Nelson’s Mandela is gone, and now it is time to collect the pieces of his legacy and bind them together. Certainly, there would be various views and opinions about Mandela’s legacy, and many of them would be apocryphal, while others would be frothy fanfare in the media of the former colonial powers. We have already seen that all their eulogies of Mandela start after his release from prison in 1990. All his struggles, his suffering and his efforts on his 72 years before 1990 have been deliberately swept under the rug! The reason? The colonial powers have been responsible for Mandela’s 72 years of sufferance, and they don’t want to start with any repentance or apologies to him. They want to conceal their guilt, and praise him as a man of peace, equality and justice - even though they denied him equality for 72 years, and justice for 27 years! Mandela is the prime example of the parable “Justice delayed, is justice denied!” But justice denied for so long is for him the core of his legacy, as there are no other achievements -other than the right of the blacks to vote- for him to show for! His friend, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, admitted that Mandela's sudden fame was the result of the "heavy price he had paid" against apartheid (27 years of hard labor in prison).
Mandela has been eulogized in postmortem adulatory speeches as “a man of peace,” but he wasn’t Mohandas Gandhi. He was a liberation fighter against colonial rule, and was deemed “South Africa’s Most Wanted” outlaw for 2 years - until he was captured! In the post-WWII era, Africa was brimming with revolutions against colonial regimes and foreign multinational corporations, which were mining and stripping Africa of its resources using indigenous blacks as slaves, or as laborers for pennies a day. Mandela was one of the leaders of South Africa’s rebel underground movement, the African National Congress (ANC). Other such movements had sprung across Africa, like Samora Machel’s in Mozambique, Robert Mugabe, Joshua Nkomo and Abel Muzoreva in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Jose Eduardo dos Santos in Angola, Jomo Kenyatta’s in Kenya, Patris Lumumba of Belgian Congo (now Zaire), Habib Burguiba in Tunisia, and Ahmed Ben Bella in Algeria. All of them fought for liberation from British, Portuguese, Dutch, French, and Belgium colonial rule. But when the aforesaid colonial powers decided give up and leave, the U.S. moved in to install its own puppet colonial administrators. If nationalist leaders had already taken over, the CIA orchestrated their overthrow or assassination, as it did to Congo’s prime minister Patris Lumumba. Other CIA efforts and funding of mercenary armies to overthrow president dos Santos of Angola (under Jonas Savimbi) and another group by Portuguese mercenaries to overthrow Mozambique’s Samora Machel failed. When Great Britain abandoned South Africa and Rhodesia, white settlers took over the administration of these countries, and formed regimes that excluded indigenous blacks from any position of power or from the privilege of voting. The era of the so-called “apartheid” had begun, and Mandela and the ANC started subversive activities against that regime in South Africa , while in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) Robert Mugabe started a guerilla war in the African bush, while Joshua Nkomo and Abel Muzoreva tried to work out within Ian Smith’s apartheid regime.
Mandela was the pioneer of South Africa’s massive anti-apartheid protests and demonstrations that lasted decades and took the lives of tens of thousands of blacks. Eventually the apartheid regime was forced to negotiate with Mandela, and he was freed from prison obtaining instant fame as his release was flashed on TV screens across the globe. The ANC nominated him as president, and it won handily the elections. Mandela became South Africa’s first “black president!" But once in power he realized that government cannot perform miracles, or satisfy all the
demands of his disadvantaged black electorate. As a result, Mandela couldn’t bring the “gravy train” (the wealth), to the disadvantaged blacks as most blacks expected him to do. Instead he scolded blacks one time by telling them “the government didn’t have tons of money to giver them, and they should stop clamoring for!” Today, almost 20 years since Mandela’s first government, black Africans are not better than they were under the apartheid regime. For most of them, their vote - in terms of their standards of living- has been meaningless! American president Franklin Roosevelt described social progress as “as providing enough to those who had too little!” On this promise, Mandela and his ANC party have failed miserably! That was why current ANC president Jacob Zuma was jeered and booed when he took the podium to deliver Mandela's postmortem speech.
Mandela and the ANC remained friendly with the West, as most investments in South Africa were Western, and they feared a flight of capital and a collapse of the South African economy. But behind the facade of the good relations with their former colonial rulers, Mandela and the ANC leadership were African nationalists and fond of other anti-colonial revolutionaries and leaders across the globe. Mandela particularly didn’t like any white gun-ho elite establishment anywhere in the world. That is why when he stepped off the plane at his first trip to the U.S. he said “I am a Negro,” and refused to make any other statement to the crowds of reporters extending their microphones to him. Then he slipped away with waiting black activists. And to show his scorn for the U.S. establishment, he flew to Cuba and Libya to visit Fidel Castro and Muammar Gaddafi immediately afterward.
Mandela loved Gaddafi for providing financial support to revolutionary groups, and he loved Fidel Castro for supporting revolutionary groups in Latin America, and for sending Cuban troops in Angola to protect president Santos from CIA’s mercenaries. For Mandela, those leaders were his “brothers in arms!”
Mandela retired after one term in office, and he made it clear publicly upon his retirement that he did not want to associate with Western politicians seeking publicity with him. His statement: “Don’t call me, I will call you,” he said! It was like a replay of a live TV appearance in the U.S. where a former Ronald Reagan aid in the audience asked him: "Why did you choose Muammar Gaddafi and Fidel Castro as your friends?" Mandela answered it angrily: "I don't tell you whom to chose as your friend, and you don't tell me whom to chose as my friend!" The audience gave Mandela a standing ovation. But that answer opened Mandela's psyche and revealed who Mandela wanted to associate with. Only those with revolutionary credentials, who had a record of fighting colonialism and imperialism! In plain English, his message was: "If I feel we share the same values, I will call you. If I don't, get off my back!”
Mandela lost about 1/3 of his life in prison, but his struggle was eventually vindicated, and he lived long to age 95. But thousands of other blacks died in that struggle to propel him to that immortality status, 14.000 blacks in the Zulu region only since the mid 1980‘s. Yet, there were other ANC leaders who spend decades in prison like him, notably Walter Sisulu and others cadre of the ANC whose struggle was as critical as Mandela’s, but who remained in the shades of the struggle as the lights of publicity remained fixed on Mandela’s person. But one person has never won a revolution by himself. Mandela, as well as the Prophets, and all national heroes and revolutionary leaders, own their place in history to the soldiers and followers who suffered, fought, struggled or died for. For example, millions of Chinese guerrillas died in battle or froze to death during the Long March to accord their leader, Mao Tse-tung immortality. Mandela, therefore, deserves the merit of guidance and perseverance, but not credit for dismantling apartheid.
The apartheid is still there, under Mandela and his ANC party. Foreign TV crews gathering in South Africa for Mandela’s funeral learned from people in the ghettos that nothing has changed since his rise to power and fame. Even the apartheid signs “BEWARE OF NATIVES” were shown by TV crews to stand in the lines between white neighborhoods and black townships to warn whites of the danger no to enter, similar to signs “BEWARE OF BEARS” warning visitors for danger in the American National Parks. Black residents told foreign reporters that their lives are still the same as when Mandela was in prison. Mandela gave them hope but little else. That is why the Western powers eulogies have been so effusive about “his spirit of peace and reconciliation.” That “spirit of peace and reconciliation” allowed Western financial interests in South Africa to continue thriving as they did under the apartheid, while the African blacks continue to live on the leftovers of the state as they did under the apartheid - 20 years later! That is the legacy of Nelson Mandela.
Nikos Retsos, retired professor
