Calling him one of the “most influential, courageous and
profoundly good people to ever have lived,” President Obama ordered all
U.S. flags lowered to half-staff in honor of Nelson Mandela, who died
on Thursday, December 5. As the worldwide tributes pour in for the
former leader of the African National Congress (ANC) and first black
president of South Africa, it is good to remember just who Mandela was,
and who he wasn’t.
As president of South Africa, Mandela—though a typically bumbling
socialist—was not a vengeful character. After having spent much of his
adult life in prison, he is widely praised for not seeking to retaliate
against the former white rulers, and for having largely urged
reconciliation and compromise in undoing the injustices of Apartheid.
Though Mandela was a committed Marxist, he was also a pragmatist,
disappointing his more impatient comrades by not immediately carrying
out the massive nationalizations of industry he had promised, so as not
to drive away foreign investment. And he recognized his own limitations,
both physical and political, in deciding not to attempt to remain in
power after his term in office.
Most white South Africans rejoin that Nelson Mandela had no reason to
seek revenge on anyone, nor any basis for extending forgiveness to his
previous jailors. After all, as the most famous prisoner of the previous
Apartheid government, he had been fairly tried and convicted of
complicity in many murders, and he confessed to participation in 156
acts of terror, crimes that would certainly have earned him the death
penalty in a great many countries. Moreover, his confinement was more
than comfortable by any standards. During his legendary twenty-seven
years in prison, Mandela communicated freely with his followers, and
somehow managed to accumulate a considerable fortune. He was continually
offered release by the white Apartheid government, but on one
condition: that he renounce violence in pursuit of political reform.
That is something he consistently refused to do.
As was made clear by testimony before the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission, Mandela was personally involved in the targeting and timing
of terrorist bombings that took place during his imprisonment, such as
the infamous “Church Street Massacre,” designed to maximize casualties
among Afrikaner women and children. Even a group as left-leaning as
Amnesty International refused to grant Mandela political prisoner status
because of the obviously violent character of his ideology and his
actions. His African National Congress party ran a horrific camp for
political prisoners in Angola, with daily torture and murder, often by
the “necklacing” technique, whereby a gasoline-filled tire is placed
around the neck of a victim and set ablaze. Virtually all the victims of
this particular horror were blacks.
Within South Africa, on direct orders from Winnie and Nelson Mandela,
the ANC targeted not only whites, but also all black civil servants,
teachers, lawyers, and businessmen—essentially anyone who imagined a
post-Apartheid South Africa that differed from the one mandated by the
Marxist ANC. Even simple black peasants who refused to carry out terror
attacks were treated as enemies, and they were killed in large numbers.
Thus, just as the terroristic FLN killed far more Algerians than did the
French during the Algerian war for independence, the ANC was the
leading cause of death, by far, for black South Africans throughout the
period of Apartheid.
The only reality that makes it even remotely possible to view Mandela
as a “statesman” is that he lived on a continent where the definition
of “statecraft” is not exactly rigorous or exemplary. Since the wave of
decolonization following World War II, the number of African states
ruled by ruthless dictators has always been in the majority, and
sometimes approached unanimity. The precise number of tyrants involved
is actually difficult to ascertain. One simply loses count, and the
shadows of the worst of them conceal the merely “semi-heinous” crimes of
the lesser despots, so that their names are eclipsed and you find
yourself asking: “Does so-and-so really fit the African definition of a tyrant?”
Numbered among the rogue gallery of miscreants who have wielded power
on that tragic continent, we find some of the world’s biggest drug
traffickers, diamond smugglers, and slave traders. It seems that the
poorer an African nation is, the greater the wealth accumulated by its
“President for Life.” Almost every country in black-ruled Africa has a
system of gulags. All elections are rigged, free press is non-existent,
and all dissent comes from exiles. In the past fifty years, there have
been more wars in Africa than in all the other continents combined. And
everything is considered a weapon of war: ethnic cleansing, child
soldiering and child rape, even cannibalism. Just refraining from
committing genocide in Africa practically sets one up for comparison
with Mother Theresa.
So in this regard, Mandela (post-Apartheid, at least) does indeed
look pretty good. Though personally implicated in a great many murders,
there is at least no record of him ever eating a political foe or
advocating child rape or promoting genocide. And he left office
voluntarily in 1999, even if this was due more to advancing years, frail
health, and the realization that he had no talent for governing, rather
than to a real commitment to democracy. Still, by African standards,
this is the stuff of a Nobel Peace Prize.
Mandela did, however, leave behind another socialist nightmare in the
making. With their motto of “liberation before education,” the ANC has
proved itself completely incapable of governing, and South Africa is
sliding into chaos at an alarming rate. Since 2004, South Africa has
experienced almost constant political protests, many of them violent.
Activists like to refer to the nation as the most “protest-rich in the
world,” which, along with prison camps, is the only type of “riches” a
socialist nation can produce. The nation is staggered by unemployment,
corruption throughout all levels of the police, military, and civil
service, and ubiquitous, inescapable crime. Life in South Africa is far
more dangerous, especially for blacks and women, than it was under
Apartheid. With about fifty murders a day, the nation is now among the undisputed murder capitals of the world,
most of these crimes going uninvestigated. The astounding estimates of
other violent crimes, including rape, are almost impossible to believe.
But only the truth of such figures could account for the fact that the
private security business in South Africa is the largest in the world, with over a quarter-million private security guards in a nation of under 53 million.
Taking their lead from the disaster in neighboring Zimbabwe, the
government of South Africa is now looking the other way as white farmers
are driven off their land by arson and murder. It is said that job
advertisements, even those posted by the government, routinely include
the phrase “Whites need not apply.” Would it be an exaggeration to say
that a “reverse Apartheid” is taking place in South Africa? The nearly
one million white South Africans who have fled the growing chaos don’t
think so.
Of course, life in South Africa is now most dangerous for the most
defenseless, for those waiting to be born. As president, Mandela—ever
the pragmatist—signed the most liberal abortion law in all of Africa,
with no reason at all needed for a woman to procure abortion in the
first 20 weeks of pregnancy, and abortion easy to obtain through all
nine months. Since this law took effect in 1997, even the most
conservative estimates put the number of abortions that have taken place
at one million. Once again, socialists and pragmatists of all stripes
reveal that they cannot conceive of any form of good governance that
does not involve killing on a massive scale.
Yes, some South Africans view Mandela as a nearly messianic figure.
Desmond Tutu has publically thanked God for the “gift” of Mandela. But
this is the same “bishop” Tutu who recently stated that he would decline
his own invitation to heaven if God turned out to be a “homophobe.” Any
pious invocation by Tutu has to be regarded as more than a little
suspect. Nor can we have any confidence in Barack Obama when he declares
that Mandela “achieved more than could be expected of any man” and that
“he belongs to the ages.” Obama no doubt believes he himself “belongs
to the ages,” since his signature “accomplishments”—the government
seizure of medical care, the enthronement of abortion, and the promotion
of homosexual “marriage”—are all policies promoted by the ANC in the
new South Africa. So we should not expect to hear much from the Obama
administration about Mandela’s violent past. Statists never find
anything to reproach in one of their own.
