4Learning - Secondary - Resources - History - History in Action: Heroes or Villains

Nelson Mandela

Activities

Suggested activities using this programme and the recommended websites:

Activity 1: Happy Birthday Nelson Mandela

Look carefully at the web page Nelson Mandela 80^th Birthday Tribute (http://www.anc.org.za/people/mandela/birthday/fidex.html).

Work in pairs or small groups. Read through the messages and try to get a feel for the tone and the length of the messages. Now use the TV programme and the other resources on this site to research Mandela’s life and career. When you have done this, devise your own messages for Mandela on:

His 30^th birthday (1948)
His 40^th birthday (1958)
His 50^th birthday (1968)
His 60^th birthday (1978)
His 70^th birthday (1988)

Your messages will obviously be different depending on when they are meant to be written. They have to be brief, but they could:

Try to encourage him
Explain what is going on in South Africa
Suggest that victory for his cause is close
Suggest that he had made mistakes

Activity 2: Why is Nelson Mandela a hero?

Try using a search engine to look for sites for Nelson Mandela. Then try looking at your results to see if you can find a site which criticises Mandela. Then look at the TV programme and see whether it has any criticisms of him. Ask your teacher if he or she has ever heard or seen Mandela being criticised. Your task is to try to work out why Mandela is such a hero to so many people. Use the programme and the recommended sites. Try to decide whether Mandela is a hero because of:

The cause he fought for
The way he fought for it
His own personality
The nature of his opponents
Other factors you identify yourself
Any combinations of these factors

Activity 3: Comparing heroes — Nelson Mandela and Yasser Arafat

A simple search on the Internet on Mandela also threw up two references to the PLO leader Yasser Arafat (featured in Programme 5 of this series).

The first one was about Arafat, but contained the phrase: ‘No one is asking Arafat to be a Nelson Mandela. But if he were…’ . (Read the whole article at http://www.shamash.org/jb/bk970404/edit.htm)
The second reference was a letter from Yasser Arafat to Nelson Mandela (http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/mandela/about%20and%20to/arafat.html) and it began like this:

H.E. Brother Nelson Mandela
President of the ANC
REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA

Greetings,

It was with great appreciation I received your congratulatory message on the occasion of the Palestinian Israeli signing of the Declaration of Principles and mutual recognition.

The impression given in the second article is that the two leaders, Mandela and Arafat, are brothers in the sense that they are both great leaders. However, the first article suggests that Arafat is nowhere near as well respected as Mandela. Use the TV programmes and Net Notes on these two individuals to research:

Why there are these difference of opinion about the two
Whether the opinion expressed is widespread
How far you agree with that opinion

Activity 4: Mandela’s new South Africa

Look at the website The Unofficial Winnie Mandela Page http://www.zip.com.au/~rocket/winnie.htm
It contains many articles which are highly critical of South Africa and its politicians since 1994. However, it does not directly attack Nelson Mandela, even though he was the President from 1994 until June 1999. Use all your work from the programme and the recommended sites to discuss these questions:

Why does the site not criticise Mandela?
Is he responsible for any of the problems raised in the site?
If he is not responsible then who is?
From what you have seen and read, are you optimistic or pessimistic about South Africa’s future?