How many times has the liberation movement worked together with workers, and at the moment of victory betrayed the workers? There are many examples of that in the world. . . (prolonged applause) It is only if the workers strengthen their organisation before and after liberation . . . (applause) . . . if you relax your vigilance, you will find that your sacrifices have been in vain. You must support the African National Congress only so far as it delivers the goods, if the ANC government does not deliver the goods, you must do to it what you have done to the apartheid regime (prolonged applause, and shouts of "Buwa! Buwa!").

More... (http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2013/mandela051213.html)

Ya got to wonder what the man really thought about how things have developed over the past decade.

I wonder about the timing of the whole thing, how did the concessions of the Boers relate to the decline of the Soviet Union? Was it safe then?

This is a rather long and detailed work from 1996 describing the situation in South Africa. The writer is a Trotskyist but other than a few 'Stalinists' seems to refrain from sectarian jive, even taking SA Trotskyist to task for said offense. Among other points he addresses the effect of the dissolution of the Soviet Union upon the ANC, the loss of morale and subsequent dismay which was happening everywhere. Though not covered in this article I would suggest that had the ANC begun expropriating the means of production they would have faced a serious, possibly military response from the capitalists powers with no Soviet Union having their back. Sometimes timing is everything.

http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/isj70/safrica.htm

Ya got to wonder what the man really thought about how things have developed over the past decade.

I wonder about the timing of the whole thing, how did the concessions of the Boers relate to the decline of the Soviet Union? Was it safe then?

Dude, in the past decade the man had already fully gone flower power. The perception in SA and surrounding countries seems to be that they know Madiba was no Ghandi and that everybody got their hands dirty. So he (and to some extent they) are regarded as deserving on this basis. I get no sense that anyone is taken in by the modern reality -- and, remember, you don't have to resort to history books to recall the Bad Old Days.

Dude, in the past decade the man had already fully gone flower power. The perception in SA and surrounding countries seems to be that they know Madiba was no Ghandi and that everybody got their hands dirty. So he (and to some extent they) are regarded as deserving on this basis. I get no sense that anyone is taken in by the modern reality -- and, remember, you don't have to resort to history books to recall the Bad Old Days.

Yeah, I see that, think we see something similar in Fidel, the old have their excuse. I was speaking more of his view of the lack of progress on economic equality and the performance of the ANC.

I am sick to the teeth of the media coverage already, the only reason he is being lauded by these philistines is because he didn't kick the Boers in the balls and take their toys. Which is what he should have done but like I said above, the timing was off.

SACP statement on the passing away of Madiba


“…The True Revolutionary Is Guided By Great Feelings Of Love”:
Last night the millions of the people of South Africa, majority of whom the working class and poor, and the billions of the rest of the people the world over, lost a true revolutionary, President Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, Tata Madiba.

The South African Communist Party (SACP) joins the people of South Africa and the world in expressing its most sincere condolences to Ms Graca Machel and the entire Mandela family on the loss of what President Zuma correctly described as South Africa's greatest son, Comrade Mandela. We also wish to use this opportunity to express our solidarity with the African National Congress, an organisation that produced him and that he also served with distinction, as well as all his colleagues and comrades in our broader liberation movement. As Tata Madiba said: “It is not the kings and generals that make history but the masses of the people, the workers, the peasants…”

The passing away of Cde Mandela marks an end to the life of one of the greatest revolutionaries of the 20th century, who fought for freedom and against all forms of oppression in both their countries and globally. As part of the masses that make history, Cde Mandela’s contribution in the struggle for freedom was located and steeled in the collective membership and leadership of our revolutionary national liberation movement as led by the ANC – for he was not an island. In Cde Mandela we had a brave and courageous soldier, patriot and internationalist who, to borrow from Che Guevara, was a true revolutionary guided by great feelings of love for his people, an outstanding feature of all genuine people’s revolutionaries.

At his arrest in August 1962, Nelson Mandela was not only a member of the then underground South African Communist Party, but was also a member of our Party’s Central Committee. To us as South African communists, Cde Mandela shall forever symbolise the monumental contribution of the SACP in our liberation struggle. The contribution of communists in the struggle to achieve the South African freedom has very few parallels in the history of our country. After his release from prison in 1990, Cde Madiba became a great and close friend of the communists till his last days.

The one major lesson we need to learn from Mandela and his generation of leaders was their commitment to principled unity within each of our Alliance formations as well as the unity of our Alliance as a whole and that of the entire mass democratic movement. Their generation struggled to build and cement the unity of our Alliance, and we therefore owe it to the memory of Cde Madiba to preserve the unity of our Alliance. Let those who do not understand the extent to which blood was spilt in pursuance of Alliance unity be reminded not to throw mud at the legacy and memory of the likes of Madiba by being reckless and gambling with the unity of our Alliance.

The SACP supported Madiba's championing of national reconciliation. But national reconciliation for him never meant avoiding tackling the class and other social inequalities in our society, as some would like to make us believe today. For Madiba, national reconciliation was a platform to pursue the objective of building a more egalitarian South African society free of the scourge of racism, patriarchy and gross inequalities. And true national reconciliation shall never be achieved in a society still characterized by the yawning gap of inequalities and capitalist exploitation.

In honour of this gallant fighter the SACP will intensify the struggle against all forms of inequality, including intensifying the struggle for socialism, as the only political and economic solution to the problems facing humanity.

For the SACP the passing away of Madiba must give all those South Africans who had not fully embraced a democratic South Africa, and who still in one way or the other hanker to the era of white domination, a second chance to come to terms with a democratic South Africa founded on the principle of majority rule.

We call upon all South Africans to emulate his example of selflessness, sacrifice, commitment and service to his people.

The SACP says Hamba kahle Mkhonto!


http://houstoncommunistparty.com/sacp-statement-on-the-passing-away-of-madiba/

COSATU pays tribute to Comrade Madiba
6 December 2013

The Congress of South African Trade Unions joins all South Africans, and millions more all over the world, in mourning the sad loss today, 5 December 2013, of the greatest ever South African and most inspirational leader in our struggle for liberty and democracy, our beloved Comrade, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela.

Comrade Madiba inspired all those fighting for freedom in South Africa and around the world. He suffered long and brutal incarceration, but never became embittered and revengeful. He was elected as our first democratically elected President, but remained a humble and modest servant of his people, who never put his personal interests before his commitment to the struggle.

He never compromised his democratic principles or thought of anything but how to win the ultimate victory of the struggle he lived for, and was prepared to die for - for a non-racial, non-sexist, democratic and free South Africa.

