Nelson Mandela’s Stolen Spoon

Yes but America was built by enslaved black African blood, sweat, labor and tears. And America was sustained separate and unequal paid for by the same black African American price. While America has 5% of humanity the 2.3 million Americans in prison are 25 % of the world's prisoners. And although only 13% of Americans are black, 40% of the prisoners are black because they are persecuted for acting like white people do without any criminal justice consequences. The carefully carved colored exception to the 13th Amendments abolition of slavery and involuntary servitude. Mandela went to prison when he took over the armed wing of the ANC aka the Spear of the Nation and engaged in acts of terrorism. America, the EU and Israel deemed Mandela a terrorist into the 2nd Bush term. The Holocaust was not perpetrated in America by Americans against other Americans. There is no American state, territory nor possession named Israel. Israel is no more a democracy than were slave and Jim Crow America and apartheid South Africa. There has never been any American truth and reconciliation and reparations for the black African heirs of enslavement and Jim Crow. Black lIves still don't matter in America.

One might start off by questioning Roger's whitewashing (can one use this regarding apartheid South Africa?) of Jewish roles in apartheid South Africa. Were diamonds one of the lynchpins of the South African economy (and hence apartheid)? Did Jews play a dominant role in South Africa's diamond industry? Were blacks abused and virtually enslaved, working in diamond jobs? (please no, these were the "best" jobs they could get). Then proceed to luckily apartheid generally didn't involve "attacks" on blacks, just the disenfranchisement, denial of good education, good jobs, basic dignity, freedom and rights, etc., as touched on by Roger (of course resistance to any of these might result in fatal or painful "attack"). Such "logic" was applied yesterday by an NYT article on how "attacks" on Jews in France, allegedly often by Muslims, had risen, while "attacks" on Muslims had barely budged. Muslims, discriminated against & abused in France, across the country & across generations, are now expected to rush into police stations & report "attacks" against them (whoops, so if often it's the police who are doing the "attacking," who do you go to? interesting indeed...go play soccer?). French Muslims, please be more like Mandela? Good advice. Might I even say, "great?" Mr. Mandela's ability to rise above systemic society wide discrimination and oppression, deserves him not just awe but, quite literally, deification. But one just needs look at NYT articles to see how prejudice persists.

Mandela was the sort of philosopher-king that seems extinct nowadays. South African whites did get off too easily, but Mandela knew that it would spell disaster (i.e. Zimbabwe) if he sought to exact vengeance or even to get complete justice. The South African economy needs harmony between the races to function at all. Hopefully, Ramaphosa can use that harmony to grow and spread the wealth and opportunity that South Africa is so capable of producing. South Africa is already a political miracle. With wise leadership (of which Ramaphosa is quite capable) it can become an economic miracle. It’s too bad Jacob Zumba held power for as long as he did. But one of Mandela’s legacies is that there was no way for Zumba to make himself president for life. Nowadays, with ruthless, selfish leaders popping up everywhere, we need to study Mandela and follow his example more closely than ever.

There are gaps.lacunae in this otherwise well written article. First, those of the Jewish faith faced two challenges, threats during pre independence days in South Africa: First, from the ultra conservative Broederbond, founded after the Boer War to defend Afrikander culture from the English, but which became during the Second World War not only pro Third Reich, but anti Semitic; second,from radical adherents of the ANC, who resented presence of Jews within the movement because they were white. Nonetheless, Aaron Cohen, author's father was initially at one with white liberals such as Helen Suzman, Nadine Gordimer Alan Paton among others who WERE FIGHTING the good fight against separate development, put in place initially by Malan's "Purified" National Party in 1948. But then the author's father decamped suddenly with his family and emigrated to Great Britain, leaving his fellow" combattants,for social justice"at the mercy of the enemy, the verkrampt leadership of the National Party.Attended a book signing by Alan Paton in an Anglican Church in Capetown in 1975, and following his talk, spoke with Paton and during our tete a tete brought up the name of Mr. Cohen's father.I was met with a stony silence.Question to be formulated is why Aaron Cohen left, deserted his comrades in arms when they needed him most?What say you, Mr. Cohen?

What is clear is that white liberalism, with its emphasis on forgiveness, has no program for redressing generations of racial exclusion (U.S.) and expropriation (South Africa). Without a program a little corruption is the about the best one can hope for.

