When Mandela wasn’t the messiah
Governments around the
world, who now officially worship Nelson Mandela, once called him a
terrorist and did deals with South Africa’s apartheid regime.
Everybody loves Nelson Mandela. The French press has called him “A hero of our times” (1) and declared that “he changed history” (2). Clint Eastwood’s Hollywood film Invictus
made him movie-star glamorous. The World Cup united us all in worship
of a visionary who rejected violence and led his people to a promised
land where blacks, whites and those of mixed race live together in
harmony. The prison on Robben Island where Mandela was incarcerated for
many years is a must-see for foreign visitors, a reminder of a misty
past: the era of the apartheid regime that was condemned by all, and
especially by western democracies.
Scholars have tried to trace the historical Jesus Christ from the accounts in the Gospels, and so it should be easier to trace the historical Mandela since we have a “gospel” written by the man himself (3), as well as many eyewitness accounts. And yet the Mandela of legend seems as far from reality as the Christ of the Gospels, if not further, because we find it so shocking to admit that this new messiah was once regarded as a terrorist, an ally of the communists and of the Soviet Union, and a revolutionary.
The African National Congress (ANC), which had a strategic alliance with the South African Communist Party, first resorted to armed conflict in 1960, after protesters were killed in the township of Sharpeville. They were demonstrating against the pass system, which required black South Africans to carry a kind of internal passport. The deaths convinced Mandela, who until then believed the struggle should be pursued by legal means, that the white minority would never give up its power and privileges peacefully. Having tried sabotage, the ANC moved on to terrorism on a limited scale, planting bombs in a few cafés.
Mandela was arrested and imprisoned in 1962. In the late 1980s he rejected a number of offers of freedom in return for a repudiation of violence. He wrote in his memoirs that it was always the oppressor, not the oppressed, who dictated the form that the struggle would take. If the oppressor used violence, the oppressed had no choice but to respond with violence. Only violence, supported by popular mobilisation and by ever more restrictive international sanctions, was able to demonstrate the stupidity of the apartheid system and force the white minority government to change. Having established the principle of “one man, one vote”, Mandela and the ANC showed they could be flexible through their efforts to build a “rainbow nation” and the guarantees they made to the white minority. They even scaled down their plans for social transformation – but that is another story.
The ANC enjoyed material and moral support from the Soviet Union and the socialist camp. Many of its officers were educated and trained in Moscow or Hanoi. The struggle spread through southern Africa, where the South African army was trying to establish hegemony. The intervention of Cuban troops in Angola in 1975 and the victories they won, especially at Cuito Cuanavale in 1988, weakened the government’s military power and highlighted the impasse that it faced. Cuito Cuanavale was, according to Mandela, “a turning point for the liberation of our continent and my people” (4). Mandela did not forget the part Cuba had played and Fidel Castro was a guest of honour at Mandela’s inauguration as president in 1994.
In this clash between the black population and the white minority government, the US, the UK, Israel and France took the wrong side, defending apartheid in the name of the struggle against communism. Chester Crocker, the architect of the US policy of constructive engagement in southern Africa under President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, wrote: “By its nature and history South Africa is a part of the western experience, and an integral part of the western economic system” (5). The US supported South Africa’s invasion of Angola in 1975. It flouted the arms embargo and worked closely with the South African intelligence services, rejecting all coercive measures against the white regime, and called on the black majority to show “restraint” and wait patiently for change.
On 22 June 1988, only 18 months before Mandela’s release and the legalisation of the ANC, the US deputy secretary of state John C Whitehead told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: “We must accept that the transition to a non-racial democracy in South Africa will inevitably take longer than all of us would like.” He claimed sanctions would have no “demoralising effect on the white elites” and would primarily hurt the black population.
This was Ronald Reagan’s last, unsuccessful, attempt to prevent Congress from punishing the Pretoria regime. About the same time he was praising the freedom fighters of Afghanistan and Nicaragua and denouncing the ANC and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) for their terrorist tactics.
In the UK, Margaret Thatcher’s government refused to meet representatives of the ANC until Mandela’s release in February 1990. At the Commonwealth summit in Vancouver in October 1987, Thatcher opposed the adoption of sanctions. When asked for her reaction to the ANC’s threat to target British interests in South Africa, she replied: “This shows what a typical terrorist organisation it is.” About this time, the Federation of Conservative Students (the student wing of the Conservative Party) was distributing posters that read “Hang Nelson Mandela and all ANC terrorists: they are butchers”. Britain’s current, Conservative, prime minister David Cameron has tried to suggest he did not belong to this era, talking of “the mistakes my party made in the past”. But a recently updated biography reveals he visited South Africa as the guest of an anti-sanctions lobbying firm in 1989.
