HENRY McCULLOCH writes:

In its race to canonize the late Nelson Mandela before he has even cooled to room temperature (“Nelson Mandela, South African Icon of Peaceful Resistance, Is Dead“), The New York Times shows itself once again to be the natural heir to the Soviet Communist Party’s Pravda.

De mortuis nil nisi bonum, perhaps. But to describe Nelson Mandela as an “Icon of Peaceful Resistance” is to ignore the first half of his life.

There was a reason Nelson Mandela was on Robben Island. Whatever the old Marxist may have been in his later years, in the full flush of his youth he was an active terrorist with plenty of blood, black as well as white, on his hands.

But in our day, who will tell the full story of Nelson Mandela’s life?  Maybe Dan Roodt – that is if he and his fellow Afrikaners survive the not-so-peaceful “celebrations” that are likely to mark Mandela’s passing.

The motto of Mandela’s “Rainbow Nation” may be Unity in Diversity.  Rather than something so self-evidently untrue, I’ll remember the more accurate motto of the Union of South Africa of earlier days: Ex Unitate Vires.  It’s a shame the Afrikaners forgot that in 1994.  They have been paying for their naivete ever since.

— Comments —

Bill R. writes:

Well said, Mr. McCulloch.  As to whom in our day will tell the full story of Nelson Mandela’s life, I cannot say, but let me recommend for a modest start on it this excellent piece by Mr. Gregory Hood at American Renaissance.  I would only amend one statement by Mr. McCulloch to say that to describe Mandela as an “Icon of Peaceful Resistance” is not only to ignore the first half of his life, but all of it.  There is nothing peaceful about South Africa today, and Mr. Mandela got everything he wanted when he came to power and it has continued unabated his way.  I suggest that whatever advocacy for peace and reconciliation he appeared to represent in later years were merely the gestures of political expediency and I believe that any thorough and honest examination of his life will bear this out.  As Mr. Hood points out in his article, Mandela did not repudiate violence even when offered release from prison if he did so, and even after his release he still joined in the singing of the anthem of the ANC’s terrorist arm that celebrates the killing of whites.  The following comparison can never be repeated often enough, and it applies perfectly to Mr. Mandela’s case:  Does anyone for a minute doubt the unending, instant-pariah-creating, career-destroying opprobrium a white Western politician, let alone national leader, would be subject to if he had been caught participating in the singing of a song that celebrated the killing of blacks, and even more to find out it was the anthem of a terrorist group that he led?  The double-standard that this man has enjoyed and which has permitted the peace-lover fantasy about him to enter our popular culture as fact is mind-boggling.

When I saw the headline about Mr. Mandela’s passing the other day, another headline caught my eye and I was struck by the irony of their appearing at the same time.  It was the story about the thousands in the Central African Republic who have sought refuge at an airport, cheering the arrival of white troops from France who hold out the only hope they seem to have now of any protection from those who want to slaughter them.  The irony is that that kind of terror, all too common on that continent these days, is what the real Nelson Mandela was about, not this fantasy figure whose “peace-loving” life that never was is about to be fawned over ad nauseum and celebrated for days on end in the West, including on-location homage by three American presidents.  That kind of terror is also what the country is increasingly about that Mr. Mandela is supposed to have freed, but is in fact fast becoming the latest prisoner to the African Heart of Darkness, or in Paul Johnson’s apt metaphor, one more kingdom for Caliban.

I wonder, by the way, if while they’re there, anyone of our esteemed presidents intends to visit any of the Afrikaner farms where entire families have been set upon and murdered with particular brutality by African blacks.  In some cases, the lethal attacks have included the torture of women and old people and the rape of children.  These murders have been occurring at rates, since Mr. Mandela’s great liberation, which has made South African farming not only the most dangerous occupation in the world, quite literally, but the white farmers themselves and their families indisputably the victims of systematic extermination and genocide.  That is the South Africa Mr. Mandela inaugurated and leaves behind, therefore that, too, is his legacy, is it not, and isn’t that what they’re going there to commemorate?

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