Strayer Chapter 23

I wasn’t expecting for chapter 23 to start off talking about South African Apartheid or the struggle of Nelson Mandela while he was in prison. I was alive when apartheid ended, but I was too young to really understand the complexities and political consequences of it. I do remember in the 1990s watching films such as “Madela & De Klerk,” which talked about how the last president of the regime helped free Mandela and negotiate an end to the system. And then I remember that also in the 90’s there was a musical produced about students in the 70’s protesting Apartheid in the township of Soweto called “Sarafina,” which starred Whoopi Goldberg and can be seen on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRaFRCAPWJk I remember that Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years, but I’m not sure if I knew the extent of how bad his imprisonment was. I don’t recall that sometimes he had no bed, and that he could have only one visitor for 30 minutes once a year, or that he was only allowed to write one letter every six months. And what’s amazing about the man was his ability to forgive his captors and the regime that imprisoned him. The textbook alluded to a speech Mandela did, but I was disappointed that Strayer chose not to unclude an excerpt of it within the textbook. Actually, Strayer has a tendency to on occasion quote ordinary people when relevant to the textbook, but he doesn’t really quote the famous people relevant to the times his trying to teach the student about. The chapter talks about the end of empires in Europe and the new notion of individual nations with their own right to self-determination, but it might have been discussed in better context had Wilson’s 14 Points Doctrine been mention, which had a lot to do with setting up these new nations in order to prevent wars between empires, the establishment of the League of Nations et cetera. I’d actually written some papers for an Asian studies course with Professor Chary at NDNU. But, it was interesting that Strayer noted that the British attacks upon the Ottoman Empire antagonized Muslims in India because this was not usually mentioned as one of the reasons for civil unrest when Gandhi became more prominent upon the political scene within India. I do recall that there were some British massequers of Indians protesting for civil rights, but I don’t recall the figure having been 400 victims before Strayer mentioned it. Strayer indicates that Indians amongst the educated elite planned to ask for autonomy at first rather than call for open rebellion towards independence. Of course, this is not really surprising since there have been other movements that demanded autonomy first before they realized they had to go for full independence. The Indian National Congress (INC) was mostly an urban phenomenon. I never knew this really. In films depicting Gandhi, a more rural setting is usually depicted. It’s important to note that Gandhi’s defining moment was when he was kicked off a train in South Africa for his race not the Satyagraya, when he disrupted Indian commerce by stopping salt production.