December 14, 2013
The “Black Jesus.” That’s what the late Nelson Mandela was called by many South Africans, who greeted his death last week with intense national mourning.
Mandela was a great man, and great leader. But he was no Jesus. I rather call him “mahatma,” meaning great spirit, the Hindu title conferred upon Gandhi.
Like Gandhi, Mandela, at least in his later years, was a combination of saintly, non-violent national leader and wily politician.
Having covered South Africa, and the bush wars in Southwest Africa (today’s Namibia), and Angola during the 1980’s, let me add my thoughts about Nelson Mandela.
I came very close to securing an interview with him while he was still in prison, but it was cancelled on the last minute. White-ruled South Africa was in a state of intense, nervous transition at the time – what the French call fin du regime – as the old apartheid order crumbled.
Contrary to popular belief, Mandela did not overthrow the apartheid system. A combination of fierce pressure and much violence from the African National Congress and Communist Party, foreign economic and military sanctions, and the fear of invasion by Cuban and East Bloc troops from Angola finally did in the white regime.
South Africa’s Boers, whose ancestors came to the Cape from Flanders in the 1600’s, wanted to fight on. But the nation’s English-speaking Anglos did not; many fled. Ironically, South Africa’s Boers had been there longer than the other two major tribes, the Xhosa and Zulu, both of whose ancestors had emigrated from the north. The Zulu had wiped out other local tribes in the notorious Mfakane massacres.
During the 1980’s, Mandela was both number two at the African National Congress and a senior leader of its ally, the Communist Party. Mandela also headed up the Umkhonto we Sizwe or Spear of the Nation, the violent fighting arm of the ANC. He was a hereditary prince of the Xhosa people.
In those days, the US and Britain branded Mandela and the ANC as “terrorists.” White civilians were killed, restaurants and bars bombed. I joined a special South African unit up on the Limpopo River trying to protect isolated, elderly white farmers from being murdered by gangs of ANC gunmen.
In fact, most of the ANC’s white victims were civilians. Hundreds of blacks accused of collaboration with the government were “necklaced” (burned to death by having gasoline-filled tires put around their necks). It was your typically brutal, dirty revolutionary war, the kind I’d covered in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Amazingly, Mandela remained on the notorious US terrorist black list until 2008. Today, America’s hard right and neoconservatives still call Mandela a terrorist for having called Israel a “colonialist apartheid state” and human rights violator. Mandela hailed Libya’s Muammar Khadaffi and Palestine’s Yasser Arafat as liberators.
As a result, Israel’s current rightwing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, boycotted Mandela’s funeral and unleashed his North American attack dogs on the memory of the great South African. Israel and apartheid South Africa were very close allies. Israel supplied Pretoria arms, US political support, and nuclear technology.
Remember others who brought peace to South Africa: the last white leader, F.W. deKlerk, a man of wisdom who read the writing on the wall. Zulu Chief Mangusutu Buthelezi who, with Mandela, prevented a Zulu-Xhosa conflict, and Foreign Minister Pik Botha. Their combined efforts resulted in a smooth transition to majority rule and allowed the whites to retreat with honor.
Most revolutions rarely produce happy outcomes. The ANC became all-powerful, a one-party government riddled with corruption and malfeasance. Crime has run rampant in post apartheid South Africa.
Many white farmers have been terrorized off their land by black gangs; white emigration continues to be high. Under white rule, South Africa accounted for almost half of Africa’s economic output; today, its economy is sagging, driven by the fall in gold and mineral prices.
The current ANC leader, President Jacob Zuma, was roundly booed at Mandela’s funeral. Which proves my dictum that every people has the basic right to be misruled by their own kind.
Compared to today’s world leaders, Mandela does looks like a saint. He was wise enough to serve only one term before failing health and grubby politics tarnished his renown. His memory will shine on.
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copyright Eric S. Margolis 2013
This post is in: Africa, Nelson Mandela
Some additional info about the lady (and I use the term loosely) that was going to use British troops to quell the miners in ’84’:
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Margaret Thatcher barely mentioned the plight of Nelson Mandela when she controversially invited the hardline South African president PW Botha to talks at Chequers on 2 June 1984, newly released Downing Street files show, throwing into doubt claims made after Mandela’s death last month.
Two of Thatcher’s closest supporters, Norman Tebbit and Charles Moore, claimed on Mandela’s death that as prime minister, she had put persistent pressure on Botha to release Mandela. Moore claimed that “the release of Mandela was the strongest and most specific of all her demands”
I’m not pro-apartheid, but from the Guardian (not the only paper I read), the article about problems in Zimbabwe sums up some of the problems in the manner in which Africa was ‘freed’:
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“But this year, the holiday spirit has been dimmed by Zimbabwe’s worsening economic situation marked by company closures and job losses.
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Banks have experienced shortages of cash. Zimbabweans waited in long, winding lines at banks to withdraw money but many depositors came out with a just a fraction of the money in their accounts that they had hoped to spend during the holiday period.”
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This, too, is part of Mandela’s legacy.
…and from the Guardian, “Nelson Mandela apparently underwent weapons training by Mossad agents in Ethiopia in 1962 without the Israeli secret service knowing his true identity, according to an intriguing secret letter lodged in the Israeli state archives.
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The missive, revealed by the Israeli paper Haaretz two weeks after the death of the iconic South African leader, said Mandela was instructed in the use of weapons and sabotage techniques, and was encouraged to develop Zionist sympathies.”
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Slightly less Saintly… I’m not sure that he has benefited Africa in any fashion… Africa, in general, has overthrown one oppressor for another. I fear that they have outpaced the rest of the world. As the world grows ‘uglier’, Africa is headed in a faster downward spiral.
Wow, the media never talks about this. What amazed me about the memorial service was the fact that England and America’s leaders were allowed to give speeches (that set the world record for hypocrisy) when they were the last countries to call for Mandela’s release, but Canada which was one of the first was not. Brian Mulroney who lead the charge and whom Mandela called “My son” was there, but was allowed to say nothing.