Mandela's forgotten memories recovered

For three decades the notebooks gathered dust in a cupboard, unknown to the world, forgotten even by their author, but cherished by the secret policeman who sensed history in their pages. As an apartheid agent Donald Card's job involved the decoding of confiscated writings of Robben Island prisoner 46664, to read between the lines about where the liberation movement was headed.

Except by the time he received the two books in 1971 Card had lost faith in South Africa's white regime and so without telling anyone he locked away the private thoughts of Nelson Mandela in a cupboard at his home in eastern Cape.

This week the two notebooks surfaced when the retired spy handed them over in an emotional ceremony of restitution which Mandela said was the signal for a nationwide "recovery of memory".

http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-National&ao=122814

He is the living embodiment of the hope that leaders can embrace decency. Mandela stands with the great comparable figures in history: Cincinattus and Washington. Like them he is a man who could struggle against great odds for their country - and their world - and having done so, gracefully surrender power.

"What I am condemning is that one power, with a president who has no foresight, who cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust."

"Why is the United States behaving so arrogantly? All that (Mr. Bush) wants is Iraqi oil."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/30/iraq/main538607.shtml

As Bush leads the world down the path of the Valley of the Shadow of Death:

Yet another reason we must defeat the criminals who rule our country is to consider what a disgrace it would be for the United States if, when the great Mandela passes on, our country sends Dick Cheney to the funeral.

Cheney was one of the few members of congress to vote AGAINST a resolution calling for Mandela's release from prison. For this alone, the cowardly piggish intellectually and morally crippled Cheney will rot in history.