Nelson Mandela and the American Revolution

The world mourns the loss of Nelson Mandela, the South African social revolutionary and later national leader who devoted his life to fighting apartheid, a system of racial division that vested power only in whites.

For much of his life Mandela was vilified as seditious, treasonous, a terrorist and a social malcontent. He reveled in peaceful civil disobedience to advance his cause but for a time suborned sabotage in his struggle against the entrenched white government. During the period of apartheid, black Africans were barred from voting, holding national political office, traveling freely about the country or organizing. The existence of the black majority in South Africa, their birthplace and birthright, was characterized by poverty, humiliation and subjugation.

Eventually he was sentenced to prison, serving twenty-seven years before his release in 1990.

The emergence of freedom, equality and justice throughout the world have historically been troubled affairs. The powerful elite yields only grudgingly, often marked by vitriol, upheaval and violence. Mohandas Mahatma ("Venerable") Gandhi resisted British exploitation for over twenty years, enduring prison in the process, before a post-colonial free India finally emerged. He was eventually assassinated for his efforts. Martin Luther King, Jr. endured physical attacks and jail before the Civil Rights Act was passed by congress in 1964. He, too, ultimately paid for his activism with his life.

Our founding fathers defied English rule by all means, too. The Boston Tea Party was an act of disobedience and sabotage aimed at the exploitation and denigration of "colonists" by the British.

The Shot Heard 'Round the World, fired at Concord in 1775 and famously heralded by Paul Revere, was an act of defiant violence against the oppression and injustice of foreign domination. Had we lost the Revolutionary War (its outcome was in doubt), George Washington would have hanged for his acts of sedition and terror; he led a bloody revolution against a sovereign government, that of Great Britain. But instead the result was the declaration a year after Concord that ratified every man's God-given right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," a concept that swept the world and led directly to the western democracies we see today.

I recently returned from a visit to South Africa and its immediate neighbor, Zimbabwe. The later country is ruled by a murderous tyrant, Robert Mugabe. Following independence from white colonial rule, Zimbabwe—the former Rhodesia—instituted a system of retribution against whites that included seizing their lands and businesses, one injustice replaced by another. Elections are a sham under this thinly disguised dictator. Political opponents are routinely murdered. The result has been fear and economic chaos, harming the indigenous black Africans there disproportionately. Unemployment in Zimbabwe is over eighty percent, much higher than previously, and their national currency completely crashed, replaced by the dollar and South African rand.

Upon his release from prison, Mandela went on to become president of South Africa. Until his recent death he continued as a political, social and spiritual force. He has become a winner of the Nobel Prize, a global icon for justice and progress. Under his leadership apartheid was dismantled and replace by an effective system of social democracy where whites and blacks have equal rights under the law. Unlike Zimbabwe, there has been no structural retribution against whites. South Africa has its problems as a developing third-world African economy. But the changes resulting from the leadership of Mandela today include a growing economy and stable currency, while unemployment, still high by American standards, is less than a third of neighboring Zimbabwe's. Their progress is expected to continue into the future.

Mandela has had his admirers and detractors. Like many historic leaders he had personal flaws. But he stands as an example—in the company of Washington, Jefferson or Lincoln—as one who was willing to stand for what is right irrespective of the personal consequences. His life embodied many of the principles of our founding fathers who fought for an America Revolution.

As America moves forward in the twenty-first century we would do well to heed the example of Nelson Mandela. Our democracy is under assault internally by those who would undermine our heritage of freedom and opportunity in the pursuit of socialist egalitarianism. Is the dividing of Americans into antagonistic classes—"haves" and "have-nots" pitted against one another—is that so far removed from apartheid? Is the suppression of our individual liberty in the cause of a society managed for preconceived and failed notions of social welfare really that different from pre-Mandela South Africa? Perhaps we as a nation can draw inspiration from the memory of Nelson Mandela to fight for traditional values that will continue to keep American great and free well into the future.