Although Comrade Madiba would have insisted that full credit be given to the other giants of the struggle - Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu, Chief Albert Luthuli, Joe Slovo, Chris Hani and many others – he was unique, the South African who, more than any other, became the embodiment of the struggle against racist dictatorship, apartheid brutality and the exploitation of workers and the poor.

He was honoured with over 250 awards, including the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize, the US Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Soviet Order of Lenin. But for South African workers, the one which we shall always remember is the inaugural Elijah Barayi Award for outstanding leadership and service, presented on COSATU’s 15th birthday in 2000.

There was absolutely no doubt about who should be the first recipient - Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela. The citation to that award declared: “You have been a constant inspiration to us from the days of the Congress of the People, through the armed struggle, the dark days in prison and exile, the mass uprisings of the eighties, to the period of negotiations, and finally the days of liberation and reconstruction.

“You have always first and foremost been the leader of the people’s movement. Whether you were the young lion fighting to radicalise the ANC, the leader of the defiance campaign, the ‘black pimpernel’ avoiding the clutches of the security police, the MK commander-in-chief seeking weapons and funding in Africa, and unifier and leader on Robben Island, or the negotiator, a statesman and first President of a democratic South Africa, you never lost sight of your role as the leader and servant of the liberation movement.

“You have taught us all this lesson, through your commitment, your dedication, your humility, your selflessness, your loyalty and your discipline: that to be a true leader is to be a servant of your people. For this we salute you.”

The citation concluded with the words of a popular liberation song once sung by MK troops in Angola “We shall always love you, we shall need you, for the things you’ve done for us”.

Now he is no longer with us in person but his example shines more brightly than ever, and will continue to inspire and guide us for as long as we shall live.

The best way to honour his memory is to take forward the struggle he led, and obey the call he made during the ANC’s 50th National Conference: “Here are the reins of the movement – protect and guide its precious legacy; defend its unity and integrity as committed disciples of change; pursue its popular objectives like true revolutionaries who seek only to serve the nation”.

COSATU sends its condolences to all Comrade Madiba’s family, and all his friends and comrades.

Patrick Craven (National Spokesperson)
Congress of South African Trade Unions
110 Jorissen Cnr Simmonds Streets
Braamfontein
2017

http://www.thebellforum.com/showthread.php?t=107761

Statement of the Press Office of the CC of the KKE on the Death of Nelson Mandela

http://www.902.gr/sites/default/files/styles/902-original/public/Media/20131206/mandela-grammatoshmo-ussr_0.jpg?itok=jr-1VCHq

The KKE expresses its sincere condolences regarding the death of Nelson Mandela, militant, symbol of the struggle against Apartheid, former president of the African National Congress and the first President of South Africa elected in multi-racial elections.

“Madiba”, as he was called by the popular strata, was identifies with the struggle against colonialism and racial discrimination, against hunger and poverty. He played a leading role in the struggle of the African National Congress – political and armed-against Apartheid and was imprisoned for 27 years due to this activity. He cooperated closely with the South African Communist Party in the framework of the alliance and worked side by side with its historic cadres, such as Joe Slovo and Chris Hani. He was honoured by the USSR for this activity with the Lenin peace Prize and he also received the Nobel peace prize, while the SACP awarded him in 1998 the “Chris Hani” peace prize.

The legacy of the people’s struggles in which he participated and played a leading role against discrimination, poverty, unemployment, inequality is today given expression, meaning and purpose by the struggle of the workers and popular strata of South Africa and all over the world against the monopolies, exploitation and capitalism.
..

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/Statement-of-the-Press-Office-of-the-CC-of-the-KKE-on-the-Death-of-Nelson-Mandela/

Leonard Peltier on the passing of Nelson Mandela


Greeting my relatives, friends, and supporters:

It saddens me to hear that a great man like Nelson Mandela has departed from this lifetime. He was a man who was truly inspirational and showed us the possibilities of how a continued struggle by indigenous people could manifest itself in levels of freedom that have been marred by centuries of oppression.

Our Native people suffered the same types of oppression many times. It is not as overt and as easily distinguished as in some places; however, if you are dead because a policeman shot you, or dead because you could not stand the racial and cultural genocide, so you committed suicide-- you are just as dead either away. Nelson Mandela is known for leading the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. America talked about ending apartheid and put sanctions on South Africa. Not being all that adept at the English language, it is my understanding that (apartheid) means to keep someone apart from something; my people have been kept apart purposely from the sacred Black Hills of South Dakota. There was, and still are, measures that keep us apart from our true history, perpetrated by an education system that limits the truth of our being. Right now, here in America, right now in Canada, right now in South America, there is apartheid that seeks to separate us from our sacred places, our lands, and our resources. Right now in Canada Native people are struggling to protect their aboriginal lands from fracking which destroys the water tables and disturbs the natural balance of the Earth. Right now with an apartheid mentality, they seek to build pipelines across Native lands that have the potential of great ecological destruction. Right now there is an apartheid that seeks to separate us from the protection of the constitution of the United States which says treaty law is the supreme law of the land; which also says you have a right to an unbiased fair trial; which also says you have a right to a jury of your peers. Right now our young Native people are tried as adults THREE times more than other groups and kept apartheid from their families and kept apartheid from competent legal representation.

more.........

http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2013/12/leonard-peltier-on-passing-of-nelson.html

The smug, talking-heads on the news pontificate about and lament over the death of "such a great man" - it is bullshit. These cretins do not even listen to themselves talk. What made Mandela such a "great man"? It was his lifelong (or near lifelong) fight against the very system that these talking-heads worship like a god. If the system does not kill you, you might attain greatness after you are no longer a threat. Most of the time the system just kills you.

What else could Mandela do, but acquiesce to the system and join in with the very organizations that had murdered his people for generations? What else could he have done? Just like the "ruling councils" on US reservations - what else can they do, but go along and try to do what the white man says?
When you think about it, "What can they (I) do?" is the same question as, "What is to be done?"

The smug, talking-heads on the news pontificate about and lament over the death of "such a great man" - it is bullshit. These cretins do not even listen to themselves talk. What made Mandela such a "great man"? It was his lifelong (or near lifelong) fight against the very system that these talking-heads worship like a god. If the system does not kill you, you might attain greatness after you are no longer a threat. Most of the time the system just kills you.

What else could Mandela do, but acquiesce to the system and join in with the very organizations that had murdered his people for generations? What else could he have done? Just like the "ruling councils" on US reservations - what else can they do, but go along and try to do what the white man says?
When you think about it, "What can they (I) do?" is the same question as, "What is to be done?"

Brings to mind Chief Joseph.

There lies the message, resistance is futile, your grace in accquience will be noted. All that went before is just counterpoint, amplifying your 'endorsement' of the system. Fuckers love this shit, the system must be met on it's terms. Somehow I don't think Fidel will be eulogised in like manner.

