# Where would South Africa be today if there'd been no Nelson Mandela? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 5, 2013, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-south-africa-be-today-if-thered-been-no-nelson-mandela/675613 "2013-12-05T22:57:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2013, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-south-africa-be-today-if-thered-been-no-nelson-mandela/675613/61 "2013-12-09T19:00:07Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Okay, I randomly looked up a few Tea Party pages, just picking them randomly. They didn’t seem to be advocating any sort of racism. Do I win something, and do you think maybe we could talk about Nelson Mandela, who was not American and neither a Democrat nor a Republican? > > Not everything is about the United States; there is a world, and issues, outside of the current American zeitgeist, hard though it might be for you to believe. South Africa is not the USA, and its issues can, parties, and personalities are not little versions of American ones. The problems Nelson Mandela faced, dealt with, and in some cases did a lot of solve are not ones Barack Obama faces. I didn’t mean to take this on a tangent, I was just curious as to the behavior of white South Africans during the Mandela administration and whether some of them were as antagonistic towards him as some white Americans are toward Obama. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2013, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-south-africa-be-today-if-thered-been-no-nelson-mandela/675613/62 "2013-12-09T19:03:02Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > Not to hijack the thread, but racism is an integral part of the Tea Party. Just go to Facebook and look at any of the Tea Party pages. Yeah, that’s completely a lie. The Tea Party movement essentially started during the 2010 election cycle. If it was based on racial opposition to President Obama, then where were they when McCain was running against Obama in 2008? If there was really some racist core of evil conservatives who wanted to racially oppose any black President, it seems weird they wouldn’t have marshaled their forces in sufficient or noteworthy numbers until the next election cycle _after_ he had already been elected. It’s also strange that in fact if you check various Tea Party propaganda sources like Facebook pages and various websites you do not, in fact, find hot beds of racism as you purport. Now, is it possible to find racists who identify with the Tea Party? I’d be shocked if you couldn’t, but I would say the same about Democrats and even Obama voters. Racism is widespread enough that you find it everywhere. Do you find it more in the deep south? Definitely, I grew up in the South, I know this to be true. Is the South more associated with the Tea Party than other regions? Definitely. So I would suspect you’d find more racists in a Tea Party group in South Carolina than you would a Sierra Club meeting in Vermont. However, none of that suggests the Tea Party’s ideology is racist, that it is “based” in racial opposition to the President or anything of that nature. I’ve seen actual racist political philosophies, and they aren’t that hard to detect. When George Wallace or Strom Thurmond were running as third party candidates their racial positions were not secret–they were right out there in their platforms. What it seems like to me is the Tea Party sprung out of organizations like the Cato Institute, which for years were little-known libertarian think tanks. But then some wealthy backers poured money into taking their low-tax, minimal government ideas and building a grass roots (or “astroturf”) organization with their philosophies at the center. The Tea Party is a corporate-sponsored (with later genuine organic growth) group that grew out of libertarian think tanks. They quickly drifted into a Paulian form of “libertarianism” in which they don’t really believe in small government as a principle but just a very small, ineffective Federal government and State governments that can essentially do whatever they want (as long as they don’t raise taxes or take guns away.) I’m not a fan of the political ideology, but it is not really in any way based on “racial opposition to the President” nor is there a single bit of compelling evidence to support that argument. “Some of them are racists!” is a charge you can levy at pretty much any organization with more than a handful of members and is meaningless if it isn’t part of the organization’s core philosophy. