COVER N. 205 - FRANCE

Postmark:  Nelson Mandela 1918-2013 1er Jour 20.01.2023 Paris 

Posted on the 20th January; Received on the 25th January 2023
_________________________________________________________________________________

A caravan of cars comes up to the gate. a couple exits the leading car. The gate opens, and a man, not that young anymore, walks away, head high, hand in hand with his wife, towards the crowd that cheers. His wife raises a fist; he raises a fist, and in his fist it is hope that rises; it is peace and development that rises; it is reconciliation  that rises...

February 1990, live on TV, for all the world to witness. 

Bertold Brecht once said "There are men that fight one day and are good, others fight one year and they're better, and there are those who fight many years and are very good, but there are the ones who fight their whole lives and those are the indispensable ones”

 Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was one of these few.

Some things are impossible to forget, and some may be even harder to forgive. And yet Nelson Mandela chose the path of appeasement over that of revenge; life and justice, over  hatred and prosecution; ethics over brutality.

If ever the Nobel prize for Peace was well awarded, that time was in 1993, and even though there were two recipients, for both played a major part in the process that led to the termination of one of the most obnoxious regimes that ever existed on the face of earth, one of them did it from the oppressed side, the down side of history, while the other had not to endure the discomfort and hardships of  an entire life of prosecution and imprisonment.

Once there was one such a man, and the world became a better place because of him....

One cannot but think of him and of his legacy, upon turning on the TV nowadays at news time.....How can men be so absolutely different.....

Thank you so much, Pierre, for a beautiful cover dedicated to a beautiful Human Being!

Green is the colour of hope. That's probably why green was chosen as the main colour of the 1,80 € (new tariff for up to 20g international ) stamp that honours Madiba, Nelson Mandela, issued on 20JAN2023 by La Poste.

The first day postmark features a symbolic clenched fist, but I wonder if the position if which it is depicted is not also evidence of the idiotic politically correct times we live in, when anything that might be connected with a certain social vision is whitewashed or transubstantiated for fear of being perceived as  declared support to that idea... ? just wondering....