Nelson Mandela. Free at last.

[Magda Hassan]

[Albert Doyle]

Probably the only thing that saved him from the same fate as Lumumba was the fact he was neutralized and wasn't a direct threat to the predominant interests of the majority in the southern African colonial states.

[Magda Hassan]

CIA Role in Mandela's Capture?

Nelson Mandela in prison. He was released in 1990, after being incarcerated for 27 years.
http://www.dailyhistory.net

While the mass media devoted hours of broadcast time and scores of articles to Mandela's release, they missed a key part of the story on how he got to prison in the first place--namely, the CIA's reported role in luring Mandela to his capture.
Mandela was arrested in August 1962, while traveling disguised as a chauffeur. According to 1986 reports in the South African press, Mandela had been on his way to a top secret meeting with the U.S. consul in Durban, South Africa--Donald Rickard, a diplomat reputed to be a CIA officer. Rickard, the reports said, had tipped off the South African authorities to the time and place of his meeting with Mandela, allowing him to be apprehended.
This story was referred to on CBS Evening News (8/5/86), in an op-ed column in the New York Times (10/13/86), and it received extensive coverage in the Fall/Winter 1986 National Reporter. But in all the reporting on Mandela's release, FAIR saw no mention of the CIA's reputed role in his capture.

http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/ci...s-capture/

[Magda Hassan]

Nelson Mandela's greatness may be assured but not his legacy

When my interview with him was over, he patted me on the arm as if to say I was forgiven for contradicting him.

By John Pilger Published 11 July 2013 7:17

Nelson Mandela in 1990. Photograph: Getty Images


When I reported from South Africa in the 1960s, the Nazi admirer B J Vorster occupied the prime minister's residence in Cape Town. Thirty years later, as I waited at the gates, it was as if the guards had not changed. White Afrikaners checked my ID with the confidence of men in secure work. One carried a copy of Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela's autobiography. "It's very eenspirational," he said.
Mandela had just had his afternoon nap and looked sleepy; his shoelaces were untied. Wearing a bright gold shirt, he meandered into the room. "Welcome back," he said, bursting into a smile. "You must understand that to have been banned from my country is a great honour." The sheer grace and charm of the man made you feel good. He chuckled about his elevation to sainthood. "That's not the job I applied for," he said drily.
Still, he was well used to deferential interviews and I was ticked off several times "you completely forgot what I said" and "I have already explained that matter to you". In brooking no criticism of the African National Congress (ANC), he revealed something of why millions of South Africans will mourn his passing but not his "legacy".
I asked him why the pledges he and the ANC had given on his release from prison in 1990 had not been kept. The liberation government, Mandela had promised, would take over the apartheid economy, including the banks and "a change or modification of our views in this regard is inconceivable". But once in power, the party's official policy to end the impoverishment of most South Africans, the Reconstruction and Development Programme, was abandoned, and one of his ministers boasted that the ANC's politics were Thatcherite.
"You can put any label on it if you like," Mandela replied. ". . . but, for this country, privatisation is the fundamental policy."
"That's the opposite of what you said in 1994."
"You have to appreciate that every process incorporates a change."
Few ordinary South Africans were aware that this "process" had begun in high secrecy more than two years before Mandela's release, when the ANC in exile had, in effect, done a deal with members of the Afrikaner elite at a stately home, Mells Park House, near Bath. The prime movers were the corporations that had underpinned apartheid.
Around the same time, Mandela was conducting his own secret negotiations. In 1982, he had been moved from Robben Island to Pollsmoor Prison, where he could receive and entertain people. The apartheid regime's aim was to split the resistance between the "moderates" that it could "do business with" (Mandela, Thabo Mbeki, Oliver Tambo) and those in the front-line townships who were leading the United Democratic Front. On 5 July 1989, Mandela was spirited out of prison to meet P W Botha, the white-minority president known as Die Groot Krokodil ("the big crocodile"). Mandela was delighted that Botha poured the tea.
With democratic elections in 1994, racial apartheid ended and economic apartheid had a new face. The Botha regime had offered black businessmen generous loans, allowing them to set up companies outside the Bantustans. A new black bourgeoisie emerged quickly, along with a rampant cronyism. ANC chieftains moved into mansions in "golf and country estates". As the disparities between white and black narrowed, they widened between black and black.
The familiar refrain that the wealth would "trickle down" and "create jobs" was lost in dodgy merger deals and "restructuring" that cost jobs. For foreign companies, a black face on the board often ensured that nothing changed. In 2001 George Soros told the World Economic Forum in Davos, "South Africa is in the hands of international capital."
In the townships, people felt little change and were subjected to evictions typical of the apartheid era; some expressed nostalgia for the "order" of the old regime. The postapartheid achievements in desegregating daily life in South Africa, including schools, were undercut by the extremes and corruption of a "neoliberalism" to which the ANC devoted itself. This led directly to state crimes such as the massacre of 34 miners at Marikana in 2012, which evoked the Sharpeville massacre more than half a century earlier. Both were protests about injustice.
Mandela, too, fostered crony relationships with wealthy whites from the corporate world, including those who had profited from apartheid. He saw this as part of "reconciliation". Perhaps he and his beloved ANC had been in struggle and exile for so long that they were willing to accept and collude with the people's enemy. There were those who genuinely wanted change, including a few in the South African Communist Party, but it was the reform-and-redeem influence of mission Christianity that may have left the most indelible mark. White liberals at home and abroad warmed to this, often ignoring or welcoming Mandela's reluctance to spell out a coherent vision, as Amilcar Cabral and Pandit Nehru had done.
Mandela seemed to change in retirement, alerting the world to the post-9/11 dangers of George W Bush and Tony Blair. His description of Blair as "Bush's foreign minister" was mischievously timed; Mbeki, his own successor, was about to visit Chequers. I wonder what he would make of the "pilgrimage" to his cell on Robben Island by Barack Obama, the unrelenting jailer of Guantanamo.
When my interview with him was over, he patted me on the arm as if to say I was forgiven for contradicting him. We walked to his silver Mercedes, which consumed his small grey head among a bevy of white men with huge arms and wires in their ears. One of them gave an order in Afrikaans and he was gone.
John Pilger's film "Apartheid Did Not Die" can be viewed on johnpilger.com