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2013, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-south-africa-be-today-if-thered-been-no-nelson-mandela/675613/63 "2013-12-09T19:12:07Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > I didn’t mean to take this on a tangent, I was just curious as to the behavior of white South Africans during the Mandela administration and whether some of them were as antagonistic towards him as some white Americans are toward Obama. The problem is the association is without meaning since there is no evidence a huge number of white Americans oppose Obama just because he is black. The Tea Party was a reaction to what was seen as Democratic overreach in terms of passing the PPACA and the large budget deficits which some people viewed as an apocalyptic thing. White South Africans who opposed Mandela would be hold outs from the decades-long apartheid regime. It’s just a very different scenario. The Tea Party grew out of an opposition to policies. Apartheid, as its most rosy defenders would paint it, grew out of a desire to have separate states for people of different backgrounds. This in and of itself isn’t “evil” and F.W. de Klerk was correct when he said that for example, the Czechs and Slovaks wanting to split into their own separate countries was not immoral. Where apartheid of course became evil is the small minority white population essentially took everything of value, but all the blacks in ghettoized “homelands” where they were powerless and impoverished for generations. A white South African opposing Mandela would be arguing for the status quo, or the system of homelands and ghettoization that had been the norm for generations. The Tea Party is not at all a status quo movement, they are specifically opposed not only to Democrats and the current President’s new policies, but they are also opposed to what they see as various failures of the extant Republican leadership. They are a reactionary party advocating for dramatic change to very different ways of doing things. That would be quite different from apartheid supporters when Mandela became President, since they would be arguing for the existing status quo. Apartheid supporters would argue that the country had “changed” on them, while Tea Party reactionaries are quite specifically saying the country needs changed to their way of thinking, not that they want to persist a status quo they oppose. Finally, the whites who would have opposed Mandela would be racists who favored an unequal society. Tea Party whites who oppose Obama are by all indications opposing him because of political differences, not because he is black or represents an end to a period of racial subjugation. Comparing the two situations is false and frankly, stupid. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2013, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-south-africa-be-today-if-thered-been-no-nelson-mandela/675613/64 "2013-12-09T19:14:10Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > If you have no counteragument then you agree with me, thanks. Whatever you say. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2013, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-south-africa-be-today-if-thered-been-no-nelson-mandela/675613/65 "2013-12-09T19:17:03Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Whatever you say. This is what I say: > [@](#): > > If you have no counteragument then you agree with me, thanks. To avoid a loop and since you’re behaving immaturely I will disregard anything further you have to say about American politics in this thread as you obviously have no valid opinions on the matter. I will say that the thread should not even be discussing American politics, but as long as **BobLibDem** wishes to continue slurring political movements in America and veils it as “just asking questions” about South African history it sadly cannot be helped. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2013, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-south-africa-be-today-if-thered-been-no-nelson-mandela/675613/66 "2013-12-10T05:17:28Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > To avoid a loop and since you’re behaving immaturely I will disregard anything further you have to say about American politics in this thread as you obviously have no valid opinions on the matter. Oh, I have opinions (whether they are valid is up to group consensus, not your say-so) For instance, would you say Ted Cruz was a figure in the Tea Party? He certainly would say so. And his vocal followers, they’d be considered Tea Partiers too, right? The ones castigating Cruz for eulogizing Mandela, those guys? _Why_ would they be against Mandela when their foundational idols were freedom fighters in the same vein? Oh, they claim he was a Communist (not that he was) and other crap, but that’s not \*really \*why the Right opposed the ANC in the 60s, now was it? ---
**Author:** ![Mr\_Quatro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/bc8723/32.png) [@Mr\_Quatro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Quatro)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2013, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-south-africa-be-today-if-thered-been-no-nelson-mandela/675613/67 "2013-12-10T19:31:19Z")
Where would South Africa be today without Mandela? The same place Northern Ireland is at … ruled by the English. Where is Irelands Mandela? ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2013, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-south-africa-be-today-if-thered-been-no-nelson-mandela/675613/68 "2013-12-10T20:01:37Z")