Had the Soviet Union been around things might have shaken out much differently. If wishes were horses....

Somehow I don't think Fidel will be eulogised in like manner.

I said exactly this to my wife during the first wave of eulogies on Thursday.

There lies the message, resistance is futile, your grace in accquience will be noted. All that went before is just counterpoint, amplifying your 'endorsement' of the system. Fuckers love this shit, the system must be met on it's terms. Somehow I don't think Fidel will be eulogised in like manner.
or mugabe..

or mugabe..

He has done the forbidden, expropriate! He and the people of Zimbabwe are being duly punished for their effrontery. If you hear his name on NPR you know they are talking about a madman. The very idea!!

He has done the forbidden, expropriate! He and the people of Zimbabwe are being duly punished for their effrontery. If you hear his name on NPR you know they are talking about a madman. The very idea!!

The thing about Mugabe is that all of his alleged misdeeds would be tolerated, explained away or covered up were he playing nice with the capitalists and settlers. The deal he made to end the civil war, like South Africa, was inadequate, the difference being that he was moved to make corrections .



Though widespread grievance over the theft of land – a process begun in 1889 and completed in the 1950s – fuelled the guerrilla struggle against the regime of Ian Smith, whose Rhodesian Front opposed black majority rule, the matter was never properly addressed when Britain came back into the picture to effect a constitutional transition to independence under majority rule. Southern Rhodesia became Zimbabwe in 1980, but the social realities of the newly independent state remained embedded in an earlier historical period: some six thousand white farmers owned 15.5 million hectares of prime land, 39 per cent of the land in the country, while about 4.5 million farmers (a million households) in ‘communal areas’ were left to subsist on 16.4 million hectares of the most arid land, to which they’d been removed or confined by a century of colonial rule. In the middle were 8500 small-scale black farmers on about 1.4 million hectares of land.

This was not a sustainable arrangement in a country whose independence had been secured at the end of a long armed struggle supported by a land-hungry population. But the agreement that Britain drafted at Lancaster House in 1979 – and that the settlers eagerly backed – didn’t seem to take into account the kind of transition that would be necessary to secure a stable social order. Two of its provisions, one economic and the other political, reflected this short-termism: one called for land transfers on a ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ basis, with the British funding the scheme; the other reserved 20 per cent of seats in the House of Assembly for whites – 3 per cent of the population – giving the settler community an effective veto over any amendment to the Lancaster House terms. This was qualified majority rule at best. Both provisions had a time limit: 1990 for land transfers based on the market principle, and 1987 for the settler minority to set limits on majority rule. The deal sustained illusions among the settlers that what they had failed to achieve by UDI – Smith’s 1965 declaration of independence from the UK – and force of arms, they could now achieve through support from a government of ‘kith and kin’ (as Smith called it) in Britain. In reality, however, the agreement drew a line under settler privilege.

The inadequacy of the Lancaster House provisions for the decolonisation of land ensured that it remained the focus of politics in independent Zimbabwe. The course of land relations and land reform in Zimbabwe has over the years been meticulously documented by Sam Moyo, a professor who directs the African Institute of Agrarian Studies in Harare. Transfers during the first decade of independence were so minimal that they increased rather than appeased land hunger. The new regime in Harare, installed in 1980 and led by Mugabe and his party, Zanu, called for the purchase of eight million hectares to resettle 162,000 land-poor farming households from communal areas. But the ban on compulsory purchase drove up land prices and encouraged white farmers to sell only the worst land. As the decade drew to a close, only 58,000 families had been resettled on three million hectares of land. No more than 19 per cent of the land acquired between 1980 and 1992 was of prime agricultural value.

As the 1980s wore on, land transfers actually declined, dropping from 430,000 hectares per annum during the first half of the decade to 75,000 hectares during the second. The greater land hunger became, the more often invasions were mounted; in response, Mugabe created local ‘squatter control’ units in 1985, and they were soon evicting squatters in droves. At this point Zimbabwean law still defined a squatter in racial terms, as ‘an African whose house happens to be situated in an area which has been declared European or is set apart for some other reason’. By 1990, 40 per cent of the rural population was said to be landless or affected by the landlessness of dependent relations.

When the Lancaster House Agreement’s rules on land transfer expired in 1990, the pressure to take direct action was intensified by two very different developments: an IMF Structural Adjustment Programme and recurrent drought. Peasant production, which had been a meagre 8 per cent of marketed output at independence in 1980, and had shot up to 45 per cent by 1985, declined as a result of the programme. Trade-union analysts pointed out that employment growth also fell from 2.4 per cent in the late 1980s to 1.55 per cent in the period 1991-97. The percentage of households living in poverty throughout the country increased by 14 per cent in five years. There was now widespread squatting on all types of land, from communal areas to state land, commercial farms (mainly growing tobacco), resettlement areas and urban sites.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n23/mahmood-mamdani/lessons-of-zimbabwe

This essay is weak analysis but rich in facts.

Landless ex-revolutionary soldiers were a large factor in the accelerated expropriaton, compare this to Shay's Rebellion.

It is also to be noted that the effects of drought are confounded with the disruption of the agricultural section due to redistribution by the bourgoise hacks, where have we seen that gambit before?

The Obama speech:



Obama’s speech at Mandela memorial (transcript): ‘Mandela taught us the power of action, but also ideas’

Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. To Graça Machel and the Mandela family; to President Zuma and members of the government; to heads of states and government, past and present; distinguished guests -- it is a singular honor to be with you today, to celebrate a life like no other. To the people of South Africa -- people of every race and walk of life -- the world thanks you for sharing Nelson Mandela with us. His struggle was your struggle. His triumph was your triumph. Your dignity and your hope found expression in his life. And your freedom, your democracy is his cherished legacy.

It is hard to eulogize any man -- to capture in words not just the facts and the dates that make a life, but the essential truth of a person -- their private joys and sorrows; the quiet moments and unique qualities that illuminate someone’s soul. How much harder to do so for a giant of history, who moved a nation toward justice, and in the process moved billions around the world.

Born during World War I, far from the corridors of power, a boy raised herding cattle and tutored by the elders of his Thembu tribe, Madiba would emerge as the last great liberator of the 20th century. Like Gandhi, he would lead a resistance movement -- a movement that at its start had little prospect for success. Like Dr. King, he would give potent voice to the claims of the oppressed and the moral necessity of racial justice. He would endure a brutal imprisonment that began in the time of Kennedy and Khrushchev, and reached the final days of the Cold War. Emerging from prison, without the force of arms, he would -- like Abraham Lincoln -- hold his country together when it threatened to break apart. And like America’s Founding Fathers, he would erect a constitutional order to preserve freedom for future generations -- a commitment to democracy and rule of law ratified not only by his election, but by his willingness to step down from power after only one term.