MANDELA THE MYTH

www.sarahmaidofalbion.blogspot.com

http://www.spainvia.com/sarahmandela.htm

INTRODUCTION.

Sarah, the author of this factual article (written just before the 90th birthday party of this media celebrity), is an Englishwoman endowed with an incisive and razor-sharp understanding of South Africa ‘s recent history as I do having lived there for 24 years. Unlike so many millions of brain-washed lemmings in the UK, she sees right through the media-contrived smoke & mirrors, lies and myths as propounded by the MSM. (Mass Media.) Thanks to Sarah for the OK to reproduce this here. It says it all.

It is often said that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, however, this usually means that the other man has been less than fastidious in his choice of hero, or that the ‘freedom fighter’ in question was on the crowd pleasing side. On the 27th of June, 2008 London’s Hyde Park played host to a concert in honour of Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday and it received wall to wall coverage by a star struck and worshipping media, who will continue to laud Mandela as one of the greatest, or indeed the greatest, heroes of our time.

The beaming old man will appeared on stage in one of his trademark multi-coloured shirts and cheerily acknowledge the cheers of the adoring crowd, most of whom have been taught to believe in his sainthood since their first days in primary school, which, for many of them, will have occurred around the same time their hero walked free from Robben Island.

The unquestioning belief in Mandela’s universally admired saintliness will again be displayed in the press and by the unending line of politicians and dignitaries who will queue up to genuflect before him and sing his praises. It is a brave politician or journalist who would dare to question the godliness of this legend and consummate showman, and hence no such questions will be raised, nor will his much vaunted ‘achievements’ be subjected to any objective scrutiny.

No matter how many speeches are given or how many news articles are written, it is safe to bet that the full truth about Mandela will not be told except by those who know and care about history being recorded factually.

In fact the truth about Mandela is so hidden in mythology and misinformation that most know nothing about him prior to Robben island, and those who do tend to exercise a form of self censorship, designed to bolster the myth whilst consigning uncomfortable facts into the mists of history.

For most people all they know about Mandela, prior to his release in 1990, was that he had spent 27 years in prison and was considered by many on the left at the time (and almost everyone now) to be a political prisoner. However, Mandela was no Burmese Aung San Suu Kyi, he was not an innocent, democratically elected leader, imprisoned by an authoritarian government.

Mandela was the terrorist leader of a violent terrorist organisation, the ANC (African National Congress) which was responsible for many thousands of, mostly black, deaths. The ANC’s blood spattered history is frequently ignored, but reminders occasionally pop up in the most embarrassing places, indeed as recently as this month the names of Nelson Mandela and most of the ANC remained on the US government’s terrorist watch list along with al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and the Tamil Tigers. Of course the forces of political correctness are rushing to amend that embarrassing reminder from the past. However, Mandela’s name was not on that list by mistake, he was there because of his MURDEROUS PAST.

Before I am accused of calumny, it should be noted that Mandela does not seek to hide his past, in his autobiography ‘the long walk to Freedom’ he casually admits ‘signing off’ the 1983 Church Street bombing carried out by the ANC and killing 19 innocent people whilst injuring another 200.

It is true that Mandela approved that massacre and other ANC killings from his prison cell, and there is no evidence that he personally killed anyone but the same could be said about Stalin or Hitler, and the violent history of the ANC, the organisation he led is not in question.

According to the Human Rights Commission it is estimated that during the Apartheid period some 21,000 people were killed, however both the UN Crimes against Humanity commission and South Africa’s own Truth and Reconciliation Commission are in agreement that in those 43 years the South African Security forces killed a total of 518 people.
The rest, (some 92%) were accounted for by Africans killing Africans, many by means of the notorious and gruesome practice of necklacing whereby a car tyre full of petrol is placed around a victim’s neck and set alight.

