been the equality of material relations hidden behind political slogans.
The unfair treatment suffered by black South Africans is not due to their dark skin, but to the experience of being forced into slavery throughout history.
Only when society is truly free to flow, free from the constraints of birth, can the colors show their true beauty.
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