Given the sweep of his life, the scope of his accomplishments, the adoration that he so rightly earned, it’s tempting I think to remember Nelson Mandela as an icon, smiling and serene, detached from the tawdry affairs of lesser men. But Madiba himself strongly resisted such a lifeless portrait. Instead, Madiba insisted on sharing with us his doubts and his fears; his miscalculations along with his victories. “I am not a saint,” he said, “unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.”

It was precisely because he could admit to imperfection -- because he could be so full of good humor, even mischief, despite the heavy burdens he carried -- that we loved him so. He was not a bust made of marble; he was a man of flesh and blood -- a son and a husband, a father and a friend. And that’s why we learned so much from him, and that’s why we can learn from him still. For nothing he achieved was inevitable. In the arc of his life, we see a man who earned his place in history through struggle and shrewdness, and persistence and faith. He tells us what is possible not just in the pages of history books, but in our own lives as well.

Mandela showed us the power of action; of taking risks on behalf of our ideals. Perhaps Madiba was right that he inherited, “a proud rebelliousness, a stubborn sense of fairness” from his father. And we know he shared with millions of black and colored South Africans the anger born of, “a thousand slights, a thousand indignities, a thousand unremembered moments…a desire to fight the system that imprisoned my people,” he said.

But like other early giants of the ANC -- the Sisulus and Tambos -- Madiba disciplined his anger and channeled his desire to fight into organization, and platforms, and strategies for action, so men and women could stand up for their God-given dignity. Moreover, he accepted the consequences of his actions, knowing that standing up to powerful interests and injustice carries a price. “I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I’ve cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and [with] equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

Mandela taught us the power of action, but he also taught us the power of ideas; the importance of reason and arguments; the need to study not only those who you agree with, but also those who you don’t agree with. He understood that ideas cannot be contained by prison walls, or extinguished by a sniper’s bullet. He turned his trial into an indictment of apartheid because of his eloquence and his passion, but also because of his training as an advocate. He used decades in prison to sharpen his arguments, but also to spread his thirst for knowledge to others in the movement. And he learned the language and the customs of his oppressor so that one day he might better convey to them how their own freedom depend upon his.

Mandela demonstrated that action and ideas are not enough. No matter how right, they must be chiseled into law and institutions. He was practical, testing his beliefs against the hard surface of circumstance and history. On core principles he was unyielding, which is why he could rebuff offers of unconditional release, reminding the Apartheid regime that “prisoners cannot enter into contracts.”

But as he showed in painstaking negotiations to transfer power and draft new laws, he was not afraid to compromise for the sake of a larger goal. And because he was not only a leader of a movement but a skillful politician, the Constitution that emerged was worthy of this multiracial democracy, true to his vision of laws that protect minority as well as majority rights, and the precious freedoms of every South African.

And finally, Mandela understood the ties that bind the human spirit. There is a word in South Africa -- Ubuntu -- a word that captures Mandela’s greatest gift: his recognition that we are all bound together in ways that are invisible to the eye; that there is a oneness to humanity; that we achieve ourselves by sharing ourselves with others, and caring for those around us.

We can never know how much of this sense was innate in him, or how much was shaped in a dark and solitary cell. But we remember the gestures, large and small -- introducing his jailers as honored guests at his inauguration; taking a pitch in a Springbok uniform; turning his family’s heartbreak into a call to confront HIV/AIDS -- that revealed the depth of his empathy and his understanding. He not only embodied Ubuntu, he taught millions to find that truth within themselves.

It took a man like Madiba to free not just the prisoner, but the jailer as well to show that you must trust others so that they may trust you; to teach that reconciliation is not a matter of ignoring a cruel past, but a means of confronting it with inclusion and generosity and truth. He changed laws, but he also changed hearts.

For the people of South Africa, for those he inspired around the globe, Madiba’s passing is rightly a time of mourning, and a time to celebrate a heroic life. But I believe it should also prompt in each of us a time for self-reflection. With honesty, regardless of our station or our circumstance, we must ask: How well have I applied his lessons in my own life? It’s a question I ask myself, as a man and as a President.

We know that, like South Africa, the United States had to overcome centuries of racial subjugation. As was true here, it took sacrifice -- the sacrifice of countless people, known and unknown, to see the dawn of a new day. Michelle and I are beneficiaries of that struggle. But in America, and in South Africa, and in countries all around the globe, we cannot allow our progress to cloud the fact that our work is not yet done.

The struggles that follow the victory of formal equality or universal franchise may not be as filled with drama and moral clarity as those that came before, but they are no less important. For around the world today, we still see children suffering from hunger and disease. We still see run-down schools. We still see young people without prospects for the future. Around the world today, men and women are still imprisoned for their political beliefs, and are still persecuted for what they look like, and how they worship, and who they love. That is happening today.

And so we, too, must act on behalf of justice. We, too, must act on behalf of peace. There are too many people who happily embrace Madiba’s legacy of racial reconciliation, but passionately resist even modest reforms that would challenge chronic poverty and growing inequality. There are too many leaders who claim solidarity with Madiba’s struggle for freedom, but do not tolerate dissent from their own people. And there are too many of us on the sidelines, comfortable in complacency or cynicism when our voices must be heard.

The questions we face today -- how to promote equality and justice; how to uphold freedom and human rights; how to end conflict and sectarian war -- these things do not have easy answers. But there were no easy answers in front of that child born in World War I. Nelson Mandela reminds us that it always seems impossible until it is done. South Africa shows that is true. South Africa shows we can change, that we can choose a world defined not by our differences, but by our common hopes. We can choose a world defined not by conflict, but by peace and justice and opportunity.

We will never see the likes of Nelson Mandela again. But let me say to the young people of Africa and the young people around the world -- you, too, can make his life’s work your own. Over 30 years ago, while still a student, I learned of Nelson Mandela and the struggles taking place in this beautiful land, and it stirred something in me. It woke me up to my responsibilities to others and to myself, and it set me on an improbable journey that finds me here today. And while I will always fall short of Madiba’s example, he makes me want to be a better man. He speaks to what’s best inside us.

After this great liberator is laid to rest, and when we have returned to our cities and villages and rejoined our daily routines, let us search for his strength. Let us search for his largeness of spirit somewhere inside of ourselves. And when the night grows dark, when injustice weighs heavy on our hearts, when our best-laid plans seem beyond our reach, let us think of Madiba and the words that brought him comfort within the four walls of his cell: “It matters not how strait the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.”