I remember in the 1990's reading the International USA Today where Dick Cheney was making the argument against the release of Mandela. Hard to believe Cheney could ever be wrong before he appointed himself as the best candidate for Vice-President. His argument is the argument that all good republicans made at the time and that was that Mandela was a terrorist. Without ever acknowledging the that perhaps there was justice in getting rid of the apartheid system, Cheney sounds like many Americans who refuse to recognize that people hate living under an oppressive regime just because the United States has "interests" that will abide the cruelest of regimes. Cheney was a player in much of the support we threw to every repressive regime in the Western Hemisphere from Nixon to Bush II. Sadly there was never a punishment for Cheney for his actions done in the name of the American people.

Just love Roger Cohen's columns. Perhaps because he writes so humanity and dignity always seems to rise up above injustice, meanness, cruelty. A call for the betterment of self and society. A slient inspiration in a very noisy world.

(Number 1) I was in South Africa many years ago, conducting a study on an endangered species. Nelson Mandela was on Robben Island. Steven Biko was in jail until he was murdered there or bludgeoned next to death there, dying on the way to a hospital. There were riots in Soweto. In order to face my demons, I told myself that extinction is forever but apartheid will end. I unwittingly broke laws, for which I was gently reprimanded. An example: allowing a ‘non-white’ hitchhiker of a different sex to share the front seat with me. Years later, I sat on the grass as Nelson Mandela spoke to thousands of us - of all colours and of all sexes - in one of the cities he visited subsequent to his release. His words washed over me and I was absolved of any lingering guilt for having lived - voluntarily - in his country while he had been exiled within it. Years later still, I revisited South Africa. I had hiked up Table Mountain with plans to return by cable car at sunset. When I arrived at the summit, I was informed that mechanical difficulties had caused a stoppage in cable car transit. The number of people transiently stranded at the summit would fill at least 4 cable cars. Reflector blankets (it was cold), coffee, tea and hot chocolate were distributed.

(Number 2) It took a few hours for repairs, the cable car started running again, and I chose to delay my return until I was in the last group. I was the sole white person in a sea of Black Africans. We were sharing the same car - packed to standing. As we descended to the last vestiges of a dark pink/purple sky, with the lights of Cape Town below us, my fellow travellers started singing in the a cappella manner that always had and would have brought me to my knees had I not been propped up by our numbers. I do not know the title of the song they were singing, but the common refrain was ‘I’m Coming Home’. When we reached the terminus, they left in high spirits, chattering and laughing. I lingered in the carriage, weak and holding it in. Once alone, I could finally let the tears run. In retrospect, I realize I was not alone. Nelson Mandela was right there beside me, smiling into the night.

To begin with. Nelson Mandela should first and foremost be remembered for standing up against the white supremacist evils of Apartheid, and for championing equality for all the 'Blacks' and 'Coloureds' in a country dedicated to institutionalizing their subservience. Everything else comes after that.

First time I read words of acceptance and reconciliation ever since President Obama left office. Thank you Mr.Cohen, for making me start my weekend with a pleasant feeling that there are people who care about the world and protect the world.

My goodness. You’ve made me cry early on a Saturday morning. So beautifully written. Thank you.

First comment in NYT for me, but I was so moved by this article I had to. In the Age of Trump, I must rise above the ugliness. WE must rise above it and reclaim a higher ground and a higher purpose for our nation.

You've done it again, Mr. Cohen. Now we have to look inside and ask ourselves if we are bystanders or spoon thieves or heroes. Few of us are heroes, but as long as we're not bystanders or spoon thieves that will suffice.

Perhaps we should forgive this thief of the spoon for he has given Roger Cohen such a good frame for his wonderful essay. Thank you Roger for this and so many powerful essays that help keep me sane in these times of insanity.

What will America be in its post-racism years? We don't know. We don't know when or how that age will be ushered in. Europeans brought their tribalism and their superstitions and their assumptions of superiority with them from Europe a long time ago. Simply saying, as some do, let's all be nice to each other, and the nastiness will go away. Trump represents a force analogous to global climate change. As that spreads. so too do deserts and waves of refugees fleeing the arid regions. Trump spreads a desert of culture, of knowledge, of common decency, and of confidence in the future as anything other than a competition to spend more than we did when Obama was POTUS. The New America: Everything Un-Obama.

