Posts Tagged ‘Piek Botha’
Gandhi and Mandela: Two South Africans
April 16th, 2015 | 
Author: 
Johan Galtung
By Johan Galtung
Mohandas Gandhi invented the nonviolent approach to basic social change, Satyagraha, in South Africa in the early 20th century; Nelson Mandela presided over the birth of a one person-one vote democracy at the end of the century. Both were lawyers, trained in English Common Law; good in the sense of a keen consciousness of what is right and wrong, bad in the sense of a court process identifying who is in the wrong rather than solving underlying conflicts, and wrong in the sense of punishing the wrong-doer; violence rather than cooperation.
Both built on the positive side of law – the indelible rights of the people for whom they were fighting by comparing empirical facts with normative rights; immigrant Indians in the case of Gandhi, original inhabitants in South Africa, the Blacks, in the case of Mandela.
Gandhi (1869-1948) did not live to see equality between Indians and whites in South Africa, but in India, his mother-father land; Mandela (1918-2013) did. They won their struggles – but the societies that emerged still suffer from other and major ones.
A deep culture united them: the culture of law. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Africa, Cold War - new, Conflict and war, Democracy - local & global, Development, Human rights and justice, India, International law, Johan Galtung, Nobel Peace Prize, Nonviolence, Norway, Pakistan, Peace, Psychology - war & peace, Russia, US Empire, US politics & security, Violence-prevention, World order/governance | 
Tags: apartheid, colonialism, Gandhi, Gandhi in South Africa, imperialism, Israel, law- domestic law, Mandela, Piek Botha, Satyagraha, South Africa | 
No Comments »