What a magnificent soul it was. We will miss him deeply. May God bless the memory of Nelson Mandela. May God bless the people of South Africa.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/obamas-speech-at-mandela-memorial-mandela-taught-us-the-power-of-action-but-also-ideas/2013/12/10/a22c8a92-618c-11e3-bf45-61f69f54fc5f_story_2.html

There is so much wrong with this that I hardly know where to start. Might start with historical veracity, their ain't much. "Greatest liberator of the 20th century", umm, greater than Lenin? Greater than Mao? With his people still miserable and exploited? The comparison with 'our founding fathers' is particularly obscene, how many slaves did Mandela have? No mention of the armed struggle which Mandela approved, no mention of his Communist Party membership, just a bunch of sanitized new-agey self-help palaver. Mandela inspired Obama in the 80's, shit, and I thought it was Reagan.

Mandela inspired Obama in the 80's, shit, and I thought it was Reagan.

After the week-long praise and lies by US media, I thought Mandela was Reagan...

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Wb7gmBhM3z4/SqJZ7B_mklI/AAAAAAAACF0/JVuJRwqGEbo/s400/fidel+nelson.jpg

Another aspect of Mandela, studiously ignored. It is hard to estimate how important Cuba's contribution to the defeat of the South African fascists in Angola meant to the struggle in South Africa.

They're saying that Obama 'bowed' to Raul and the right is going nuts. Absurd, but he should have, and begged forgiveness.

dupe

On the Death of Nelson Mandela
by worker

By George Greene

All the bourgeois press has been crying crocodile tears over the death of Nelson Mandela, the long-time leader of the South African National Congress (ANC) and first president of post-apartheid South Africa. But they mostly neglect to mention that Mandela was arrested in 1962 based on intelligence information from a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency inside the ANC, that the ANC was considered a terrorist organization, and that the U.S. government had to grant a waiver for him to come to the U.S. for the first time in 1990, when he was given a hero’s welcome in the streets of Harlem, Bedford-Stuyvesant, East New York and elsewhere in New York and around the country. They also did not like the fact that South Africa’s liberation was aided by other anti-imperialist and revolutionary countries, such as Libya under Muammar Gadhafi and Cuba under Fidel Castro, aid that Mandela continued to extol during his visit to the U.S.

While they hypocritically decry Mandela’s 27 years in prison, they do not mention such political prisoners in the U.S. as Mumia Abu-Jamal, who has already spent 32 years in prison, Leonard Peltier now imprisoned for 37 years, Oscar Lopez Rivera imprisoned for 32 year, David Gilbert imprisoned for 32 years, or Lynne Stewart who has already served over 4 years of a 10 year sentence.

The bourgeois press also praised Mandela for “peacefully freeing” South Africa from white minority rule, while condemning President Mugabe of Zimbabwe who not only freed his country from white minority rule through armed struggle, but went on, at the end of the 20-year period mandated by the British-imposed Lancaster Agreement, to take over white-owned plantations and divide them up among landless African peasants. For this Zimbabwe has been placed under sanctions by the U.S. and Western Europe, and Mugabe himself has been demonized by the bourgeois press and its Trotskyite hangers-on.

In 1993, at the end of the apartheid era, Mandela together with F.W. de Klerk, the last apartheid president of South Africa, was given the Nobel Peace Prize. In a similar action, in 1973, after the conclusion of the Peace Accords on Vietnam, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to both Le Duc Tho, the chief negotiator for the Democratic Republic of [North] Vietnam, and Henry Kissinger, the U.S. Secretary of State and one of the chief architects of that imperialist war. But, unlike Mandela, Le Duc Tho declined to accept the prize.

There are further reasons why the bourgeois press praises Mandela and the ANC government. The agreements ending apartheid in South Africa, accepted by the ANC, included clauses saying that the major corporations in that country, owned by white South Africans and British and U.S. capitalists, could not be nationalized. At best, a few members of the African elite were put on the Boards of Directors of these corporations (similarly to allowing token representatives of unions on the Boards of Directors of U.S. corporations, such as Doug Fraser, then head of the UAW, who served on Chrysler’s Board of Directors). In doing this they violated the provisions of the Freedom Charter, adopted by the ANC in 1955, which stated: “The mineral wealth beneath the soil, the Banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole;” and that “Restrictions of land ownership on a racial basis shall be ended, and all the land re-divided amongst those who work it to banish famine and land hunger.” (See http://www.anc.org.za/show.php?id=72)

The fact that there has been no genuine change in white imperialist property relations in South Africa has led to the continuing poverty of the African masses, which has led to increasing revolts in recent years, especially among the miners.

The ANC, while it played the largest role in the fight against white minority rule, was never the only liberation movement. One cannot forget the Black Consciousness Movement, founded by Steve Biko, who was killed in prison in 1977 by the apartheid regime, or the Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania. In the late 1920s and 1930s, the SACP, under the influence of the Comintern, took up a revolutionary position, calling for an “independent native [Black] South African republic as a stage towards a workers’ and peasants’ republic with full, equal rights for all races.” (See the Resolution of the Comintern on the South African Question, at http://www.RedStarPublishers.org/sacp1928.doc.) However, for decades the SACP, following the Khrushchevite line of “peaceful transition,” has become a thoroughly revisionist party that has abandoned any fight against the imperialist bourgeoisie in South Africa.

The gains of bourgeois democracy, in oppressed nations as well as in imperialist countries, are important to the working class because they clear the way for the further development of the class struggle, as Lenin frequently pointed out. This is clearly seen in the Black liberation movement in the U.S. Here, it was particularly after the formal defeat of Jim Crow with the passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965, that the movement moved beyond the demand for peaceful reforms. It was the Harlem rebellion of 1964, the rebellions in Detroit and Watts in 1967, and the hundreds of rebellions that broke out throughout the country after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. that marked the high-points of the movement here.

The petty-bourgeois left in the U.S., including the anti-imperialist left, confines itself to praising Mandela, while making no criticism of the accommodations made by him and the ANC with the white-led ruling class there. This is another example of their failure to provide any leadership in training proletarian and anti-imperialist revolutionaries in understanding current events along the road to a socialist revolution in the United States.

http://houstoncommunistparty.com/on-the-death-of-nelson-mandela/

While it's all true mention should be made of external events, the recent demise of socialism in Europe, which conditioned the mentality and practical possibilities available during negoiations. Those events were a catastrophe for the working class world wide as capital and it's imperialism have run amok, since the body was hardly cold to this very day.

Reconciliation is Not Decolonization

http://blackagendareport.com/sites/www.blackagendareport.com/files/imagecache/feature400/freedomcharter-big.gif

“True decolonization for Africa demanded no less than the full uprooting of the bifurcated colonial structure: decoupling whiteness and power.”