My wife and I have recently returned from three weeks in South Africa, and visited the same places Mr. Cohen describes in the article. My take away from the journey was the effects of apartheid are still alive and well---even after decades of the regimes fall. We stayed in suburban communities that were heavily patrolled by private police units and houses with a variety of alarm/fencing systems that made these well maintained bungalows look like a maximum security prisons. When we traveled in different parts of Cape Town and Johannesburg the miles upon miles of tin shanty towns was startling---most within miles of these same very well off communities. The dilemma Mandela faced and all governments in South Africa must confront, is how to keep white corporate money in South Africa while at the same time distributing the wealth in a way that it does not scare that money away. Of course this situation was worsened by the corruption of African leaders after Mandela. Although not necessarily comparable, like our own South, treating the cancer of racism is a long and complex process, with always mixed results.

"Tribal stupidity" sums it up. Nothing wrong with tribes. A whole lot wrong with stupidity, "us vs. them" insanity.

Mr. Cohen, Nelson Mandela died in 2013. He stopped celebrating his birth day years ago. When a person dies a 18, he never reaches 25. His body dies at that age, and there his growth ends ... forever. It's pretty to think, you can celebrate Mr. Mandela reaching 100, but that's for you, not him. Just like your visit, and resulting column, was for you and your granddaughter, not for Nelson Mandela. I'm glad you and she feel the balm of his forgiveness, and the man whom you bought and shared your sausages with professed the same. But does a dead Mandela speak for all impoverished South African blacks, now and in the future. You express guilt, and shame perhaps, at the way your people collectively defended themselves by using the blacks in your new land as cover for your own minority status. You benefitted, they did not. Can a few words absolve your privileges, and those of such luxury foreign travel, passed on to your own white/ Jewish heirs? Do you owe any reparations for the sins of your own family who participated and benefitted under aparteid, and sold your wares in segregated spaces? That's the discussion we are currently undertaking in America: who bears guilt, who walked away enriched from slavery, and essentially, who took and took and never paid back. If your mother were here today, alive, perhaps she could explain. In taking her own life back in England, I think she understood, and refused to go back. Maybe this could be her true legacy to you, Roger

Simply, beautiful.

"There are more bystanders than heroes in times of oppression". We'll know for sure in November.

Thank you Mr Cohen. It is so nice to read your hope in these very dark times. I also lived in Johannesburg for several years. Africa gets in your blood, eh?

We have found the spoon thief, but there remains much doubt about whether he will inherit the earth. Probably not, though, because he threatens to guarantee that there will be no habitable earth to inherit. The spoon thief is President Donald Trump. It is Vladimir Putin. It is Rodrigo Duterte. It is Viktor Orban. It is Benjamin Netanyahu. It is Ismail Haniyeh. It is Clarence Thomas. It is Ben Carson. It is Nigel Farage. We could go through the list of senior Trump cabinet secretaries and senior advisers. There you will find the spoon thief; it doesn't matter which one. They are armed with meat cleavers to rent the human community apart. Who knows what they plan to do with Nelson Mandela's spoon? That spoon is somewhere. It might be stolen but it's not dead.

Roger Cohen: The only NYT columnist that somehow always manages to bring a tear to my eye (as well as leave me with a glimmer of hope about humanity)... Beautiful piece, Sir.

Lives, and the humans who live them, are complicated. A million persecuted blacks protect thousands of Jews from persecution who "went along." There is a book titled "Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World" by Malcolm Potts that comes to mind. It's a good read. The "Path" goes through Ocasio-Cortez (last chapter).

Inspirational - Mandela and Mr. Cohen’s essay.

Thank you, Roger Cohen.

Thank you, Roger. Thank you, Madiba, indeed. I'm afraid I do not feel optimistic now, however much I agree that in the long run we will find the spoon thieves. A vast black cloud is on the horizon. It looks like the photographs we have seen of other black clouds. Take, for instance, the Know Nothing movement which foreshadowed our own bloody civil war. Or the swastika cult and the good Germans and the "theory of the big lie." Not a storm but a conflagration. It feels to me like another conflagration is on the way.

A column for my meditation folder. "Thank you, Madiba, for pardoning my family, me, the whites of South Africa, the spoon thieves, today’s political infants, all humanity for its iniquity and tribal stupidity. Thank you for lifting our gaze." I must never forget my need for forgiveness, no matter where I grew up, no matter my religion, no matter my ethnicity. I have sinned against others.