[Peter Lemkin]

Nelson Mandela, my greatest living hero is gone. We all knew it was coming, but still it is a momentous and sad moment in history. I remember well the uphoria I felt on the day he was freed and another when he became President. His legacy is just HUGE! Truely saddened.

[Magda Hassan]

Nelson Mandela, my greatest living hero is gone. We all knew it was coming, but still it is a momentous and sad moment in history. I remember well the uphoria I felt on the day he was freed and another when he became President. His legacy is just HUGE! Truely saddened.

And one of the few to make it to old age and to die a natural death at home surrounded by his loved ones. A fate usually reserved for the bastards of the world. Yeah, I stayed up all night to watch his release from prison as they had it broadcast live. I remember there was a delay. It took quite a while for him to emerge. Can't remember why now. Big legacy. Hope others take it up and go forward. He still had lots to do.

[David Guyatt]

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[Peter Lemkin]

• Email
  

• Xan Rice and David Smith
  
  
• The Guardian, Friday 6 December 2013
  

Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk in the South African parliament in 2004. Photograph: Oryx Media Archive/Gallo Images/Getty Images

In the last dark days of apartheid Nelson Mandela was the name that became known to people across the world. But around him was a cast of characters of all colours and motivations: fellow struggle veterans, exiles, rival black politicians and white liberals and hardliners seeking to placate or frustrate. Some of the leading figures have died, such as Oliver Tambo and Walter Sisulu co-founders with Mandela of the ANC youth league in 1943 and Chris Hani, the South African Communist party leader who may have been president today had he not been assassinated. Others have faded into obscurity. Profiled below are six people who played leading roles in the late 1980s and early 1990s and who still carry influence.