It doesn’t take away from Nelson Mandela’s radical work with his African National Congress (ANC) comrades to say that the “new” South Africa under “Black rule” epitomizes the most spectacular failure of Africa’s decolonization project. The formal end of racial apartheid in South Africa was to be the culmination of African triumph over white European rule. In South Africa Blacks were inheriting the biggest economy on the African continent, an economy built through their stolen land, resources, and labor power. But as of 2008, the poorest 50% received only 7.8% of total income and while 83% of white South Africans and only 11% of Blacks were among the top 20% of income receivers. Things have gotten worse since the global financial crisis as there has been increased suffering among the Black population, the supposed victors at the end of racial apartheid.

So what happened? And what can the South African experience teach us about the failure of African decolonization more generally?

In the new South Africa the maintenance of white power was explicit, even as it was hidden beneath the veneer of Black political empowerment. The details of the transition to Black political control in South Africa have been discussed by a number of journalists, academics, and politicians. But some of these details – most importantly, the economic ones – bear repeating. In a recent interview, South African scholar Patrick Bond reminded us that some key compromises made by the leaders of the African National Congress at the moment of negotiations with the racist regime locked the new Black-run nation in a destructive relationship with former rulers and beholden to global white capital.

Consider just some of these compromises: the acceptance, by the ANC leadership, of an IMF loan which depended on the standard structural adjustment conditions that plagued African and other third world nations of the time; laws that solidified whites’ property rights, effectively allowing them to keep stolen land; the maintenance of the undemocratic structure of the central bank; and the agreement by ANC leaders to absorb and repay apartheid era debt incurred by the racist government, to the tune of $25 billion! In agreeing to these compromises, the ANC leaders sold out their people. In particular, they reneged on their own Freedom Charter which promised that land, the national mineral wealth, the banking systems, as well as all other industry and trade be nationalized and used to the benefit of South Africa’s majority. As Glen Ford recently reminded us, with the “sunset clause” agreement, ANC’s Black leadership allowed the economy to proceed as before, with whites keeping their jobs in the “bloated bureaucracy” that had served as welfare system for, especially, the Boer whites. Thus, the ANC’s leadership chose “a change in regime, but not a change in the relationships of economic power.”

“European economic supremacy and structural racial privilege were the true victors in the decolonization experiment in Africa.”

It is easy to consider the failure of the ANC and Black rule more generally, as unique to South Africa. But, just as racial apartheid and economic exploitation was the default structure of the colonial state throughout the continent, so too was the failure of decolonization. True decolonization for Africa demanded no less than the full uprooting of the bifurcated colonial structure: decoupling whiteness and power. But that never happened – anywhere on the continent. Example after example demonstrate that most leaders of African decolonization, eager to avoid the violence that real transformation of power would have brought, negotiated deals that provided blackface cover for the maintenance of the white colonial power structure, with its control of the best lands, mines, manufacturing plants, and financial institutions. South Africa is only the most prominent and disappointing example.

As historian C. L. R. James said of Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana during its negotiations with its former colonial master: “the British government gave nothing, handed over nothing, fought to the last second to retain everything that it could, and when it was forced to retired, left the Gold Coast tied up in knots which Ghana will have to spend a long time untying.” The truth of the matter is that the European colonial powers had more to gain by ceding some political control in order to maintain the structure of economic domination.

In effect, European economic supremacy and structural racial privilege were the true victors in the decolonization experiment in Africa. It is this context that is important to remember as we watch the western elite fawn over Mandela’s “reconciliation” and “forgiveness.” As Amai Jukwa and Garikai Chengu recently pointed out, “what appears to be love for Mandela is actually self-love, a subconscious act of white self-preservation.”

Black African self-preservation and renewal is another matter.

While we mourn Mandela’s passing we would do well to remember that decolonization has not occurred – and that a new radical and uncompromising movement is needed to end the enduring racial and economic apartheid in Africa and the Black World.

http://blackagendareport.com/content/reconciliation-not-decolonization

President Mugabe explains..


I had no feud with Mandela: President

Mabasa Sasa recently in Johannesburg, South Africa
President Mugabe has said Cde Nelson Mandela was a “great friend” and there was no feud between them as has been insinuated by some media houses. Since Cde Mandela’s death in Johannesburg on December 5 after a lung infection, some media outlets have tried to create the impression that President Mugabe and South Africa’s first black leader did not get along.

This went to the extent that some started querying why President Mugabe had taken “long” to issue a condolence message.
On returning from Cde Mandela’s memorial service, which was held on Tuesday, and yesterday’s body viewing, President Mugabe expressed surprise that some people thought the two did not get along.

Speaking to the media after landing in Harare, President Mugabe said, “I don’t know about any feud. If anything, there was an alliance. We worked very well with him when he came out of prison. We gave him support.

“We established the principle of national reconciliation (at independence in 1980), they took it over and used it as a basis to create what they have now as the Rainbow Nation. There was no feud, where was the feud, what feud?”

The Head of State and Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces said he hoped South Africa and Africa at large would uphold the principles that Mr Mandela embodied and fought for.

“We went to send off Cde Mandela and the two events were the memorial service yesterday (Tuesday) and today (Wednesday) this morning the viewing of the body.

“Those have taken place and we are very happy that he got this send off, this very huge send off for a man who actually deserved it.
“But we do hope that what he stood for, the principles that he stood for, will be pursued in South Africa. And some of them are universal, of course, and Africa also will pursue them.

“We do hope that the situation in South Africa will continue with the peace and calm that Mandela created in 1994 when he came out of prison.

“But from our point of view, we have lost a great friend, a revolutionary and a man of real principle. That’s why we went to give him a send off so that we would be satisfied that the love we had for him, the historical alliance that we created in the fight against imperialism and colonialism will not have been historically lost by our being absent, and by not really being present to see this great man being given his eternal rest.

“So we say let him rest in peace; he has done his best for the people of South Africa.”
In an earlier interview, President Mugabe’s spokesperson, Mr George Charamba, said the so-called feud was fanned by media houses that wanted to create a rift between Zimbabwe and South Africa.

“What is this fascination with a feud that does not exist? It is a contrivance by media that do now want to see an alliance between Zimbabwe and South Africa,” Mr Charamba said.

The Herald spoke to government officials from South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique and Tanzania who not only disputed the existence of a feud, but also provided insights into how the media contrivance of a fall-out came about.

A diplomat from Botswana said, “For your information, Zimbabwe was one of a group of Southern African countries working hard to get Nelson Mandela released from prison.

