Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 12:46:55 +0100
From: mokey <higginsc-AT-tcd.ie>
Subject: Re: Class-strugle and reconciliation.



aditya wrote:
>One other thing that bothers me about complete betrayal of Minnie by
>Nelson. 

I'll pass over a joke about cartoon mice.

>It was Winnie who kept Nelson in the limelight so that he could
>not be quietly killed in jail. Now Nelson has divorced this woman and
>married the widow of another president. Nelson always belonged to the
>the ruling class of his tribe and that is how he got to get the
>education that prepared him to take over the charge from the white
>rulers.

Admittedly Winnie Mandela did an awful lot to alert the outside world of
the brutality of the south african system, but the struggle destroyed her.
We've seen within the last couple of years that Winnie was not the black
angel that many thought she was.  Instead, she became in the early eighties
a tyrant herself - her militiamen in the Nelson Mandela Football Club being
responsible for gross human rights abuses leading ultimately to the murder
of Stompie Muketse (and others no doubt, we still don't know everything).
Winnie acquired too much power, and Lord Acton cast his spell on her.  

But lets remind ourselves of the real facts behind Mandela's incarceration.
 We've got to see through the propaganda that the ANC were peddling at the
time.  They were not a collected bunch of Ghandi's - Mandela was, after
all, head of the party's paramilitary wing.  Now, some of you know my views
on violence, I jump on a bus and in ninety minutes I can see just what it's
done to Belfast and the rest of the North.  I'm sure many truly believe
that a violent campaign against the Apartheid government was perfectly
legitimate.  I feel that any debate over this is irrelevant to this
discussion.  Mandela was portrayed as a non violent leader during the
climax of the anti-apartheid movement in the nineteen eighties.  This he
was not.  He was a convicted terrorist.  

So although I feel that we must praise him for truly standing up for what
he believes, we must also take off our rose-tinted glasses and look at the
evidence from the past.  The South African white aristocracy were not the
only tyrants.  The ANC murdered, maimed, destroyed and injured too.  Some
may believe that you've got to fight fire with fire, but (and i must
apologise for using two tired cliches in the same sentence) once you let
that genie out of the bottle, it's damn hard to put it back in again.  Many
of South Africa's problems today can be traced back to that era when
violence was simply part of everyday life.

That's where Archbishop Tutu and his T&RC step in.  Folks like him are the
real heroes.  There's where I hope the future for South Africa lies, not
with the shady Mr. Mbeki.  We must never forget, but we must forgive.
Otherwise people's tribal memories will emerge again, and South Africa
becomes another Yugoslavia.  Cheers Desmond, it takes guts to lower your
fists.

colin