Cyril Ramaphosa

A lawyer by training, Ramaphosa made his name in apartheid South Africa as head of the National Union of Mineworkers, which he turned into the country's most powerful trade union. He was part of the reception committee that welcomed Mandela on his release in 1990, and a year later became secretary general of the ANC. The party chose Ramaphosa to lead its team negotiating the end of apartheid with the ruling National party, and his tough, skilful performance was widely lauded. Ramaphosa entered government following the first democratic elections in 1994 and was elected chair of the constitutional assembly. He was seen as one of the ANC's top strategists and Mandela is said to have wanted him to be next president, but powerful party members who had been in exile during white rule preferred one of their own Thabo Mbeki.
In 1997 Ramaphosa quit politics to move into commerce, where he quickly established himself as one of the leading and wealthiest black businessmen in the country. A staunch advocate of black economic empowerment, he founded the Shanduka Group, a black-owned investment company, and held several directorships. Among these was the London-based mining company Lonmin, whose workers staged a violent strike in 2012 police opened fire and killed 34 in a single day. Ramaphosa, who described it as South Africa's lowest point since apartheid, was accused of betraying his union roots. However, later that year he made a return to politics, winning election as deputy president of the ANC. Some believe he may now fulfil the destiny Mandela wanted for him.

FW de Klerk

As South Africa's last white ruler, FW de Klerk oversaw the end of apartheid and the transfer of power to Mandela. A cabinet minister in the Afrikaner-dominated government since the 1970s, De Klerk was not regarded as a reformist until shortly before he became president in 1989, taking over from PW Botha, who had had a stroke. De Klerk quickly ended the ban on the ANC, ordered Mandela's release, and paved the way for democratic elections. For this, he shared the Nobel peace prize with Mandela in 1993, causing anger among some South Africans who believed it was international pressure rather than De Klerk's genuine change of heart on apartheid that prompted his compromise. In the first non-racial government, he was vice-president under Mandela not always seeing eye to eye before withdrawing from politics in 1997.
A year later he divorced his wife, Marike, following an affair with Elita Georgiades, the wife of a Greek shipping tycoon, whom he married. Today De Klerk lives in Cape Town, where he runs his eponymous foundation, focusing on constitutional issues. In recent speeches he has become increasingly critical of the ANC and warned that the country's much-lauded constitution is at risk. He told the BBC in 2009 that he hoped to be remembered as somebody who "helped to avoid a catastrophe".

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela

Married to Nelson Mandela for just six years before his incarceration in 1963, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela became a global symbol of the struggle against apartheid. She was jailed several times, once held in solitary confinement for 18 months. In 1977 the government banished her from Soweto to Brandfort in the Orange Free State for nine years. A fiery speaker, she courted controversy in the 1980s by endorsing "necklacing" placing burning car tyres around the neck of apartheid collaborators as a liberation tool.
Worse was to follow when one of her bodyguards accused her of ordering the death of a 14-year-old boy in 1989. Convicted of kidnapping, her six-year jail sentence was later reduced to a fine. Though she was by her husband's side on the day he was freed, the marriage only lasted two years before they separated in 1992. The divorce was finalised in 1996 on the grounds of her adultery. By then corruption allegations had ended a short stint as a deputy cabinet minister, and in 2003 Madikizela-Mandela was convicted of fraud and given a suspended sentence on appeal.
She remains popular among many ANC supporters, particularly women. She secured fifth place on the 2009 ANC electoral list, guaranteeing her a parliamentary seat, although she has been criticised for rarely attending debates. She is no friend of the current president, Jacob Zuma, and his allies.

Mangosuthu Buthelezi

A descendant of Zulu royalty, Mangosuthu Buthelezi rose to prominence in the 1970s as chief minister of the Bantustan of Kwazulu, one of the semi-independent "homelands" for black people established by the white government. Though he had been a member of the ANC youth league as a student, and had formed his mainly Zulu Inkatha Freedom party (IFP) with the ANC's blessing, Buthelezi became a strong critic of the armed struggle advocated by Mandela and his allies. This, together with Buthelezi's claim to lead the Zulu people, angered many in the ANC, who considered him an apartheid collaborator. In the final years of white rule, IFP and ANC supporters repeatedly clashed, leading to thousands of deaths and fears of civil war. Relations were so strained that Buthelezi refused to participate in negotiations for a new constitution and only agreed to stand in the 1994 election after a meeting with Mandela a few weeks before the vote.
Buthelezi was appointed home affairs minister in the first two multiracial governments but fell out badly with Thabo Mbeki over immigration laws before the 2004 election. He was offered the post of deputy president, but refused as it would have required the IFP to cede the premiership of the KwaZulu-Natal province to the ANC. Buthelezi stayed on as an MP. He was returned to parliament in the 2009 election, but has since presided over a split in the IFP which led to it losing support to a breakaway party.