“I remember for instance one particular meeting between our President (Sir Ketumile Masire), President Mugabe, President (Joaquim) Chissano (Mozambique) and President (Ali Hassan) Mwinyi.

“This was in the late 1980s and they felt that the struggle in South Africa was stagnating and needed to be fired up. They felt that a key ingredient would be Mandela’s release from prison.

“There was a lot of pressure on Mozambique, in particular, at the time from the apartheid regime and they wanted the situation in that country resolved.

“Zimbabwe was also feeling the effects of South Africa’s support for Renamo (the Mozambique rebel group) and there was a real fear that Zimbabwe could be attacked by the apartheid regime.

“The whole region could not be comfortable with apartheid intact and they went about pressuring the wider international community to act on apartheid.

“So I don’t see why anyone would think that there would be a feud between the two. I suppose it is a media agenda for another purpose to make such claims.”

A senior South African media official told this paper that Mr Mandela and President Mugabe both understood the need for unity and that economic independence would best be achieved if the two countries worked together.

However, he noted, an alliance between the two countries caused consternation in the West and within business circles.
“There were some who felt that (President) Mugabe had a radical leaning and if his ideology got the economic backing of South Africa then they would change the face and landscape of business in the region.

“It was something that many people in commerce didn’t want and maybe that is where the idea of causing a rift between them (President Mugabe and Mr Mandela) started.”

A Tanzanian official said President Mwinyi in 1991 asked President Mugabe to delay large scale land reforms as they felt this would stiffen the backs of whites in South Africa and thus impede an end to apartheid.

This is something Former President Thabo Mbeki – who succeeded Mr Mandela as President – also said a few years ago.
Zimbabwe was largely expected to embark on land reforms in 1990 after the expiry of a moratorium on such a policy in the 1979 Lancaster House independence talks “but it was too sensitive a time to do it”, said the Tanzanian official.

Soon after his release from prison in 1990, Zimbabwe was one of the first countries that Mr Mandela visited and President Mugabe hosted a public reception for him at the University of Zimbabwe. He had been awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree by the University of Zimbabwe in 1986.

Soon after that, Cde Mandela was honoured with Freedom of the City of Harare and then of the Municipality of Kwekwe.
On being elected South Africa’s first black President in 1994, Cde Mandela met President Mugabe and President Masire to find ways of handling the military mutiny in Lesotho.

Presidents Mugabe and Mandela were a couple of years later to play key roles in the establishment of the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security.

Cde Mandela was again in Harare in 1995 to discuss trade issues and ways of dismantling apartheid era tariffs, and later that year, the two leaders opened a new bridge across the Limpopo River.

http://www.herald.co.zw/i-had-no-feud-with-mandela-president/

South Africa Under the ANC: A Flawed Freedom
by John S. Saul
Has the time come when it might be possible to move past the well-deserved praise-song phase of the marking of Nelson Mandela's death in order to strike a more careful balance sheet on the meaning for present-day South Africa of his storied career?

Of course, it remains extremely difficult to speak dispassionately on such matters this close to his impressive funeral. Nor can there be any real debate about the quality of the man or as to the crucial importance of the role he played, especially in his early years of defiance and in his long, unbending period in prison. He was, in fact, a leader of real substance, dignity, and power, a giant among other politicians of his time -- coming, as much as anyone in South Africa, to exemplify uncompromisingly the strength of the popularly-held conviction that racist rule, with all its enormities, could not be allowed to stand.

And yet his latter-day role -- as he moved from prison into the Presidency of an ostensibly "new" South Africa -- was a much more debatable one. True, in his first moments of freedom in 1990, at the very moment that he emerged from captivity, he spoke, in a kind of radical shorthand, of the need for multiple "nationalizations" and also, more generally, of the necessary injection of genuine social purpose into a reclaiming of the realms of society and economy on behalf of the people of South Africa.

Nonetheless, Mandela -- never a man of the socio-economic left -- soon found his commitment to a radical socio-economic policy shift to be fading fast. Moreover, in this his position was merely coming into line with that of most of the ANC's upper echelon as they returned from exile.

After all the struggle against apartheid had been waged much more threateningly by mass popular organizations on the shop floor and in the townships than it had by any military resistance mounted from exile by the ANC. And, increasingly, what was most feared by the South African business and state establishments was the possibility of a popularly-based "revolutionary force" becoming ever more deeply radicalized by a sustained confrontation with the combined oppressions of both apartheid and of international capitalism.

Indeed, it was just such a possible mass upheaval that business guru Zac de Beer had once warned defenders of capital's stake in South Africa to guard against: the danger that "the baby of free enterprise" could be "thrown out with the bathwater of apartheid"! Soon such leaders as Malcolm Fraser of Australia and Brian Mulroney of Canada also saw that apartheid itself -- long a profitable partner of capital, with racial oppression helping to keep labor cheap -- had became dispensable. Better now simply to decapitate any "dangerous" popular movements in order to safeguard the existing pattern of class rule and socio-economic power.

And here they found willing listeners in those ANC notables who had actually spent their own 1980s informally negotiating with both the South African state and with South African national and global capital -- while promising the latter a very tame transition indeed. It was with this vision that Mandela was now firmly in agreement, ready to accept a "freedom" firmly founded on the embrace of a neo-liberal version of South Africa, one in line with global capitalism's own priorities.

As a result it is not surprising how very little change in the impoverished substance of their lives has actually been delivered by the ANC to the vast mass of South Africans, this providing a sad anti-climax to the once proud anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. True, for a Mulroney, his own sense of the need for a shift away from apartheid was qualified by his continuing suspicion, until quite late in the day, that the freedom fighters of the ANC, including Mandela himself, were mere "terrorists." However, more savvy guardians of corporate power closer to the scene had grasped the fact that only the cooptation of the ANC into a formal position of power could forestall a revolution -- and that it was perfectly possible to so co-opt it.

This is, in fact, exactly what now happened. The ANC passed into power, and, as the party of "liberation," it proceeded actively both to demobilize the people and to seal a deal with global capital. The predictable result: though the economic gap between black and white has shrunk somewhat (as some blacks have become very wealthy indeed) the gap between rich and poor (still mainly black) has widened dramatically. Crime rates have risen as a reflex of this gross, class-defined imbalance in personal incomes, while among Mandela's successors -- Zuma and his cronies -- corruption flourishes.




More promising is the fact that there are also signs of rather more militant resistance to all of this. Indeed, while it is true that a genuinely effective and credible counter-hegemonic national alternative to the ANC has been slow to emerge, the level of social resistance to the state -- by means of demonstrations, protests, and other forms of social disobedience -- that is so evident at the local level is now, in fact, the very highest in the world!

