SA Rocks

There is no comparison.

Mandela is a different person from a different time who called for a different following to achieve different goals. The closest these two come to one another is the tone of their skin color.

End.

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Fantastic stuff. Time has such a great reputation and always manage to get their sources to rally around topical stuff.

Visit Time for their great photo-essay on Madiba. I would love to know where the narrator got the information for the piece? Such definitive language use: “Defined his life” “Changed him forever”.

I would suggest that you see more from this particular issue of the time, it’s always a good read!

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I have been really surprised lately to see the following advert popping up all over the place.

Now I know that it has been said that “Madiba belongs to all of us”… but this is taking it a bit too far. I wonder a few things about this advert: Firstly how do they know what Mandela’s IQ is? Did they test him?

Secondly, are they allowed to use Mandela as a primary marketing gimmick? I wonder how many other famous politicians/leaders they have on their list to roll out in further campaigns?

What do you think, should Madiba be pimped like this?

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I would like to draw your attention to the fact that it’s Nelson Mandela’s month of celebration. Let’s be honest, a man like Madiba can’t merely have a single day to celebrate his 90th birthday.

He held a 46664 concert in London, a friend of mine sat next to him on the plane back from that wearing shorts and a t-shirt and Mandela still spoke to him for a while. That’s incredible.

And now it seems as though the trend online is to create special reports, dedicated pages or homages to the man himself.

I have picked my favourite two and suggest that you visit them.

First off the gentlemen from Zoopy have once again impressed me with their incredible design touch and depth of content. Their Madiba page leaves little to the imagination, everything you could possibly want in multimedia content is there for your to see.

Their dedicated page is filled with pictures, video, photos and you are able to leave your comment to Mandela on the page. I suggest you do that! If you have a Zoopy profile and have content of Mandela that you would like to share be sure to tag the content with “madiba90″ and it will pull through to the page. If you don’t have a Zoopy account, get one.

Next is the News24 Mandela page.

This page screams of class, sophistication and honour. The perfect way to dedicate a page to Nelson Mandela.

Their content is much more historical and educational. You can read/listen to speeches from Madiba, you can view a timeline of his life, watch video, see photos and view soundslides of his past. All in all a fantastic tribute to Mandela on his 90th Birthday.

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For some reason there has been no publicity around this neat little website.

As many of you might know Nelson Mandela is turning 90 this year and the race is one to send him birthday wishes!

At the moment Tanzania is topping the charts with the most birthday wishes sent. South Africa is up there, but lagging behind and I think that we all need to show support for the man and his legacy. Go ahead, send him a wish.

And, and by the way, if you do send in your birthday greetings you will be rewarded with a free music download… Queen, ofcourse.

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I wish that I had written this post first, but alas Llewellyn Kriel beat me to the punch. To be honest he probably did a much better job than I would have.

I don’t often link directly to a post for the sake of it, but Kriel’s post on Mandela is brilliantly written, poignant and relevant to the core of SA at the moment.

Please do me, yourself and everyone else out there a favour and read this post. It is writing at its best.

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I am always reluctant to blog about Nelson Mandela in spite of the undoubted affect he has had not only on SA but on the world. I am reluctant because I personally feel that the exposure he constantly receives has desensitised South Africans to his incredible achievements.

In the name of heritage I am blogging this post that I found on thepropertymag.co.za.

It is always refreshing to see where our leaders, icons and heroes have come from. This is where Mandela started:

Madiba’s first home was a tiny ‘matchbox’ house in the older area of Soweto called Orlando West.

His first son was born in this house. I am sure that this makes the home even more special and holds fond memories for Mandela.

Heritage is what we make of it and the future is what we learn from our past and subsequently alter. Much has been learned from a man like Nelson Mandela and I am sure he is not done imparting knowledge on the world.

I am very interested to find out if South Africans have had their fill of the man? Not taking anything away from his astounding past and incredible presence, but do people rather want to learn things like this about the man or rehash the knowledge? I personally am more interested in the random facts and interesting historical tidbits regarding his past and his heritage. I have studied the struggles that he overcame and the history that he made, I want to know about the man, not the achievements.

What would you ask Mandela if you met him? Have you met him?

I have on a few occasions and I must say that his presence is quite overwhelming. His humble nature is grounding and his humour is extremely surprising!

photos and quotations courtesay of thepropertymag.co.za

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Our decorated, passionate and complicated past has left us with some very interesting personalities and characters. But have we separated them yet? Have we branded Zuma a clown and Mandela an eternal hero? Do we remember Biko and forget Verwoerd?

I believe that the struggles of the past have left SA with a very tricky political conundrum. How do we forget what some of the “clown” did for SA in the past if they are being clowns now? Let’s be honest, the likes of Zuma are riding the crest of collapsing wave that was the past’s freedom fight. That fight is done with and there are real and tangible issues that these leaders need to be dealing with.

We, as a nation, need to pull together and rid ourselves of the belief that we need to entertain the “struggle” leaders who invariably are, themselves, riding out our pseudo-guilt about the past. Enough already.

Heritage day is a fantastic idea and in my opinion should be used by everyone in SA to reflect on our past, our heritage and ourselves and make some decisions about our future here in SA. Let’s start with our mentality toward our leadership because I think that it might just be a joke sometimes. The struggle is over, apartheid is dead.

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