I dislike the way people tend to 'big up' people once they are dead. It happens a lot.
but that is not what is going on here.
Mandela was a hero figure to lots of people
while he was alive. He didn't just win The Nobel Peace Prize - he had hundreds of honours.
The reason, i believe, for his global popularity comes from the fact that he was just a human being with flaws. He made mistakes but he came good. He did good.
His early life was full of fuck ups. He flunked a degree. He was also a bit of a ladies man. He put it about - a bit like JFK. He was connected with communism and then Marxism and he would also be known as a socialist. He was many things in his 95 years.
I think you must have got mixed up about the necklace thing. Mandela was no thug. He was a founder of the military wing of the ANC and he masterminded several sabotage attacks on government buildings. Bombings. They were all night time operations to avoid civilian casualties. He was jailed for this in 1962 and he had no contact with anyone whom he could organise more activities.
It was Winnie Mandela who is linked to those necklace murders. He learned she had become a leader of her own gang and about her violence while in prison. However, he did not divorce her until she was found guilty in court. He distanced himself from her, though and if you check on the dates of those murders you will see he was in prison anyway.
In prison he was a peaceful man. He entered as the lowest rank and just before his release he was staying in the warders house. Why? because he was well liked. He helped a lot of the angry uprising youth that were jailed after him. The rest is history. Made possible by him. No he wasn't a saint, or a mesiah, just a very ordinary man who accomplished some extraordinary stuff.
And he hugged the spice girls
