For what its worth, here is a write-up I did for the issue that named the Mandela Effect at another forum a couple of years ago:
"I gave this some thought today, and it seems there are several ways to explain what Broome terms the ”Mandela Effect”, ranging from the fantastic to the mundane, such as:
1. The people who ”remember” Mandela dying in the 1980s are right, but it did not happen in the timeline we consider as the "original timeline". Rather, these people are originally from an alternate timeline and were sometime between then and now somehow transferred into this timeline. Or, alternately, what we see as the original timeline ”invaded” their timeline and rewrote it to destroy the history they remember. Or similar timeline-hopping shananigans in this vein.
2. The people who ”remember” Mandela dying in the 1980s are right, but the fact of Mandela's death was covered up by a immensely powerful conspiracy, all (or most) traces of it were removed from history and a very similar-looking replacement put into his place.
3. The people who ”remember” Mandela dying in the 1980s simply remember it wrong.
I am going out on a limb here and saying that the last option is far-and-above most plausible one and the only one to merit serious consideration here.
Why then could such a ”composite false memory” (so to speak) be born, what would be the ”ingredients” it was built upon? Bear in mind that like some comments in the blog point out, the "memory" of Mandela's death seems to be predominately (almost exclusively) an American phenomenon. Below, I'll try to suggest some ideas.
The Mandela Effect – Some IngredientsNelson Mandela was incarcerated in Pollsmoor prison in 1982-1988, together with several leading ANC members. At this time, his international fame was at its all-time high and he as an ANC leader was often featured in the news media in the United States, as well as was the apartheid system and the situation in South Africa in general. International pleas were made to the South African government to release him, even by major leaders such as Margaret Thatcher. International banks stopped funding SA, leading to economic stagnation causing also banks to petition for his release. In 1985 Mandela underwent surgery for an enlarged prostate gland and was moved into new quarters inside the prison. In June 1985 President Botha's government declared a state of emergency, initiating a police crackdown on the anti-apartheid movement. As an answer the ANC committed 231 attacks in 1986 and 235 in 1987. In 1988, Mandela's 70th birthday attracted major international attention, notably with the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute concert at London's Wembley Stadium. Recovering from tuberculosis exacerbated by the dank conditions in his cell, in December 1988 Mandela was moved to Victor Verster Prison near Paarl.
Why would people remember ”knowing” Mandela died in prison? One ingredient might be the news about him suffering from medical problems – the tuberculosis and the prostate operation. A knowledge of medical problems would cause people to be potentially receptive to the idea of Mandela dying. It was also remembered that while in Robben Prison in 1962-1982, Mandela had taken part in hunger strikes and that the prisoners had been badly treated, also physically abused.
Another ingredient to consider could be the two 1987 films centering on apartheid, Richard Attenborough's Cry Freedom that told the story of Steve Biko (Denzel Washington), another South African black activist and Mandela's one-time fellow prison inmate, who actually died in prison in 1977, and Mandela, Philip Saville's TV movie that was centered on Nelson Mandela's (played by Danny Glover) life until that point. An interesting thing to note is that the movies were released back to back – Mandela was released in the United States on 20 September 1987 while Cry Freedom premiered there on 6 November 1987. It is not unlikely that people who saw the two films with a highly similar subject matter in under two months could have later conflated the stories together – and the prison death of another black South African activist would have mutated into the prison death of Nelson Mandela. Also, the very fact that there was a biopic made of Mandela might suggest to some that he had died or to reinforce that "memory" (some of the comments point to this direction).
Yet another ingredient in the mix might be the sudden death and public, televised funeral of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme in February 1986. While Palme obviously was not South African or black, he was a prominent supporter of the non-aligned movement and well known internationally for being a vocal opponent of apartheid and a supporter of ANC in general and Nelson Mandela in particular. As prime minister, Palme had presided over Swedish economic sanctions against South Africa, and the Swedish were also giving direct economic support to the ANC, much more than other European nations. Just days before Palme's assassination, he had again publicly spoken against apartheid, addressing the ”Swedish People's Parliament” in Stockholm and telling how he believed they have ”a responsibility for bringing this repulsive system to an end”. Palme's death was considered a major blow by the ANC, too. In January 1987 Oliver Tambo, the ANC chairman, gave the first Olof Palme Memorial Lecture in New York, in which se said, among other things, that
Our own people will always remember Olof Palme as one of us, an unswerving opponent of the apartheid system, one who took sides by supporting the oppressed and our organisation, the African National Congress. Apart from his deep-seated revulsion at the theory and practice of racial domination in our country, he was determined to ensure that we too should have unrestricted access to political power and thus put ourselves in the position where we could take our own sovereign decisions about the future of our country.
It seems to me it is possible that if the news about Palme's death and funeral were in the US media interspersed with news about apartheid and the situation in South Africa in general, for many people who did not possibly have a clear, preconceived idea about who Palme was, the death news might mix with the other ingredients to later surface as a part of ”composite false memory” about the death and funeral of Nelson Mandela. It is IMHO at least certainly conceivable that seeing people from the left, the non-aligned movement and the critics of the South African government offer their eulogies to Palme many who were rather focused on Mandela as the symbol for apartheid might mistake them speaking about Nelson Mandela. Seeing something like the events of Palme's funeral on TV might also explain why the people remembering Mandela dying in the 80s also distinctly remember a public, televised funeral, something that would have been impossible to organize in South Africa at the time. (Would the years 1985-89 contain also other examples of televised funerals to fit the bill that would have been seen in the US, too, and preferably ones from outside the United States?)
Yet another ingredient could be the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute popular music concert staged on 11 June 1988 at Wembley Stadium in London. It featured many major international artists and was broadcast to 67 countries and an audience of 600 million. While the concert was seen by the organizers and the Anti-Apartheid Movement as a way of raising awareness about apartheid and the imprisonment of ANC leader Mandela, it is easy to see that in some people's memories it could be pegged distinctly as a ”remembrance” event to honor the memory of a dead hero. While the event was very political, in the US for example Fox Television broadcast only a part of it, and by doing that removed a lot of the overtly political content. The Fox broadcast was referred to as a ”significantly deradicalized version”. Fox also did not call the concert Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute but simply billed it Freedomfest – another thing that could have had the effect of clouding some people's perception of what it was all about.
This is a provisional list of ingredients to consider as the basis for the creation of the ”Mandela Effect”, the ”memory” apparently shared by many people (predominately from the US, and often quite young at the time) that Nelson Mandela died in prison in the 1980s, and that this was attended with a televised funeral and other forms of commemoration, something that I could tentatively call a ”composite false memory”.
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As for Dolly's braces, I definitely remember that she had them when she smiled to Jaws.
by coffin_dodger » Fri Sep 30, 2016 11:13 am 
