Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela was internationally known as a peace activist. The world will remember him as the first black RSA president. When I was a child he was known as a hero by blacks and a criminal by whites. He helped found Umkhonto we Sizwe, which was a terrorist organisation by anybody’s definition. Mandela freely admitted to the treason and sabotage for which he was imprisoned. MK killed countless civilians in bombings and guerrilla attacks. Their victims were black, white and everything in between. I vividly remember their attack at Durban’s Golden Mile just after my seventh birthday, although I did not know any of the people killed or injured. I do not think any 7-year-old should have to deal with the racial injustice of apartheid but I do not think any 7-year-old should have to know about terrorism either. Mandela has since acknowledged that he and MK violated human rights.

People who want to deify Mandela tend to whitewash his early terrorist activities but I think it is important to know where he came from in order to understand where he went. One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. To the radical blacks he was helping to free them from oppression. And there was serious oppression under apartheid. It was not simply segregation and inequality. Blacks were treated as common criminals simply for being born black.

But killing people who have nothing to do with your inequality has nothing to do with freedom. Killing blacks to free blacks from oppression simply makes no sense. There were a lot of whites who campaigned against apartheid. Whites were subject to banning just as easily as blacks. It was far easier to be white but most whites had no control of the government at the time, just as most blacks have no control today. Then and now it was a very small group of people who wielded the most power.

Fortunately for everybody, Mandela mellowed out during his years in prison. He gradually evolved from advocating radical urban warfare to a more moderate approach. By the time he was released he sounded less like Malcolm X and more like Gandhi. I never would have voted for the ANC just after my seventh birthday, were that possible. But I campaigned for them just before my fifteenth. I did not vote for obvious reasons. We were all pretty excited when they won and Mandela became president. I would doubt that I knew anybody who had a problem with it. We were glad that South Afrika had finally become South Africa again. Mostly we were happy that apartheid was truly dead.

The reason Nelson Mandela is so well known throughout the world and we are all talking about him now is not because of anything he did in office. His presidency was not very noteworthy save for being the first democratically elected president. He became famous for being in prison and stayed famous for what he did after he left office. He did more for human rights than all the other former South African presidents combined. Though in retrospect that does not say much.

I think Mandela was a good president. He did what he could to unite the races. No minor feat at the time. And no one can deny that we all get along much better than before he was president. There are certainly fewer necklacings. His biggest mistake was ignoring AIDS, as his predecessors and successors have done.

But I still think de Klerk was a braver president. It is much harder to end an entrenched corrupt system than to start a new one.

Mandela did two great things as president. One was to force reconciliation down our throats. Weather we liked it or not. There were more than a few people who wanted to kill all whites. Or at least kick them out of the country. Mandela knew that such a thing would destroy the economy permanently. No country outside of Africa would ever trade with us if we were so hostile to such a large minority of our own citizens. Especially when they are white people. You can disenfranchise whatever minority group you want but if they are white then you lose all support from Europe, North America, Australia, Japan. Trading only with African countries is a horrible fiscal model.

Mandela was willing to trade with absolutely anybody, regardless of traditional allies and enemies. He did not care if you were communist, socialist, capitalist. He reached out to dictators, democratically elected representatives, military strongmen. If you were willing to trade with and invest in die Nuwe Suid Afrika you were golden. Some people did not feel that was the best policy. Getting in bed with the wrong sort usually has lasting consequences.

But Mandela’s government spent a lot of money trying to lift blacks out of apartheid. All those new social programmes were not free. They did a great deal of good but somebody had to pay for them. Raising taxes on people who make $1 a day is not an option. Taxing the hell out of whites would only lead many to leave the country, which a lot of blacks wanted, but would be almost as economically reckless as kicking them all out. Countries like the US and UK were more than happy to criticise apartheid and praise Mandela’s release but they were not so enthusiastic about new investment in the new government. They were happy to hurt the economy with sanctions but far less interested in helping the country when the sanctions were lifted. Symbolically jumping on the hero bandwagon is a lot easier than actually spending money on that which you claim to believe. Mandela’s government had little choice but to seek investment from international leaders who never increased their own popularity by praising Mandela.

Mandela’s other great achievement as president was to serve only one term. He voluntarily retired when he could have easily been elected several more times. Lesser men would have worn out their welcome. Others would have tried to make themselves dictators. Mandela probably could have given himself far more power but he was obviously serious about making his country a democracy.

Nelson Mandela was our George Washington. Neither was a great president but both were necessary for the country to grow and move forward. Both could command attention and respect by simply walking into a room. Everybody liked both men and now historians treat them as noble heroes while ignoring their serious flaws. In many ways both countries need them to be as elevated as they are. We need our heroes to be larger than life.