Question

nelson mandela mass movements

Answer 1

The Black Consciousness Movement(BCM) was a grassroots anti-Apartheid activist movement that emerged in South Africa in the mid-1960s out of the political vacuum created by the jailing and banning of the African National Congress and Pan Africanist Congress leadership after the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960.

Answer 2

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Nelson Mandela: see the movement he personified as well as the man
PETER MCCOLL 7 December 2013
Nelson Mandela was a great man, but it is the movement he was part of which changed the world.

There’s not much that anyone can add to the massive outpouring of grief and admiration for Nelson Mandela. His status as the greatest secular saint of our era becomes clearer as everyone from the Pope to those who campaigned to have Madiba hanged in the 1980s come out to talk of his great life and his great legacy.

The peaceful transition to democracy, the quelling of tribal tensions and the re-incorporation of South Africa into the world economy were all massive achievements that should not be underestimated. But the failure to secure economic freedom and democracy for South Africans remains Mandela’s greatest oversight.

There has been plenty of comment on the attempts to de-politicise Mandela, to brush over his past as a soldier, freedom fighter and friend of Fidel Castro. It’s important that we resist this form of de-politicisation of the greatest figure of our age.

But there is something we must understand about the life and politics of Nelson Mandela. While he personified the struggle against apartheid, this struggle was much, much more than that of one man.

Some will try to claim that through one man’s personal sacrifice, personal magnetism and great ability to forgive those who wronged him apartheid was brought crashing. This is a dangerous story and one Mandela himself rejected.