AlbanyCommonSense: Mandela's Legacy: A Peace Ambassador and a Terrorist

This morning I woke up to catch some live coverage of Nelson Mandela memorial services in Soweto, South Africa. I have admired this man ever since I learned and became aware of him and now that he is gone, I wanted to see how the new South Africa was going to send him off.

Every news story has praised him as a saint and heaven sent. He was a re-conciliator and a man of peace and forgiveness. Yeap, and I agree with all of that (well, except for the sainthood-heaven-sent thing). But then here comes the internet to the rescue!

On the more conservative sites, Mandela is a terrorist and a communist-marxist. ooooookay. Lets address the first nonsense, terrorist.

The apartheid government of South Africa classified him as a terrorist. true. But let me say this again THE RACIST POLICE STATE OF APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA CALLED AN ENEMY TO ITS POLICIES A TERRORIST. Not to sound like the the devil in the Devil's Advocate but "consider the source son!"

Guess what, MSNBC thinks members of the tea party are racist too. But I guess a "credible" source like MSNBC qualifies as the sole determinant of who is racist and who isn't, right?

However, his organization, the African National Congress, did commit acts of terror. No secret, all you had to do is pick a Times Magazine or a US News and World Report in the 80s to see pictures of necklacing, the practice of tying people, surrounding them with tires and setting them on fire.

Apparently according to some of these buffoons, Mandela, while cracking rock (Sam Coleman will be covered in another post) in one of the world's most notorious island prisons was running this organization.

Prisoners of Robben Island

So Mandela Soprano ran a violent anti government enterprise from within a hard labor prison. Now, the truth is that his wife Winnie was running the organization and ordered the attacks. In fact, it was one of the reasons they separated after he was released.

Now on the communist charge, .... did I miss the creation of the South African Sovietski? He became president, implemented NOT ONE COMMUNIST POLICY and is somehow a communist? Oh not to mention HE RAN AGAINST THE COMMUNIST PARTY FOR THE PRESIDENCY! I know I know facts always get in the way of a good bs story.

Mandela's legacy does not go unblemished as with any leader. I'm sure Gandhi wasn't proud of his inability to keep post colonial India from fracturing into Pakistan and Bangladesh and the violence that drove those movements. Or that under Thatcher thousands of innocent Irish men and women were imprisoned without due process of law merely for suspicion of having ties with the IRA.

One thing that no one will be able to argue is that he could at the snap of a finger thrown the nation into a civil war and killed the whites. Mandela Mugabe could have gone after his oppressors and we would be talking about the South African Civil War of 1994 not the election of a president who forgave and inspired a nation to do the same.