Yes, it was entirely wrong for South Africa to deny the vote and human rights on grounds of race.
No argument there.
But that does not mean we have to worship Nelson Mandela and the ANC.
Those who struggled against apartheid
in South Africa turned out to be democrats.
However,
as the left has so often done,
they supported foreign totalitarians
- notably in this case Cuba, Libya, Zimbabwe and the Palestinians.
I criticise the violent left-wing revolutionaries Mandela and the ANC here.
But they are not all bad.
Like the equally violent Irish revolutionaries of 1916-22, they
basically believed in democracy.
They now run a real democracy in South Africa - with elections and freedom of opposition.
South Africa is in fact one of the few
free countries
in Africa.
Mandela and the ANC are to be commended for this.
But we should not canonise Mandela,
or ignore his dictator-friendly foreign policy,
or forget the ANC's darker side (such as bombings).
He is a very flawed figure.
Where Is Mandela's Apology?
by Myles Kantor, July 22, 2003
- Mandela's praise for Gaddafi, Arafat, Castro and even Islamic Iran.
Mandela's support for tyrants:
Nelson Mandela's support for communism,
and his praise for Cuba and Libya.
He said about Castro's Cuba:
"There's one thing where that country stands out head and shoulders above the rest. That is in its love for human rights and liberty."
Nelson Mandela,
1990,
on Gaddafi:
"We consider ourselves comrades in arms.
...
Your readiness to provide us with the facilities of forming an army of liberation
indicated your commitment to the fight for peace and human rights in the world."
Mandela on the terrorist butcher Arafat, Nov 2004:
"Yasser Arafat was one of the outstanding freedom fighters of this generation, one who gave his entire life to the cause of the Palestinian people.
We honour his memory today."
Nelson Mandela, 25 June 2008, finally comes out with some late, wet and watery criticism of Mugabe.
"Nearer to home we had seen ... and the tragic failure of leadership in our neighbouring Zimbabwe."
That's it.
That's all he has to say - several years too late - about the brutal dictator that has destroyed Zimbabwe
and starved its people.
Pathetic.
A tragic failure of leadership is right.
Kader Asmal, in Phoenix, 21 May 2010, calls Israel,
the freest country in the Middle East,
an "apartheid" state.
He says Israel is to blame for the breakdown in the peace process.
He calls for a boycott and sanctions against Israel.
Mandela with the dictator Castro,
who stamped out Cuban human rights for decades.
And search.
It seems that Mandela, like many other flawed figures, was ultimately not against
the oppression of all human beings.
He was only against the oppression of his people.
No democratic country should act without consulting
a bunch of thugs, murderers, Islamic clerics, anti-semites, racists,
communist tyrants and genocidal dictators.
He says:
"No country, however powerful it may be, is entitled to act outside the UN.
When UN secretaries-general were white we never had the question of any country ignoring the United Nations,
but now that we have got black secretaries-general like Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Kofi Annan
certain countries that believe in white supremacy are ignoring the UN for racist reasons."
Mandela's speech after the liberation of Iraq, June 2003
- "the actions that have been taken against Iraq are completely inexcusable".
Like all UN enthusiasts, he never offers any defence of
the UN, any reason why we should support it, given its corrupt nature.
He simply asserts that we should.
Mandela picks Iraq over U.S.,
R.W. Johnson, National Post, October 11, 2002
- on ANC links to
Libya, Saudi Arabia, Suharto's Indonesia and Saddam's Iraq.
"Mandela's case is more complex. He shares the general Third World nervousness
at the new doctrine of "regime change"
- for if the United States is to start deposing Third World dictators on general principle,
many of Mandela's friends and donors would be at risk"
The Global Elders -
Mandela's self-appointed panel of "global elders" who we are all meant to "respect", announced 2007.
Newsweek, 2 July 1990,
exposes Mandela's disgusting politics.
He has "no time" to be looking into human rights in Cuba and Libya.
I also love the way only "conservatives" could be disturbed by his support for Gaddafi and Castro,
and only "Jews" could be disturbed by his support for Arafat.
Mandela was granted the
Freedom of Dublin
in 1988.
Mandela with the dictator Gaddafi,
who stamped out Libyan human rights for decades.