Desmond Tutu

If Mandela was the political symbol of the apartheid oppression, Desmond Tutu represented the moral voice. A trained teacher, he was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1960. Together with his mentor, the white priest Trevor Huddleston, he became a leading human rights activist, highlighting the injustice of white rule at home and abroad.
His profile was boosted by the award of the Nobel peace prize in 1984, and two years later he became the first black head of the Anglican church in South Africa. He argued that racist policies were against God's will, and preached reconciliation rather than uprising, a stance that appealed to many white liberals. His strident backing of the economic boycott sat less comfortably with them, but helped hasten the end of apartheid.
After the 1994 elections, Mandela asked Tutu to head a Truth and Reconciliation Commission that would investigate apartheid-era crimes, allowing victims to give testimony and perpetrators to request amnesty. Though it had its critics, the TRC was regarded as a success, and has served as a model for similar processes around the world. In recent years Tutu has become a strong critic of the ANC-led government especially on corruption and failure to tackle poverty and of the Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe. He remained a close friend of Mandela, who described him as "sometimes strident, often tender, never afraid and seldom without humour". In 2007, the two men announced the creation The Elders, a group of global leaders to support peacebuilding. Tutu has officially retired from public life but cannot resist weighing into various controversies. In 2011 he compared the ANC to the apartheid regime after it refused to allow the Dalai Lama into the country to attend his 80th birthday party, allegedly to avoid offending China.

Thabo Mbeki

Two years before Mandela was jailed on Robben Island, Thabo Mbeki, 19, was sent in exile by the ANC for his own safety. He enrolled at Sussex University, completing a degree in economics and a master's in African studies before travelling to the Soviet Union for military training. Based mainly in Lusaka, Zambia, where the ANC had its headquarters, Mbeki spent more than two decades representing the ANC. By the late 1980s, he was reporting directly to his mentor and ANC president Oliver Tambo, and leading the secret talks with the South African government. Under Mandela he served as deputy president, took over as party president in 1997, and two years later became South Africa's second black president.
Possessing a formidable intellect, and a firm pan-African vision, Mbeki presided over strong economic growth and was re-elected in 2004. But his controversial views on Aids, his aloof nature a sharp contrast from Mandela as well as slower-than-expected service delivery, meant that his popularity was already declining. Though never close friends, Mandela was always publicly supportive of Mbeki's leadership, even though their private relations reportedly deteriorated over time. Mbeki resigned as president in 2008 after being recalled by the ANC, following a court ruling of interference in the prosecution of Jacob Zuma, who faced corruption charges. The ruling was overturned on appeal but the damage was done. He has since led an African Union panel brokering peace in the Sudanese region of Darfur and between Sudan and South Sudan. He has established his own foundation but made only occasional public pronouncements, some of which have been interpreted as critical of his successor.

[Peter Lemkin]

There are SO MANY lessons one can learn from Mandela and the path of his life. One that I would hope the US and UK [among others] would learn immediately, and retroactively, that one man's 'terrorist', is another man's freedom fighter, and very [to most] often the first designation is WRONG, in favor of the later - because repressive, anti-democratic, autocratic, oligarchic types usually make those official 'designations'. The USA and UK, to their everlasting shame, had for decades branded Mandela and the ANC as terrorists - and RESISTED the end of Apartheid. Will be never learn?!

Aung San Suu Kyi on Mandela: "He made us understand that we canchange the world."

Time's a 'wastin....lets have at it in his footsteps!

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[Peter Lemkin]