We all need reminders of integrity, hope, the beautify of collaboration, and the celebration of our common humanity. This piece is a good one. I'll reread it the next time I encounter a spoon stealer, or feel that dark. nihilistic, toxic selfishness myself.

The spoon stealer must have worshiped Mandela and wanted to possess a relic. What else could have been his or her motive? Selfishness and disrespect for others, but hardly “cruelty.”

Mr. Cohen, In your truthful well done article you mention that "Yet most Jews went along with apartheid " —yes just as most Republican party members here in the U.S. ;Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush et al. also totally supported apartheid. Where are today's Jewish, Republican & Democrat voices against Israel's New Nation-State Law and imprisonment of African immigrants. Has anything been learned from Madiba's legacy in South Africa???

Thank you is a bit too small an expression to acknowledge the gift given to people who exploited, ridiculed, demeaned and murdered innocent men women and children because they were black. Reconciliation did not come from a polite thank you for not killing us in retribution for your crimes or not running us out of your country. It came from Truth and an admission of Guilt. It was the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions that gave South Africa the chance to heal. It is a lesson America never learned. Not just with slavery did we miss the opportunity to reconcile, but even today, we allow war criminals and the perpetrators of deadly, unnecessary, unjust and illegal wars to escape the truth and avoid the consequences of their behavior. One cannot forgive those who still deny they did anything wrong. And without forgiveness there can be no reconciliation. Perhaps that is why this Nation is so irredeemably divided. We have not learned the lesson Mandela taught South Africans so well.

If only the thief had realized that there is no spoon.

Nelson Mandela’s life is a shining example of what selfless leadership is. Kindness and empathy endures in today’s world, in spite of an American president swelling with self-importance and full of hot airs who recently showed the world his capacity for cruelty to children. His time on the world stage will not be remembered as fondly as is Mandela’s or Ghandi’s or Dr. King’s. Their focus was on the betterment of mankind. Americans today are in their own Robben Island but don’t even know it, at least not yet. Their president, unlike a visiting tourist who stole a spoon from Mandela’s prison cell, stole their country’s soul.

Nelson Mandela: What a stellar human being.

unfortunately the spoon thieves have inherited the world. Eight white men "own" half of the world's assets. It seems impossible. How have we given so much to so few and so little to so many.

When Konstantin Paustovsky was a child his father told him, "you will see many interesting things in your life - that is, if you are an interesting man yourself." Bare witness to the truth and to suffering, even if it's not enough.

Isn't forgiveness a divine inspiration, Mr. Cohen? You speak of Nelson Mandela's Christian forbearance after centuries of domination by an alien culture that came for diamonds and room and stayed and claimed other people's lands and lives, bringing their religion(s) with them. I wonder if we African-Americans, without spoons and without the promised 40 acres and mule, have forgiven. I suppose it depends upon to whom you speak. The trans-Atlantic bridge spanning apartheid regimes there and here are still alive. Your friend's "Do your best; God will do the rest" are like a spoon chiming on an empty glass. In America, particularly this Donald Trump America, white America does not forgive. Many millions of them not alive during slavery and Reconstruction and Jim Crow have not forgiven what they took and what the slaves gave. Their gods told them they owned a divine right to a crushing rulership over others. Martin Luther King had this one wrong; every day in the Secessionist South was Sunday. He forgave; his memory is hated still, his death 50 years ago memorialized. It is not easy to mention Madiba's name in a sentence with Trump's, but let's see if I can. The former was a light in what seemed like Dante's frozen Ninth Circle. The latter is the wellspring for all the evils that inhabit the human soul. One forgives and a nation is re-born. Another hates and a nation recalls its bygone past with longing when its symbols were the rope and the lash and the hammer. And no spoons.

Can you please delete the previous comment by me as it has a one word typo? Here is the updated comment . ---------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Mr Cohen, What an amazing article! For readers like me who have been spared such horrors, and, would never have otherwise understood it, your words are more than a thousand pictures. Mr. Mandela would have been proud. ------------------------------------------------------------------

Will society ever consider giving something back? Expropriation Without Payment. Must there be violence to correct economic injustice visited on a people as a result of wars of conquest.