This particularly cruel form of execution was frequently carried out at the behest of the ANC with the enthusiastic support of Mandela’s demonic wife Winnie.

The brutal reappearance of the deadly necklace in recent weeks is something I shall reluctantly focus upon later.
Given that so much blood was on the hands of his party, and, as such, the newly appointed government, some may conclude that those who praised Mandela’s mercy and forgiveness, when the Truth and Reconciliation tribunal set up after he came to power, to look into the Apartheid years, did not include a provision for sanctions, were being deliberately naive.

Such naivety is not uncommon when it comes to the adoring reporting of Nelson Mandela, and neither is the great leader himself rarely shy of playing up his image of fatherly elder statesman and multi-purpose paragon.

However, in truth, the ANC’s conscious decision to reject a policy of non-violence, such as that chosen by Gandhi, in their struggle against the white government, had left them, and by extension, their leader, with at least as much blood on their hands as their one time oppressors, and this fact alone prevented them from enacting the revenge which might otherwise have been the case.

As the first post Apartheid president of South Africa it would, be unfair if not ludicrous to judge Mandela entirely on the basis of events before he came to power, and in any event there is many a respected world leader or influential statesman with a blood stained past so in the next part I shall examine Nelson Mandela’s achievements, and the events which have occurred in South Africa in the 14 short years since he took power in following the post Apartheid election in 1994.

MANDELA - THE LEGEND AND THE LEGACY PART 2, BY SARAH, MAID OF ALBION.

In the second of two articles examining the life of Nelson Mandela, in advance of Friday’s concert in Hyde Park celebrating the living legend’s 90th birthday, I shall look at his legacy and the new South Africa which he created after coming to power on a surge of worldwide optimism and hope in 1994, when, following the end of Apartheid, he and his followers promised a new dawn for what became termed the Rainbow Nation.

Today South Africa has the reputation of being one of the most dangerous and crime ridden nations on Earth which is not actively at War. In 2001, only seven years after the end of Apartheid, whilst the city of Amsterdam in the Netherlands with 5,6 murders per 100,000 population was declared the ‘murder capitol of Europe’, Johannesburg, with 61.2 murders per 100,00 population and remains the world’s top murder city.

In South Africa as a whole, the murder rate is seven times that of America, in terms of rape the rate is ten times as high and includes the ugly phenomenon of child rape, one of the few activities in which South Africa is now a world leader. If you don’t believe me, you can read what Oprah Winfrey has to say about it here.

All other forms of violent crime are out of control, and Johannesburg is among the top world cities for muggings and violent assault, a fact seldom mentioned in connection with the FIFA Soccer 2010 World Cup which is scheduled to be hosted in South Africa.

As always with black violence the primary victims are their fellow blacks, however, the rape, murder and violent assault of whites is a daily event, and there is more .....

As with the Rhodesian/Zimbabwean Matabeleland massacres, news of which the BBC, together with much of the world media suppressed for twenty years to protect their one time hero, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, another secret genocide is being ignored by the world media, the genocide of white Boer farmers, thousands of whom have been horribly tortured to death in their homes since the end of Apartheid. Anyone who clicks on this link should we warned that it includes some very gruesome images as the savagery of these attacks belie the authorities attempts to dismiss them as nothing more than a ‘crime wave’.

Given that it is now all but illegal in South Africa to report the race of either victim or the perpetrator of a crime (unless the perpetrator is white and the victim black) and as modern South Africa’s official crime statistics are notoriously massaged, it is impossible to know the exact numbers of farm murders that have taken place. Many reliable sources estimate the figure as close to 3,000, but even if we take the more conservative figure of 1,600 quoted in the politically correct South African press (but not quoted at all in ours) this is three times the numbers killed by the South African security forces over a period of 43 years, and which the UN calls a crime against humanity.

