Why is Nelson Mandela a hero?
Try using a search engine to look for sites for Nelson Mandela. Then try looking at your results to see if you can find a site which criticises Mandela. Then look at the TV programme and see whether it has any criticisms of him. Ask your teacher if he or she has ever heard or seen Mandela being criticised. Your task is to try to work out why Mandela is such a hero to so many people. Use the programme and the recommended sites. Try to decide whether Mandela is a hero because of: • The cause he fought for • The way he fought for it • His own personality • The nature of his opponents • Other factors you identify yourself • Any combinations of these factors Activity 3: Comparing heroes — Nelson Mandela and Yasser Arafat A simple search on the Internet on Mandela also threw up two references to the PLO leader Yasser Arafat (featured in Programme 5 of this series). • The first one was about Arafat, but contained the phrase: ‘No one is asking Arafat to be a Nelson Mandela. But if he were…’ .