> [@Mr\_Quatro](#): > > Where would South Africa be today without Mandela? > > The same place Northern Ireland is at … ruled by the English. > > Where is Irelands Mandela? Northern Ireland overwhelmingly wants to remain British. I’m not sure it’s accurate to say South Africa would be ruled “by the English.” Yes, a portion of the whites in South Africa are of English ancestry but a lot of them are of Dutch ancestry as well. Look at list of pre-Mandela South African Presidents, lots of Dutch surnames there. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2013, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-south-africa-be-today-if-thered-been-no-nelson-mandela/675613/69 "2013-12-10T20:17:42Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > For instance, would you say Ted Cruz was a figure in the Tea Party? He certainly would say so. And his vocal followers, they’d be considered Tea Partiers too, right? The ones castigating Cruz for eulogizing Mandela, those guys? _Why_ would they be against Mandela when their foundational idols were freedom fighters in the same vein? Oh, they claim he was a Communist (not that he was) and other crap, but that’s not \*really \*why the Right opposed the ANC in the 60s, now was it? The people bitching about Cruz’ hat tip to Mandela were random people on the Internet, not necessarily Cruz supporters (other than in the broad sense that they are likely conservative Republicans/TPists). > [@Mr\_Quatro](#): > > Where would South Africa be today without Mandela? > > The same place Northern Ireland is at … ruled by the English. > > Where is Irelands Mandela? The “English”- or at least the people who would prefer to live under British rule- are a decided majority of Northern Irish. Your grasp of both South African and Irish history is decidedly off. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2013, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-south-africa-be-today-if-thered-been-no-nelson-mandela/675613/70 "2013-12-10T20:39:51Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > Northern Ireland overwhelmingly wants to remain British. I’m not sure it’s accurate to say South Africa would be ruled “by the English.” Yes, a portion of the whites in South Africa are of English ancestry but a lot of them are of Dutch ancestry as well. Look at list of pre-Mandela South African Presidents, lots of Dutch surnames there. They’re not Dutch. They’re Afrikaaners. ---
**Author:** ![ctnguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@ctnguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ctnguy)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2013, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-south-africa-be-today-if-thered-been-no-nelson-mandela/675613/71 "2013-12-10T21:09:34Z")
Anglos have never amounted to more than about a third of white South Africans. And South Africa stopped being a British Dominion and left the Commonwealth in 1961. Whichever way the end of apartheid had gone, South Africa would not have been ruled by the English. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2013, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-south-africa-be-today-if-thered-been-no-nelson-mandela/675613/72 "2013-12-10T21:18:50Z")
> [@Mr\_Quatro](#): > > Where would South Africa be today without Mandela? > > The same place Northern Ireland is at … ruled by the English. > > Where is Irelands Mandela? As others have pointed out, the analogy doesn’t work. As regards the securing of equal rights in Northern Ireland regardless of religion, that came about through the work of many individuals in Northern Ireland and elsewhere. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2013, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-south-africa-be-today-if-thered-been-no-nelson-mandela/675613/73 "2013-12-11T05:22:18Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > The people bitching about Cruz’ hat tip to Mandela were random people on the Internet, not necessarily Cruz supporters (other than in the broad sense that they are likely conservative Republicans/ **TPists** ). Firstly, of course they were random people on the internet, but they often said things like “This is the first thing I disagree with you on” or “I support 99.9 % of the things you say” - clearly these aren’t portyraying themselves as long-time Cruz opponents. So I think it’s fair to call them “supporters” … _unless_ you’re alleging a non-TP conspiracy to make Cruz look bad? Secondly, the bit I bolded is kind of the point - doesn’t matter if there were or were not Cruz supporters, they definitely are the face of the TP to the mainstream. And that face is ugly. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2013, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-south-africa-be-today-if-thered-been-no-nelson-mandela/675613/74 "2013-12-11T05:24:57Z")
