Nelson Mandela was a complex man who did great good but also some questionable or controversial activities. We should mourn the real Nelson Mandela, not a media myth.
On the Iraq war intentions of America, Mandela said:
'“If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America. They don’t care for human beings,”'
'“If you look at those matters, you will come to the conclusion that the attitude of the United States of America is a threat to world peace.”'
Of Israel, a Western favourite, Mandela said:
'“Israel should withdraw from all the areas which it won from the Arabs in 1967, and in particular Israel should withdraw completely from the Golan Heights, from south Lebanon and from the West Bank,”'
and:
'“The UN took a strong stand against apartheid; and over the years, an international consensus was built, which helped to bring an end to this iniquitous system. But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”'
The Freedom Charter was not the only communism Mandela supported. Mass slaughter of opponents in Cuba ring a bell?
'“From its earliest days, the Cuban Revolution has also been a source of inspiration to all freedom-loving people. We admire the sacrifices of the Cuban people in maintaining their independence and sovereignty in the face of the vicious imperialist-orchestrated campaign to destroy the impressive gain made in the Cuban Revolution….Long live the Cuban Revolution. Long live comrade Fidel Castro.”'
Gaddafi was an enemy of the west, but not of Mandela:
'“It is our duty to give support to the brother leader…especially in regards to the sanctions which are not hitting just him, they are hitting the ordinary masses of the people … our African brothers and sisters,”'
Dec 6 | 'Mandela’s sharp statements rarely cited in mainstream media' | Russia Today
http://rt.com/news/mandela-sharp-quotes-media-860/
Think Progress noted this quote from Associated press:
'The labeling of Osama bin Laden as the terrorist responsible for those acts before he had been tried and convicted could also be seen as undermining some of the basic tenets of the rule of law,'
Jan 3 2002 | AP | 'MANDELA SOFTENS SUPPORT OF U.S.' | DINA KRAFT
And a fuller telling of Mandela's Iraq comments are:
'"It is a tragedy, what is happening, what Bush is doing. But Bush is now undermining the United Nations," Mandela told the International Women's Forum.
[...]
"What I am condemning is that one power, with a president who has no foresight, who cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust."
[...]
"If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America. They don't care."
[...]
"Why is the United States behaving so arrogantly?" he asked. "All that (Mr. Bush) wants is Iraqi oil," he said.
He accused Mr. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair of undermining the United Nations and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who is from Ghana.
"Is it because the secretary-general of the United Nations is now a black man? They never did that when secretary-generals were white," he said.
He said Mr. Bush was "trying to bring about carnage" and appealed to the American people to vote him out of office and demonstrate against his policies.
He also condemned Blair for his strong support of the United States.
"He is the foreign minister of the United States. He is no longer prime minister of Britain," he said. That echoes a theme adopted by war opponents in Britain. Blair is to meet Mr. Bush for talks on Friday. '
Jan 30 2003 | CBS | 'Mandela Slams Bush On Iraq' | JARRETT MURPHY
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mandela-slams-bush-on-iraq/
And as I noted previously:
Nelson Mandela would be arrested and tried in relatively early days of anti-apartheid movement. I always find it strange that his lawyer became so famous and so acclaimed for intentionally losing a case. I would have tried to find some loophole. Instead the argument was that the court had no right to try Nelson Mandela. No wonder Nelson Mandela smiled after being convicted, that was exactly his intention. If Nelson Mandela had intended to be acquitted, his argument would have been one on technicality. Nelson Mandela himself was trained in law. Neither he nor his lawyer attempted to find loopholes which could have got him off.
Nelson Mandela thus went to jail and spent 27 years in jail. There are plenty of people who spent 27 years in jail who are not lauded for this. Likewise with Jesus Christ there were plenty of people who were crucified who were not lauded for being crucified. Nelson Mandela spending 27 years in jail is only an act of greatness if he did not deserve to go to jail in the first place. It is this perseverance for which Nelson Mandela has his fame. An ordinary criminal will persevere in jail however. It is Nelson Mandela’s loyalty to his cause however that is lauded by the world. Whether he persevered or not he would spend 27 years in jail.