To put this in perspective, the population of South Africa is 47 million, (13 million less than Britain despite its far greater land mass) of which the 4.3 million whites account for 9.1%, about 1% less than the immigrant population of Britain. Can you imagine the outcry if 1,600 (let alone 3,000) members of a minority community in Britain were tortured to death by the native population?

Yet when the victims are white, there is hardly a peep in the South African press and silence from the international media. Compare this to when a white youth is the killer, such as in the case of white farmer Johan Nel, who shot three Africans who were trespassing on his farm, a story which became instant world-wide news with the predictable screams of racism and machete wielding mobs baying for his blood.

And they accuse us of hate?!! Don’t such people nauseate themselves with their hypocrisy?!)

Crime aside, Mandela and his ANC inherited the strongest economy in Africa, indeed, despite economic sanctions, South Africa was still one of the richest nations in the world, and indeed initially there was a brief post Apartheid boom, resulting from the lifting of sanctions and due to the fact that until affirmative action forced most of the whites out of their jobs to be replaced by under qualified blacks, those who had built South Africa were still in place.

However, any optimism was to be short lived. Now, after just 14 years of rule by Mandela and his grim successor Mbeki, corruption is rife, the country is beset with power cuts and the infrastructure is crumbling. The nation’s great cities like Durban and Johannesburg, which could once rival the likes of Sydney, Vancouver and San Francisco, had descended in to decaying crime-ridden slums within a decade.

And in the last few weeks we have seen the so called Rainbow nations ultimate humiliation, as xenophobic anti immigration violence spreads across the country. “Xenophobic” is what the media call racism when blacks do it. As poverty and unemployment explodes and is exacerbated by the floods of immigrants flooding in to escape the even more advanced Africanisation of the rest of the continent, the mobs turn on those they blame for stealing their jobs, their homes, and their women.

Thus the cycle turns, and, like watching some barbaric version of ‘Back to the Future’, on the news we see exactly the same scenes we saw on our televisions twenty years ago, wrecked buildings, burning vehicles, mobs brandishing machetes, axes and knives hacking at everything and everyone which comes within their reach.

Most horrific of all, we see the return of that most savage symbol of African brutality, the necklace where, to the cheers of a blood thirsty crowd, some poor trembling soul, with a tyre around his neck, is dragged from his home and set alight, exactly as all those other poor souls were set alight throughout the Apartheid years, when we were told it was all the evil white man’s fault. But the white Africans never ever did such a terrible thing: only the terrorists now in power did that to scare the other black Africans into joining their cause.

As nothing else the return of the necklace exposes the failure of Mandela’s revolution, and those who fought for him should weep.

Under Apartheid, blacks and whites went to separate hospitals but they received world class health care, whatever their colour. Now the facilities are collapsing or non-existent.

Black children went to different schools than white children, but they received an education, something which is now a privileged luxury. When they grew up, their bosses may have been white, but they had jobs and a living wage, as the recent violence shows us, such security is but a memory for most South Africans.

Eighteen years after Nelson and Winnie made their historic walk towards the cameras, and 14 years, since Mandela assumed power on a tide of optimism, a once proud South Africa slides like a crumbling, crime-ridden, wreck towards a precipice created through greed, corruption and incompetence.

For all his gleaming smiles, grandfatherly hand gestures, and folksy sound bites, tomorrow night, when crowd cheers the retired terrorist in the gaudy shirt, they would do best not to focus too closely upon his much admired legacy, as they might just find that the Xhosan Emperor has no clothes. For Nelson Mandela’s lasting achievement is that, in the face of a world wishing him well, he, and the party he leads, have shown the world that, for all its flaws, Apartheid was a more benign system than what replaced it, and that the average South African was immeasurably better off under the hated white rule than they are under the alternative that black rule has since created.

That is quite an achievement, Mr. Mandela; Happy Birthday.
As an addition, if Nelson Mandela was treated so badly, why is he now 90 years of age? In a black governed country in Africa, he would have died within months if he had not been hanged the time.

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