If Nelson Mandela Really Had Won, He Wouldn't Be Seen as a Universal Hero
Mandela must have died a bitter man. To honor his legacy, we should
focus on the unfulfilled promises his leadership gave rise to
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/12/09-1
Published on Monday, December 9, 2013 by The Guardian
Mandela: Hero Thwarted
Posted on Dec 8, 2013
By Alexander Reed Kelly
<http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/truthdigger_of_the_week_nelson_mandela_20131207>
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37065.htm
The Hijacking of Mandela's Legacy
By Pepe Escobar
December 09, 2013 "Information Clearing House - Beware of strangers
bearing gifts. The "gift" is the ongoing, frantic canonization of
Nelson Mandela. The "strangers" are the 0.0001 percent, that fraction
of the global elite that's really in control (media naturally
included).
It's a Tower of Babel of tributes piled up in layer upon layer of
hypocrisy - from the US to Israel and from France to Britain.
What must absolutely be buried under the tower is that the apartheid
regime in South Africa was sponsored and avidly defended by the West
until, literally, it was about to crumble under the weight of its own
contradictions. The only thing that had really mattered was South
Africa's capitalist economy and immense resources, and the role of
Pretoria in fighting "communism." Apartheid was, at best, a nuisance.
Mandela is being allowed sainthood by the 0.0001% because he extended
a hand to the white oppressor who kept him in jail for 27 years. And
because he accepted - in the name of "national reconciliation" - that
no apartheid killers would be tried, unlike the Nazis.
Among the cataracts of emotional tributes and the crass marketization
of the icon, there's barely a peep in Western corporate media about
Mandela's firm refusal to ditch armed struggle against apartheid (if
he had done so, he would not have been jailed for 27 years); his
gratitude towards Fidel Castro's Cuba - which always supported the
people of Angola, Namibia and South Africa fighting apartheid; and
his perennial support for the liberation struggle in Palestine.
Young generations, especially, must be made aware that during the
Cold War, any organization fighting for the freedom of the oppressed
in the developing world was dubbed "terrorist"; that was the Cold War
version of the "war on terror". Only at the end of the 20th century
was the fight against apartheid accepted as a supreme moral cause;
and Mandela, of course, rightfully became the universal face of the
cause.
It's easy to forget that conservative messiah Ronald Reagan - who
enthusiastically hailed the precursors of al-Qaeda as "freedom
fighters" - fiercely opposed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act
because, what else, the African National Congress (ANC) was
considered a "terrorist organization" (on top of Washington branding
the ANC as "communists").
The same applied to a then-Republican Congressman from Wyoming who
later would turn into a Darth Vader replicant, Dick Cheney. As for
Israel, it even offered one of its nuclear weapons to the Afrikaners
in Pretoria - presumably to wipe assorted African commies off the map.
In his notorious 1990 visit to the US, now as a free man, Mandela
duly praised Fidel, PLO chairman Yasser Arafat and Col. Gaddafi as
his "comrades in arms": "There is no reason whatsoever why we should
have any hesitation about hailing their commitment to human rights."
Washington/Wall Street was livid.
And this was Mandela's take, in early 2003, on the by then inevitable
invasion of Iraq and the wider war on terror; "If there is a country
that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the
United States of America." No wonder he was kept on the US government
terrorist list until as late as 2008.
From terrorism to sainthood
In the early 1960s - when, by the way, the US itself was practicing
apartheid in the South - it would be hard to predict to what extent
"Madiba" (his clan name), the dandy lawyer and lover of boxing with
an authoritarian character streak, would adopt Gandhi's non-violence
strategy to end up forging an exceptional destiny graphically
embodying the political will to transform society. Yet the seeds of
"Invictus" were already there.
The fascinating complexity of Mandela is that he was essentially a
democratic socialist. Certainly not a capitalist. And not a pacifist
either; on the contrary, he would accept violence as a means to an
end. In his books and countless speeches, he always admitted his
flaws. His soul must be smirking now at all the adulation.
Arguably, without Mandela, Barack Obama would never have reached the
White House; he admitted on the record that his first political act
was at an anti-apartheid demonstration. But let's make it clear: Mr.
Obama, you're no Nelson Mandela.
To summarize an extremely complex process, in the "death throes" of
apartheid, the regime was mired in massive corruption, hardcore
military spending and with the townships about to explode. Mix
Fidel's Cuban fighters kicking the butt of South Africans (supported
by the US) in Angola and Namibia with the inability to even repay
Western loans, and you have a recipe for bankruptcy.
The best and the brightest in the revolutionary struggle - like
Mandela - were either in jail, in exile, assassinated (like Steve
Biko) or "disappeared", Latin American death squad-style. The actual
freedom struggle was mostly outside South Africa - in Angola, Namibia
and the newly liberated Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
Once again, make no mistake; without Cuba - as Mandela amply stressed
writing from jail in March 1988 - there would be "no liberation of
our continent, and my people, from the scourge of apartheid". Now get
one of those 0.0001% to admit it.
In spite of the debacle the regime - supported by the West - sensed
an opening. Why not negotiate with a man who had been isolated from
the outside world since 1962? No more waves and waves of Third World
liberation struggles; Africa was now mired in war, and all sorts of
socialist revolutions had been smashed, from Che Guevara killed in
Bolivia in 1967 to Allende killed in the 1973 coup in Chile.
Mandela had to catch up with all this and also come to grips with the
fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of what European intellectuals
called "real socialism." And then he would need to try to prevent a
civil war and the total economic collapse of South Africa.
The apartheid regime was wily enough to secure control of the Central
Bank - with crucial IMF help - and South Africa's trade policy.
Mandela secured only a (very significant) political victory. The ANC
only found out it had been conned when it took power. Forget about
its socialist idea of nationalizing the mining and banking industries
- owned by Western capital, and distribute the benefits to the
indigenous population. The West would never allow it. And to make
matters worse, the ANC was literally hijacked by a sorry, greedy
bunch.
Follow the roadmap
John Pilger is spot on pointing to economic apartheid in South Africa
now with a new face.
Patrick Bond has written arguably the best expose anywhere of the
Mandela years - and their legacy.
And Ronnie Kasrils does a courageous mea culpa dissecting how Mandela
and the ANC accepted a devil's pact with the usual suspects.
The bottom line: Mandela defeated apartheid but was defeated by
neoliberalism. And that's the dirty secret of him being allowed
sainthood.
Now for the future. Cameroonian Achille Mbembe, historian and
political science professor, is one of Africa's foremost
intellectuals. In his book Critique of Black Reason, recently
published in France (not yet in English), Mbembe praises Mandela and
stresses that Africans must imperatively invent new forms of
leadership, the essential precondition to lift themselves in the
world. All-too-human "Madiba" has provided the roadmap. May Africa
unleash one, two, a thousand Mandelas.
Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times/Hong Kong, an
analyst for RT and TomDispatch, and a frequent contributor to
websites and radio shows ranging from the US to East Asia.
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