Towards the end of apartheid African National Congress was becoming increasingly militant. A civil war was seen as almost certain. The movie Endgame details pre-negotiations organised by the mining industry in a hope of saving South Africa. As a result of these negotiations, something very unusual began to happen. Without consulting Parliament or anyone in his own political party, President FW De Klerk suddenly announced that Nelson Mandela would be released from jail. There is a reason why both FW De Klerk and Nelson Mandela gained the Nobel Peace Prize. It was not the creation of a new South Africa. South Africa had existed all along. It was negotiating to prevent a civil war which it seemed all but certain. This is why Nelson Mandela was great. Despite spending 27 years in jail, Nelson Mandela had enough of a good head on him: to avert a civil war and to aim at peace. Nelson Mandela could not have done this alone however, FW De Klerk is equally important in this regard.
In the year 1995 president Nelson Mandela attended the Rugby World Cup. Rugby remains a white sport in South Africa just as local soccer remains a black sport to this day. Nelson Mandela attended a white sporting event. Nelson Mandela penned beautiful speeches or at least spoke them: speeches about forgiveness and diversity and the unity of a nation which was one. These speeches caused the South African people to unite. It is because of the charisma of Nelson Mandela that South Africans became one nation through the Rugby World Cup victory according to multiple accounts on the matter. His speeches throughout the period in question were very charismatic and worked in uniting different race groups to a national ANC agenda.
In creating a new constitution however Nelson Mandela was less forgiving. The constitution itself was aimed at limiting the rights of white South Africans. To this day companies brag of being all black, of refusing to whites, any form of employment. If a white company were to do that in contrast they would be taken to court. Nelson Mandela also created a constitution in which the African National Congress specifically wanted to ensure that pornography would always be legal (On pornography the major case is, the child pornography case of: De Reuck v Director of Public Prosecutions (Witwatersrand Local Division) and Others (CCT5/03) [2003] ZACC 19; 2004 (1) SA 406 (CC); 2003 (12) BCLR 1333 (CC) (15 October 2003) http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/2003/19.html). The constitutional court affirmed this: they permitted laws preventing child pornography viewing to stand as the government had followed the correct procedures which would allow any constitutional rights to be circumvented in the right scenario. The constitution was also specifically drafted with the intent of making homosexual marital like unions something which law would enforce, according to the case Fourie and Another v Minister of Home Affairs and Another (232/2003) [2004] ZASCA 132; [2005] 1 All SA 273 (SCA) (30 November 2004), gay 'marriage' is demanded by the Constitution. Nelson Mandela also ensured a constitution which would legalise homosexuality, but also result in deep persecution of Christians who did not accept homosexual marriage, a persecution which is ongoing. The drafters intended to create a right to abortion it would seem. A new court was created to judge the constitution, a court which would be stocked full of liberals and ANC loyalists: the Supreme Court of Appeal could not be trusted to be loyal to the African National Congress agenda for the constitution and so a ‘constitutional court’ was created to ensure that the ANC vision of the constitution was maintained. And so in 1996 the African National Congress created a massive expansion of abortion from a rare grudgingly done and frowned upon action: to one of the most liberal abortion systems in the world, through the termination of pregnancy act, which also extensively limited the rights of conscientious objectors in certain circumstances and of those who believed abortion to be immoral and something to protest against. The majority of pregnancies in South Africa, at least about 57% inclusive of backstreet abortions: end in intentional induced abortion. A statistic available online lists abortions at 50% in 2007. The most recent poll available on the matter found that 90% of South Africans consider abortion always immoral. On abortion see: Christian Lawyers Association of SA and Others v Minister of Health and Others 1998(4) SA 1113 (T).
