Word: mandela
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Some will recall that soon after being released from prison by former South African president F.W. De Klerk, citizen Nelson Mandela did a fundraising tour of the United States. To tremendously understate the case, his effect upon American audiences was dramatic. Few could have been left unimpressed by Mandela's uncanny strength of spirit after 27 years in prison, an amount of time spent under conditions that would have wholly sapped a lesser person...
Even after his years in a brutal South African penal system, the now gray and increasingly grandfatherly Mandela was endearing. We were glad to see that he had lost none of the sharp wit which we had come to expect after the famed Rivonia Trials which resulted in his life-sentence. Some of Mandela's statements during his American tour, however, were less endearing than others...
Prompting some to seriously question the aging black leader's sanity, Mandela said at one point that he claimed Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat (who, we recall, was at the time still considered by most to be a dangerous terrorist), Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and Libyan dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi, as his comrades-in-arms. It was a statement that raised more than a few eyebrows and prompted Mandela's handlers to suggest that, in the future, he refrain from moving too far from scripted statements...
Mitigating the damage that these comments would otherwise have caused, was Mandela's tremendous store of political capital: he had enough of the stuff to make any other world figure envious. Still, many wondered, what could possibly have possessed the man to squander his hard-earned prestige when he was so quickly approaching the status of an icon? In the ensuing discourse, a number of explanations were proffered to account for the ANC leader's tactlessness...
...Mandela's impending rise to the South African premiership seemed inevitable, some suggested that his ascension to high political office would force him to tone down his rhetoric as he became better acquainted with the subtleties of realpolitik. According to this view, Mandela's revolutionary comments were borne out of his need to appeal to constituents who would have been disappointed not to hear any mots de guerre from the defiant leader that legend and 27 years had immortalized...