Comparing speeches by Nelson Mandela and Margaret Thatcher is an interesting exercise in discriminating not just political rhetoric, but two contrasting styles of thinking and perceiving the world.
Mandela became the President of South Africa after enduring decades of imprisonment for his armed struggle against the apartheid racism imposed on black South Africans by the Africaans-speaking white minority. His words ring out with a righteous defence of the defenceless, an acute awareness of the European rape of Africa during the colonial and post-colonial era, and a remarkably balanced and humane approach to finding solutions that involved making peace with those who had abused his people and imprisoned him for much of his life.
Margaret Thatcher, the daughter of a conservative grocer, became the first female English Prime Minister, and was re-elected three times, dominating English politics from 1979 to 1990. Her conservatism was an expression of capitalist values, which exalted privatisation, corporate power, and the interests of business, wealth, privilege, and private property over concern for human beings. Her vision of Christianity blurred the concern of Jesus for the poor, twisting his words instead to justify the cruelty and insensitivity of her policies.
Both Mandela and Thatcher were creatures of their times, and of the cultures in which they grew up. In fact, their values are virtually mirror images of each other, and they drew diametrically opposite conclusions about the contemporary history in which they both played their parts.
Of the two, Mandela is unquestionably the far greater political leader, speechwriter, and human being. While Thatcher claimed to be morally anointed by her preachy Christianity, her actions belied a profound contempt for human rights and the plight of the masses of human beings, both in England and elsewhere. She rose to power on an anti-immigrant stance that is just a few degrees remo...