And here too may also lie the silver lining in Mandela's own passing from the scene. For, after an initial and fully understandable period of general mourning, one can imagine that the removal from the ANC of the brilliant luster of Madiba's public image and the halo of his almost supra-historical resonance could mean a further diminishing of the once seemingly impregnable image that the ANC, at least at the national level, had managed to sustain. In fact, with this, a further beneficial leveling of the playing field of political contestation could occur: then, after Mandela, the struggle for a more genuine liberation might well further intensify in South Africa.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John S. Saul is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at York University and is author of The Next Liberation Struggle: Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy in Southern Africa. His new book, with Patrick Bond, entitled South Africa -- The Present as History: From Mrs Ples to Mandela and Marikana is to be published in April 2014.

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2013/saul121213.html

Nearly 15 years after “fast track” land reform began in Zimbabwe, we have seen the vast majority of Zimbabwe's land returned to it's rightful owners. After nearly 20 years of ANC rule in South Africa, the vast majority of South Africa's land is still in the hands of it's white minority. The controversy and criticism the ANC has sought to avoid by not pursuing a more aggressive and just land reform and economic program in the immediate post Apartheid period, will surely come back to haunt them in the post Mandela era. We shall see.

http://www.thebellforum.com/showthread.php?t=108424

Finally, somebody besides me mentions the elephant in the room.


The end of apartheid came at the moment when the Soviet Union and the European socialist states, which had done so much to help Cuba and Venezuela defeat imperialism and achieve socialism, were also collapsing. In this context, South Africa had no choice but to try to survive in the new situation, and prioritized dismantling the institutions of apartheid over a radical push for socialism. This is why South Africa is not socialist today, and why the well known ills of capitalism, such as poverty, inequality and crime are still huge problems.

http://www.thebellforum.com/showthread.php?t=108566

This is undoubtably the biggest reason for the ANC not realizing it's promise to the South African people.

With hindsight we can see that the fall of the Soviet Union stopped social progress in it's tracks and the dogs of imperial war have been loosed ever since.

The question that is without a final answer is how did a revolutionary movement get transformed into a bourgeois electoral party along lines of the British Labor Party or the Democratic Party in the US. How did a stellar organization defined by ideologically and politically sophisticated and self sacrificing leadership become a debased and corrupt institution serving as apologists for western transnational banks and mining companies and neoliberal policies? When did the ANC cease being the party of the people, especially the working masses, and become one serving the interests of a parasitic and comprador black petit bourgeois? When did people whom the South African people and the world see as revolutionaries and freedom fighters, such as Thabo Mbeki and Cyril Ramaphosa become committed to neo-liberal capitalism and a democracy that defends white interests and sacrifices the African working class? Why did the SACP abandon its revolutionary history and adopt a social democratic and reformist worldview, and as a result become apologists for a corrupt capitalist government? Why has the Congress of South African Trade Unions become an ally of a government that is against the working class and the poor?

It seems clear the turning point occurred between roughly 1988 and 1991. Without the deployment of the tremendous moral and political authority of Nelson Mandela in the service of a deal that saved the interests of the white minority and the West the current situation is inconceivable. He and his supporters accepted a deal where elections that made him president would take place, but the seizure of power by the people would not. Whites would give up total power in return for holding on to strategic power, especially in the economy. The substance and subtext of the Mandela symbology contests the call for the revolutionary seizure of power as a mistake and replaces it with the bogus notion of a “Rainbow Nation” and multiculturalism. To claim the moral high ground they proposed a Truth and Reconciliation process rather than trials under international law for the perpetrators of crimes against humanity. Reparations and land redistribution, along with nationalization of the mines, banks and factories are all off the table. A limited democracy prevails and power remains where it was during the height of apartheid. The West deployed every means of propaganda and PR to make Mandela not just a great man, but also a messiah and a savior. At the same time there is the racial and class bribe to the black elite, thereby inventing a tamed and compliant black misleadership class.

A significant, yet little known event in the process of turning the ANC against itself, and ultimately the people, was the publication in the African Communist (the theoretical journal of the SACP) of an essay by the then chairman of the SACP Joe Slovo. The article, “Has Socialism Failed” claimed to be an explanation of the events in the Soviet Union that led to its collapse. He sided with the stance of Mikhail Gorbachev (then General Secretary of the CPSU) that existing socialism was a failure. Slovo said the party should abandon Leninism for Social Democracy (the historical opponent of communism within the international left). In attacking existing socialism as a failure Slovo attacked one of the main pillars of the ANC and the revolutionary alliance. He also called for the abandoning of revolutionary ideology and acceptance of social democracy, elections rather than power and a liberal bourgeois state, rather than people’s power.

Lastly, of major political and symbolic significance was the 1991 demand by the ANC leadership for Umkonto to cease all military operations against the regime. This was literally pulling defeat from the jaws of victory. There were no grounds for undermining Umkonto as a fighting force at a time when the regime and its black puppets continued attacking the people.

The revolutionary offensive of the people after Mandela’s release was called off, and it was argued the black resistance was endangering peace and reconciliation. It was insisted by some that the ANC-led alliance and the great mass of the people were anti-democratic, even “racialists” and therefore had to be toned down and reined in. To the rising black elite and bourgeoisie the masses and their fighting organizations were threats to the “Rainbow Nation.” Through the uses of bourgeois propaganda a new South African narrative was advanced. Through Mandela’s example of reconciliation, it insists, white racists and fascists were suddenly transformed into democrats. F.W. De Klerk, the last white prime minister, and responsible for the murders and imprisonment of thousands of freedom fighters, was given the Nobel Peace Prize and presented as a democrat and anti-apartheid figure. Winnie Mandela, on the other hand, was politically marginalized and demonized as a dangerous outsider and unreasonable radical. In the name of reconciliation no one from the white regime has been tried or gone to jail for what the UN had called crimes against humanity.

When Mandela was released from prison, the three most popular figures in the nation were, Mandela, Winnie Mandel and Chris Hani. Winnie and Chris Hani opposed the new direction of the ANC under Mandela. Hani became chair of the SACP replacing Slovo in 1991 after the party’s leadership rejected Slovo’s anti-revolutionary and social democratic positions. Hani at the time of his assassination in 1993 was the head of two of the most powerful organization in the ANC led alliance, Umkonto and SACP, with huge popular standing. Hani was viewed as a possible future president of South Africa, which would have pushed aside the likes of the pro-capitalist Thabo Mbeki, Cyril Ramaphosa and Jacob Zuma.

http://blackagendareport.com/content/african-national-congress-rise-and-tragic-fall-revolutionary-movement

But of course Hani was assassinated and while we might see that act as a turning point it was rather a punctuation point of the dominant powers in motion.