> [@Mr\_Quatro](#): > > Where is Irelands Mandela? [This Guy](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/Michael_Collins_1921.jpg). Wait, no,[this guy](http://www.chud.com/articles/content_images/5/LiamNeeson_MichaelCollins.jpg)🙂 ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2013, 10:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-south-africa-be-today-if-thered-been-no-nelson-mandela/675613/75 "2013-12-11T10:59:28Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > [This Guy](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/Michael_Collins_1921.jpg). Wait, no,[this guy](http://www.chud.com/articles/content_images/5/LiamNeeson_MichaelCollins.jpg)🙂 Joking aside, he wasn’t Ireland’s Mandela as he wasn’t able to secure equality for all Irish people. ---
**Author:** ![iLemming](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90db22/32.png) [@iLemming](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iLemming)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2013, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-south-africa-be-today-if-thered-been-no-nelson-mandela/675613/76 "2013-12-11T12:27:42Z")
Isn’t Johannesburg one of the, if not _the_, crime capital of the world today? Also, that Oscar Pistorius fellow hinging his murder defence on the notion that he shot his girlfriend because he thought she was a [black] burgler, suggests some serious underlying race related tension still fester in the country ― he lived in a high security, gated community. Reference: [Pistorius Trial: The Key Questions](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2961616/) ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2013, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-south-africa-be-today-if-thered-been-no-nelson-mandela/675613/77 "2013-12-11T13:54:37Z")
> [@An\_Gadai](#): > > Joking aside, he wasn’t Ireland’s Mandela as he wasn’t able to secure equality for all Irish people. Fair enough. He had a good run at it, though. > [@iLemming](#): > > Isn’t Johannesburg one of the, if not _the_, crime capital of the world today? I do know I’d rather live in Jozi than Mexico… > [@](#): > > Also, that Oscar Pistorius fellow hinging his murder defence on the notion that he shot his girlfriend because he thought she was a [black] burgler, suggests some serious underlying race related tension still fester in the country ― he lived in a high security, gated community. Reference: [Pistorius Trial: The Key Questions](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2961616/) That’s his _excuse_, we’ll see what the courts decide. And _of course_ some tensions still exist - I mean, it’s only been 20 years since Apartheid. Can you imagine what that kind of shit does to a nation’s collective psyche? I think, for some Whites, there’s a guilty feeling that they dodged a bullet and they’re always subconsciously waiting for the other penny to drop. Hence the [erstwhile popularity](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=238983&highlight=Mandela+Whites) of the “When Mandela dies, there’ll be a mass slaughter of Whites!” meme. Yeah, like that’s going to happen. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2013, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-south-africa-be-today-if-thered-been-no-nelson-mandela/675613/78 "2013-12-11T14:36:54Z")
> [@iLemming](#): > > Also, that Oscar Pistorius fellow hinging his murder defence on the notion that he shot his girlfriend because he thought she was a [black] burgler, suggests some serious underlying race related tension still fester in the country ― he lived in a high security, gated community. Reference: [Pistorius Trial: The Key Questions](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2961616/) Does OJ Simpson’s impassioned plea about how he’ll never stop looking for the real killer suggest that there is a double murderer hanging out on Florida’s golf courses? ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2013, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-south-africa-be-today-if-thered-been-no-nelson-mandela/675613/79 "2013-12-11T14:44:58Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > They’re not Dutch. They’re Afrikaaners. I said Dutch ancestry, not that they themselves identify as Dutch. (Afrikaners are pretty damn close anyway, their language is largely mutually intelligible with Dutch and they are descended from settlers from Holland.) ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2013, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-south-africa-be-today-if-thered-been-no-nelson-mandela/675613/80 "2013-12-11T14:50:28Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > I said Dutch ancestry, not that they themselves identify as Dutch. (Afrikaners are pretty damn close anyway, their language is largely mutually intelligible with Dutch and they are descended from settlers from Holland.) As I already said in this thread, [not as much as you’d think](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=16907422&postcount=33). They’re as German as they are Dutch, and \*a lot \*of Afrikaners have French surnames (Du Toit, Du Plessis, Le Roux…). And the two languages are only really mutually intelligible when you’re drunk, IME. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-south-africa-be-today-if-thered-been-no-nelson-mandela/675613.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-south-africa-be-today-if-thered-been-no-nelson-mandela/675613.md?page=5)