Mandela - Grudging Respect
“All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
A lead story on the BBC News this week was the unveiling of a statue of Nelson Mandela in Parliament Square in London.
Mandela has always been for me one of several, difficult to pigeon-hole, problem characters in the historical and current panoramas. Soft spoken, self-effacing, charming and reasonable, he is hard to dislike. And how can one not admire a man who could emerge from 27 years of imprisonment without rancour and a need for revenge? He not only did that but also poured his heart and soul apparently into making things go right in South Africa, including reconciliation with former oppressors. As Prime Minister Gordon Brown said: “Nelson Mandela is one of the most courageous and best-loved men of all time.”
His efforts have not gone unrecognized and he has received almost 50 humanitarian awards of various kinds, including the Nobel Peace Prize*. He is a remarkable and universally respected man and to speak negatively of him is a modern heresy.
Now, the problematic (for me) part:
Nelson Mandela joined the African National Congress as a non-violent activist opposed to apartheid. He did not remain so, however. After the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre he began openly advocating sabotage. Later he became a founder of the Umkhonto We Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), the military wing of the ANC. Is it possible that he never committed, directed, advocated or condoned acts of terrorism and savagery against innocent people? He himself has acknowledged ANC atrocities, though he has yet to apologize, to the best of my knowledge. So, hero? Or …?
During the latter part of Mandela’s time in prison (1985), President P.W. Botha repeatedly offered to release him on the proviso that he renounce violence as a means of political change. He declined, saying something to the effect that “only fee men could bargain”.
The arguments against apartheid and the vicious suppression of dissent during its era do not need to be made again. Obviously the ANC and Mandela had the moral high ground but can they be said to have held it when they operated “re-education” camps in Uganda, Angola and Tanzania, when opponents were “necklaced” and when innocent families were dragged from cars to be murdered in the road or were butchered in their beds? Will these acts not, as much as heroic resistance and noble stoicism, be Nelson Mandela’s legacy?
As I said, I find the man problematic. My admiration for him, though real, is grudging. I won’t be having my picture taken beneath his statue and I am not sure that I’d want to spend an evening chatting over a beer with him though that would be fascinating, to be sure.
* I considered writing a post called “How to Win a Nobel Prize”, but thought better of it. However the gist of what it would have said can be found by having a look at a list of all the Peace Prize recipients of the last century. It’s quite amazing, the number of them who, in effect, were unsavoury characters recanting or decidedly unsavoury characters uncharacteristically reasonable in an ad hoc sort of way. Have a look:
http://almaz.com/nobel/peace/peace.html
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