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A few media [sometimes] got it right, he allows in one of the chapters: the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Christian Science Monitor.
Media omissions could be divided into [several] categories that could strengthen the accusation that much of the mainstream coverage was distorting crucial facts. The categories were "The Reporting on Apartheid, . . . The American Economic and Political Role, . . . Reporting Black South Africa, . . . The Liberation Movements, . . . and Improving Press Coverage."
"Mandela became a media substitute for the struggle even as his hopes of 'a better life for all' ran up against trench warfare by the real economic powers here and in the world."
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Another emphasis is on those others who labored for years against Apartheid, who worked beside Mandela, who himself adamantly asserts that he couldn't have done it by himself.
"No doubt Mandela's media celebrity and the TV coverage had helped advance the struggle. Many other pressures, external and internal, [underlining mine] ultimately brought down the walls of apartheid--it was a uniquely globalized struggle at the dawn of the era of globalization. Eventually, it was a process of popular struggle and nonviolent pressure, not violent revolution that turned the tide in South Africa.
The extent of human sacrifice by a rainbow of races embraced death [10,000, Schechter specifies], maiming, lifelong involvement, unquenchable activism, moment-to-moment labor, and more.
"More than that, it was the determination of millions that made a difference, with songs to lift our hearts."
The "unachievable dream" happened in 1994: the lifting of Apartheid peacefully. History happened. South Africa became the rainbow nation, a world "miracle."
And so the peaceful transformation, a miracle considering the bloodshed that preceded it, was the work of Mandela and others. Mandela may occupy the heart of even this narrative, but it takes more than a heart to operate our bodies.
"The activists who invited me into their movement back in the 1960s believed they could liberate their country, and fought with dogged determination through all the dark times when change seemed so unlikely.
"They also believed in me, a person who cared from a far-away land, and a culture that was not their own."
The rainbow metamorphosis was so much more than rebellions against Apartheid: Schechter stresses at many points that "South Africa's fight was a national liberation battle, a fight for the rights of all people in that country to live, vote, and have a say in their destiny. It was an anti-colonial struggle on one hand, but also a human rights fight."
And that ultimately it was a battle to free us all, worldwide--GlobalVision's perspective: that South Africans fought for all of us.
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