Nelson Mandela has been one of my heroes for my adult life. Here are the reasons. He dedicated his life to a fight against injustice. He maintained his principles, and did not sell out even though it forced him to endure terrible hardships. He sustained harsh mistreatment and cruel injustice but he did not not succumb to anger and bitterness. He demonstrated great strength and integrity. Even after all he went through, he was able to show kindness and civility to others, including his oppressors. I too thank Nelson Mandela, for showing me through example the most noble path to walk. And thank you to Roger Cohen.

Gives me hope that 'this too" shall pass. Others have endured much worse suffering. and still do. even here in the USA. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Cohen. Your writings on Mandela are pieces of beauty. They remind me where to cast my eyes. Nobility in extremis. Forgiveness. Maybe we Americans can stand up to the brutality and harming children and others when doing so will not risk 27 years in prison. Thank you also for including the link "Thank you, Madiba" to your earlier, very beautiful essay.

The best thing I’ve read all week.

Thank you for the piece. Long Walk To Frreedom, Nelson Mandela's story, makes clear that he himself was far from perfect, and he would smile with understanding, at the story of the stolen spoon.

Thank you for this piece. When current events seem overwhelming, I think of my daughters and their friends, probably much like your daughter and her friends, and it gives me confidence for the future. Not a spoonstealer among them.

"There are more bystanders than heroes in times of oppression. That’s part of the survival gene — even if humanity’s ultimate survival depends on the few who will resist." Yes we have 60 million of them standing by as the vile man they voted for oppresses everyone here in the US but the rich. Thank you for being one of the few and for being a voice for the oppressed.

Thank you, Roger Cohen for this composition that brings hope without a sugar coating and reminds us of selfless leadership based on love and compassion at a time when we have submerged into the depths of negative leadership, propelled by anger and hatred without a trace of empathy. Thank you for reminding us of other possibilities than the current American political reality.

Your piece on Mandela brought on a tear. In the late fifties early sixties I spent five years in South Africa. My late wife and I and seven month old daughter started out looking down from our Dawson’s Hotel room to one of you family stores. Those five years opened my/our eyes to the reality of the lives of all the Bantu we knew. And the need for all of us on this small planet to come together. An incredibly beautiful country. And a wonderful people. www.InquiryAbraham.com

We spent nearly half of this month in South Africa, starting off in Zimbabwe and Botswana with photo safaris and touring Victoria Falls, then moving south to Johannesburg. We took a vintage train from Pretoria to Cape Town, one of the world’s most beautiful cities. There was not time to visit Robben Island, Nelson Mandela’s longtime prison, but only to view it from afar. I confess that touristy activities like visiting the spectacular Graff vineyard, taking a cable car to the top of Table Mountain, dining and shopping in the V & A area on Dock Street. We did attend a service in Bishop Desmond Tutu’s church. Before going to Cape Town, we visited Soweto outside Johannesburg and the home where Mandela first lived after his release from Robben Island. The house is small with several double-use rooms, but much larger than the ramshackle areas of Soweto Township one sees from the highway. Mandela’s house is two blocks from Bishop Tutu’s home – two Nobelists on a single, humble street. A visit to the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg is a must. Two points occur in response to Roger Cohen. First, one of the early white voices in support of Nelson Mandela was Jewish: Helen Suzman, a brave South African politician. Second, Mandela’s decision to pardon completely all of the leaders of apartheid was a mistake. Some punishment needed to be meted out or firm rules set, because one senses some backsliding by Afrikaner landowners and businessmen today.

There are always more bystanders than heroes. We only start to notice the heroes when times get bad. If everyone took one step toward the heroes, the human race could be so much better. We have taken many steps since WWII and the Holocaust toward equality for Jews, women, blacks, Asians, non-heterosexuals. We have ventured into a no-man's land between a point where the edge of human equality is almost visible in a world unknown and the edge of a past known, but unequal and now dangerous to the future of the human race can still be seen. It is time for the bystanders to surge forward behind the heroes. Smile at someone who is not in your "tribe", say please, thank you and you're welcome. Hold a door for someone (even if you are the old white woman), let someone go before you in line. See the face of the one you love the most in this world on every human you encounter. Fear and hate for "the others" were born in the caves of prehistory. They have no place in the now and in the future. There are no longer any "others", there are only other humans.