Israel remained a steadfast ally of the Pretoria regime to the end, providing it with weapons and helping its nuclear arms and missile programmes. In April 1975, Israel’s present head of state Shimon Peres (then minister of defence), signed a security accord with South Africa. A year later, the South African prime minister John Vorster, a former Nazi sympathiser, was welcomed to Israel with all possible honours. The heads of the two countries’ intelligence services met yearly to coordinate the fight against ANC and PLO terrorism.
In France, President de Gaulle and his rightwing successors were uninhibited in their relations with Pretoria. In an interview in Le Nouvel Observateur (6), Jacques Chirac gloried in having been a long-term supporter of Mandela. Like many rightwing leaders, he has a short memory – and the journalist accepted his amnesia without question. In June 1976 the then prime minister of France had approved a contract for Framatome to build South Africa’s first nuclear power station. An editorial in Le Monde said: “France finds itself in strange company among the small group of partners that Pretoria has judged ‘safe’” (7). The Sunday Times, a major South Africa weekly, carried the story on its front page. Although France had decided in 1975, under pressure from African countries, to stop direct sales of arms to South Africa, it continued to honour existing contracts for several years and South Africa went on to produce French armoured vehicles and aircraft under licence.
Although officially condemning apartheid, France continued to cooperate with the regime at least until 1981. Alexandre de Marenches, the director of France’s external intelligence service (the Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-espionnage) from 1970 to 1981, summed up the philosophy of France’s right wing: “Apartheid is certainly a deplorable system, but change must come without violence.” If the ANC had listened to his advice (or that of Ronald Reagan) and shown restraint, Mandela would have died in prison, South Africa would have fallen into chaos and the world would not have been able to construct the legend of the new messiah.
http://mondediplo.com/2010/08/14mandela
Scholars have tried to trace the historical Jesus Christ from the accounts in the Gospels, and so it should be easier to trace the historical Mandela since we have a “gospel” written by the man himself (3), as well as many eyewitness accounts. And yet the Mandela of legend seems as far from reality as the Christ of the Gospels, if not further, because we find it so shocking to admit that this new messiah was once regarded as a terrorist, an ally of the communists and of the Soviet Union, and a revolutionary.
The African National Congress (ANC), which had a strategic alliance with the South African Communist Party, first resorted to armed conflict in 1960, after protesters were killed in the township of Sharpeville. They were demonstrating against the pass system, which required black South Africans to carry a kind of internal passport. The deaths convinced Mandela, who until then believed the struggle should be pursued by legal means, that the white minority would never give up its power and privileges peacefully. Having tried sabotage, the ANC moved on to terrorism on a limited scale, planting bombs in a few cafés.
Mandela was arrested and imprisoned in 1962. In the late 1980s he rejected a number of offers of freedom in return for a repudiation of violence. He wrote in his memoirs that it was always the oppressor, not the oppressed, who dictated the form that the struggle would take. If the oppressor used violence, the oppressed had no choice but to respond with violence. Only violence, supported by popular mobilisation and by ever more restrictive international sanctions, was able to demonstrate the stupidity of the apartheid system and force the white minority government to change. Having established the principle of “one man, one vote”, Mandela and the ANC showed they could be flexible through their efforts to build a “rainbow nation” and the guarantees they made to the white minority. They even scaled down their plans for social transformation – but that is another story.
The ANC enjoyed material and moral support from the Soviet Union and the socialist camp. Many of its officers were educated and trained in Moscow or Hanoi. The struggle spread through southern Africa, where the South African army was trying to establish hegemony. The intervention of Cuban troops in Angola in 1975 and the victories they won, especially at Cuito Cuanavale in 1988, weakened the government’s military power and highlighted the impasse that it faced. Cuito Cuanavale was, according to Mandela, “a turning point for the liberation of our continent and my people” (4). Mandela did not forget the part Cuba had played and Fidel Castro was a guest of honour at Mandela’s inauguration as president in 1994.
In this clash between the black population and the white minority government, the US, the UK, Israel and France took the wrong side, defending apartheid in the name of the struggle against communism. Chester Crocker, the architect of the US policy of constructive engagement in southern Africa under President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, wrote: “By its nature and history South Africa is a part of the western experience, and an integral part of the western economic system” (5). The US supported South Africa’s invasion of Angola in 1975. It flouted the arms embargo and worked closely with the South African intelligence services, rejecting all coercive measures against the white regime, and called on the black majority to show “restraint” and wait patiently for change.