By 1997, the African National Congress realised something which the nationalist party had realised years ago. As presided over by president Nelson Mandela: the African National Congress created a policy paper that from now on the party would not promote a rainbow nation, but an Africanist worldview, which they hoped would gain them votes. You might have read of how the African National Congress every single election states that South Africans must vote for them because all that white South Africans want to do is bring back apartheid in their perspective. This is because of a policy paper the African National Congress created under the leadership of Nelson Mandela. Where there was risk of civil war the African National Congress pushed the idea of a rainbow nation which Nelson Mandela is most associated with. Nelson Mandela, and the African National Congress under his leadership also cancelled this rainbow nation policy.
The African National Congress would introduce black economic empowerment, punishing businesses for hiring white South Africans and punishing businesses which were owned by white South Africans. If an orphanage was in a majority white area it would risk being shut down as the government would punish companies who donated to charities which looked after white South Africans and charities which looked after white and black South Africans. Charities which didn’t look after a certain quota of black South Africans and turn away white South Africans to fill for this quota have to this day risked losing all corporate funding due to tax punishments from the government. This is the BEE policy. This is not a policy which Nelson Mandela has opposed. In fact Nelson Mandela was certain to include justification for it in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996.
In his later years Nelson Mandela joined a group of statesman called the Elders. Amongst other things this non-governmental organisation promotes far left policies and abortion. Nelson Mandela has also consistently campaigned for the African National Congress. He is known for putting the party first. Nelson Mandela has also been known for his close links to dictators such as Castro and Robert Mugabe. His descendants have been known for allegations involving tender improprieties, and for seemingly having charges dropped against them in court where prosecutors had previously claimed there was a case. Some of his descendants also have a reality show where they go about shopping.
Nelson Mandela did not create a utopia in South Africa. According to Agence France-Presse he leaves South Africa disillusioned and unequal (On this see: AFP "Mandela quitte une Afrique du Sud désenchantée et inégalitaire" Par Claudine RENAUD at 6 December 2013 http://fr.news.yahoo.com/mandela-quitte-afrique-sud-d%C3%A9senchant%C3%A9e-in%C3%A9galitaire-223926214.html ). So what did Nelson Mandela do which was so great? Nelson Mandela was a demagogue. His charisma was uniting. South Africa ended apartheid and South Africa created peace. The man that the United States of America listed as a terrorist many years after he became national President of the Republic of South Africa: played a large role in uniting South Africa. This is the Nelson Mandela who should be remembered: a very human man, a man who engaged in some questionable activities in his lifetime, but a man who in his actions helped unite the nation and to prevent a civil war. For that I am grateful to Nelson Mandela and FW De Klerk. However it is important to remember Nelson Mandela the man, and not Nelson Mandela the media created myth, who bears little resemblance to the real Nelson Mandela. It was the fact that Nelson Mandela was an ordinary South African, which so inspires the entire world, by what he did through perseverance!
Note from editor: much of the information in this article is from sources such as books, law cases, back copies of American and other newspapers and so forth. These are not always readily available to the average member of the public, but are also propietary. Should you struggle to find information sources online, please feel free to contact us, but do search firstly. One example of us responding to such a request is the placing of a link to a 2007 article relating to abortion within this article, which is why we are writing this editor's note. Most of the information herein should be available online, although we purposely chose to rely on more accurate non-online sources. What information is not available online should be easily found in a well stacked public library. The author of this piece writes from memory of studying the matters in law school, and the syllabus relating to Constitutional Law and Customary law, and Criminal law at the University of the Witwatersrand, which included little known information such as evidencing the ANC policy document, and other valuable documentary evidence which is rare enough to be available largely only to tertiary students who require the information. The history of witchcraft in South Africa likewise is based on historic research in an offline format. The early missionary accounts, and several offline accounts by experts, are particularly valuable as such, although obviously the missionary accounts have a Christian format to their language. The African National Congress witch trials are extensively recorded in historic material looking back at that precarious time. However, there are less complete online accounts of this fascinating subject, which no doubt should be available to the average reader. Any information you struggle to check or verify if you are that type, please contact us for.
No comments:
Post a Comment
No spam, junk, hate-speech, or anti-religion stuff, thank you. Also no libel, or defamation of character. Keep it clean, keep it honest. No trolling. Keep to the point. We look forward to your comments!