American Confusion Over Apartheid

++I've been receiving e-mails from conservatives about how Democrats controlled Congress during Mandela's time in prison as if this exonerates Republicans during this time.

++Reading Bill Clinton and Al Gore's tributes to Nelson Mandela does bring up issues of hypocrisy. After all Mandela remained on the terrorist lost during their administration also.

++Newt Gringrich responded to the teabag assault on  his tribute to Nelson Mandela. Ironically,his enablers like Grover Norquist, Paul Wyrich and Jack Abramoff received millions from fronts for the South African regime during that period.

++Yesterday, Al Sharpton called out Paul Gigot of the Wall Street Journal on Gigot's statement that everyone agreed that apartheid was immoral but people disagreed on a strategy to end it. Gigot said that Ronald Reagan wanted Mandela released and his ambassador to South Africa,Frances Perkins, asked for his release. 

++Gigot statement may, in fact be true. The Botha regime offered Mandela a conditional release from prison in 1985 if he renounced violence. Mandela told his daughter that he would agreed only if the regime renounced violence. It was six years later that the ANC suspended armed struggle when Mandela was released from prison.

++Mary Matalin also tried to defend Dick Cheney for his actions on Mandela, saying Cheney has since said nice things about the man but in those days the ANC was a "terrorist" group.

++I was in Johannesburg the day Nelson Mandela spoke in Cape Town after his release from prison. The air was jubilant and joyous but parts of white South Africa were apprehensive about what he would say. If he had called for bloodshed, the whole country would have been ripped apart. He conciliatory words re-assured the white South Africans. That's what is being celebrated today in America. The refrain about how this man forgave his jailers and that he was a model of reconciliation. Alot of that is true but the details get lost.

++Nelson Mandela pulled the ANC out of the negotiations with de Klerck when K.W. wanted the whites to have veto power of the constitution and the formation of the government. De Klerck later amnestied over 4,000 security forces over their crimes against anti-apartheid activists. Mandela created the National Reconciliation Commission so the history of the repression be known and some of the perpetrators be punished. 

++I fault the National Reconciliation Commission for not dealing adequately with the death of Stephen Biko and other victims who were members of the Black Consciousness movement. 

++The vitriol expressed towards Nelson Mandela by the teabag tweeters and the right-wing blogs represents the ugly emotions that characterized the situation during apartheid. WND actually polled his readership on whether Mandela should have been released from prison at all. Another right-winger claimed Mandela was well-armed. 

++A young woman from the BBC said on American television that Mandela's armed wing of the ANC was part of the Communist Party. He had a brief membership but in his speech at the Rivonia trial he makes it clear that the armed struggle was not Communist-inspired. 

++The sad fact remains that the United States was on the wrong side of history on apartheid. The United States considered white South Africa a reliable ally in the Cold War. It didn't matter that the South Africa, which had supported the allies in WWII, had been taken over by a clique that was pro-Nazi. It was only at the end when the regime was untenable that policy-makers started scrambling around for an exit strategy. Earlier last week, Peter Beinart wrote the inconvenient truth that following American geopolitical interests doesn't always mean freedom.

++To give you some perspective, when Desmond Tutu won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1984, he was ridiculed by the Reagan White House. 

++One final word. Nelson Mandela wore great shirts. The problem is that a white guy like myself would look like a dork wearing them.