On 22 June 1988, only 18 months before Mandela’s release and the legalisation of the ANC, the US deputy secretary of state John C Whitehead told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: “We must accept that the transition to a non-racial democracy in South Africa will inevitably take longer than all of us would like.” He claimed sanctions would have no “demoralising effect on the white elites” and would primarily hurt the black population.
This was Ronald Reagan’s last, unsuccessful, attempt to prevent Congress from punishing the Pretoria regime. About the same time he was praising the freedom fighters of Afghanistan and Nicaragua and denouncing the ANC and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) for their terrorist tactics.
In the UK, Margaret Thatcher’s government refused to meet representatives of the ANC until Mandela’s release in February 1990. At the Commonwealth summit in Vancouver in October 1987, Thatcher opposed the adoption of sanctions. When asked for her reaction to the ANC’s threat to target British interests in South Africa, she replied: “This shows what a typical terrorist organisation it is.” About this time, the Federation of Conservative Students (the student wing of the Conservative Party) was distributing posters that read “Hang Nelson Mandela and all ANC terrorists: they are butchers”. Britain’s current, Conservative, prime minister David Cameron has tried to suggest he did not belong to this era, talking of “the mistakes my party made in the past”. But a recently updated biography reveals he visited South Africa as the guest of an anti-sanctions lobbying firm in 1989.
Israel remained a steadfast ally of the Pretoria regime to the end, providing it with weapons and helping its nuclear arms and missile programmes. In April 1975, Israel’s present head of state Shimon Peres (then minister of defence), signed a security accord with South Africa. A year later, the South African prime minister John Vorster, a former Nazi sympathiser, was welcomed to Israel with all possible honours. The heads of the two countries’ intelligence services met yearly to coordinate the fight against ANC and PLO terrorism.
In France, President de Gaulle and his rightwing successors were uninhibited in their relations with Pretoria. In an interview in Le Nouvel Observateur (6), Jacques Chirac gloried in having been a long-term supporter of Mandela. Like many rightwing leaders, he has a short memory – and the journalist accepted his amnesia without question. In June 1976 the then prime minister of France had approved a contract for Framatome to build South Africa’s first nuclear power station. An editorial in Le Monde said: “France finds itself in strange company among the small group of partners that Pretoria has judged ‘safe’” (7). The Sunday Times, a major South Africa weekly, carried the story on its front page. Although France had decided in 1975, under pressure from African countries, to stop direct sales of arms to South Africa, it continued to honour existing contracts for several years and South Africa went on to produce French armoured vehicles and aircraft under licence.
Although officially condemning apartheid, France continued to cooperate with the regime at least until 1981. Alexandre de Marenches, the director of France’s external intelligence service (the Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-espionnage) from 1970 to 1981, summed up the philosophy of France’s right wing: “Apartheid is certainly a deplorable system, but change must come without violence.” If the ANC had listened to his advice (or that of Ronald Reagan) and shown restraint, Mandela would have died in prison, South Africa would have fallen into chaos and the world would not have been able to construct the legend of the new messiah.
by Alain Gresh
Alain Gresh is deputy director of Le Monde diplomatique
(1) Courrier International, June/August 2010 special issue.
(2) Le Nouvel Observateur, 27 May 2010.
(3) Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela, Little, Brown & Co, Boston & New York, 1994.
(4) Ronnie Kasrils, “Turning point at Cuito Cuanavale”, Independent Online, 23 March 2008.
(5) “South Africa: Strategy for Change”, Foreign Affairs, Council on Foreign Relations, winter 1980/81 issue.
(6) Le Nouvel Observateur, 27 May 2010.
(7) Le Monde, 1 June 1976 issue.
(1) Courrier International, June/August 2010 special issue.
(2) Le Nouvel Observateur, 27 May 2010.
(3) Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela, Little, Brown & Co, Boston & New York, 1994.
(4) Ronnie Kasrils, “Turning point at Cuito Cuanavale”, Independent Online, 23 March 2008.
(5) “South Africa: Strategy for Change”, Foreign Affairs, Council on Foreign Relations, winter 1980/81 issue.
(6) Le Nouvel Observateur, 27 May 2010.
(7) Le Monde, 1 June 1976 issue.
http://mondediplo.com/2010/08/14mandela
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