And search.
Mandela set up a democracy in South Africa, and for that he should be commended.
But did he ever call for democracy and human rights for Cuba and Libya?
If so, tell me here.
The Trial of Mandela
in 1963-64
(see trial documents)
produced a document hand-written by Mandela before his arrest in 1962, called How To Be A Good Communist.
The above is from
Exhibits R Rivonia.
Note other communist material.
The site
rhodesia.nl
carries what seems to be the full text of
How To Be A Good Communist by Nelson Mandela.
This agrees with the extracts at the trial.
This shows the document to be (sometimes closely, sometimes loosely) based on
the Stalinist text
How to Be a Good Communist (1939)
by Chinese revolutionary (later Mao's head of state)
Liu Shaoqi.
There are
some additions on South Africa.
Mandela seems to be paraphrasing Liu Shaoqi
and adding some of his own material.
From the document:
"A Communist is a member of the Communist Party who understands and accepts the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism as explained by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin
...
Under a Communist Party Government South Africa will become a land of milk and honey.
...
The victory of Socialism in the U.S.S.R., in the Peoples Republic of China, in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and Rumania, where the living conditions of the people were in many respects similar and even worse than ours, proves that we too can achieve this important goal.
...
The cause of Communism is the greatest cause in the history of mankind".
From the document
"Dialectical Materialism",
hand-written by Mandela,
presented at the trial above.
In power in the 1990s, Mandela was not a communist. He was a democrat.
But like so many leftists,
he praised and supported communists.
Of course, South Africa denied their human rights, and they could not vote,
so a case could be made for the use of some force.
But it is important to remember that Mandela and the ANC were not peaceful.
And some of their actions were basically terrorism.
Yes, South Africa has moved on.
The
2009 election
shows a thriving multi-party democracy.
(If a bit lopsided.)
People want to forget the past.
But my website is all about bringing people unpleasantness.
Everyone forgets that
Mandela and the ANC were violent.
The Irish Times,
24 Dec 1985,
reporting on the
Amanzimtoti shopping centre
bomb attack on white Christmas shoppers.
Mandela is more like Gerry Adams than like Gandhi.
Former African Slave Blasts Bishop Tutu on Israel.
Simon Deng, a black African who was held as a slave by
Arab Islamists in Sudan,
defends Israel against Tutu's attacks.
"The State of Israel is not an apartheid state. I know because I write this from Jerusalem where I have seen Arab mothers peacefully strolling with their families - even though I also drove on Israeli roads protected by walls and fences from Arab bullets and stones. I know Arabs go to Israeli schools, and get the best medical care in the world. I know they vote and have elected representatives to the Israeli Parliament. ... None of this was true for blacks under Apartheid in Tutu's South Africa.
I also know countries that do deserve the apartheid label: My country, Sudan, is on the top of the list, but so are Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. What has happened to my people in Sudan is a thousand times worse than Apartheid in South Africa. And no matter how the Palestinians suffer, they suffer nothing compared to my people. Nothing. And most of the suffering is the fault of their leaders. Bishop Tutu, I see black Jews walking down the street here in Jerusalem. Black like us, free and proud."
When Tutu retired, Oct 2010, TIME magazine absurdly described him as
"the world's moral compass".
See cover.
Freedom House still ranks South Africa as
"Free",
and this is to be praised.
But there are worrying tendencies.
Elections are very
lop-sided
(ANC gets 66 percent of the vote,
next party gets 17 percent)
and this is not healthy.
The new President
Jacob Zuma
is a disturbing figure.
Of course, there are evil murderers of all races all over the world.
But one wonders, based not on anecdote but on the stats above,
if there is a racist element to a lot of crime against whites in South Africa.
For balance, if you know of any similar brutal crimes by whites
against blacks in South Africa since 1994,
tell me here.
Jacob Zuma sings the racist hate song "Shoot the Boer", Jan 2012.
The Spear,
a satirical painting of the creepy South African President
Jacob Zuma.
Zuma and the ANC responded not by ignoring this, but with a defamation lawsuit,
showing their worrying authoritarian tendencies.
has (on pp.118-120) extracts from How To Be A Good Communist, hand-written by Mandela.
Since 1995.
