South African President Jacob Zuma said, "Our nation has lost its greatest son. Our people have lost a father." Though he was solely referring to South Africans when he used the phrase 'our people,' we'd like to think that he was talking about all of humanity.
If inspiration were measured like gold, we'd all live in big houses from the courage and patience Nelson Mandela showed us. No one who is a true symbol of something, never aspires to be such, but Mr. Mandela will forever serve as a symbol of freedom and equal opportunity for the world.
We can offer little, if any, insight with regard to the life of Nelson Mandela and what he meant to the world; we wouldn't to presume to insult your intelligence and diminish his memory.
But Mr. Mandela's death makes us think of the very essence of what it means to have freedom and equal opportunity. We see the latter of the two systematically being replaced, or abridged, to only 'opportunity.' The lack of simple opportunity is chronically plaguing country's all over the world, and it's getting worse exponentially. When people around the world should be demanding an equal opportunity, we've been reduced to asking for any one, equal or not because the notion of opportunity is becoming more scarce. And if we keep going on in this direction, we'll bottom out in a place where we'll only have to hope for another individual to act and lead on the inspiration given to him or her by Mr. Mandela
Nelson Mandela
1918-2013
Postscript (a lighter note - sort of): We can say that the song "Sun City," written and produced by Steven Van
Zandt for United Artists Against Apartheid, 1985, is the best
mass-all-star collaboration recorded in pop music, much better than its
contemporary rival "We Are the World," which has all the genre-varied
artist conforming to one structure whereas "Sun City" incorporates
several divergent music styles to complete one generous whole of a
song.
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