The death of Nelson Mandela

[Rob Wick]

Quote:To me there seemed to be two Nelson Mandela's. A young emotional and sometimes reckless radical revolutionary who fought passionately for causes he believed in, while also alligning himself with anyone who fought along side him. And the Nelson Mandela that we know now, his sacrifices in pursuit of freedom for the oppressed , a man devoted to the encouragement of racial harmony, forgiveness, power sharing ( through Democratic Socialism), and a strong focus on the future, not the past.

Mike,

I sincerely believe that to understand people like Mandela, it requires a knowledge of the history of colonialism throughout the 20th century. There's an old cliche that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, and another that says the enemy of my enemy is my friend, but there is some truth to both. The west, and by that I mean not only America but more prominently Britain and France, were never friends to 20th century nationalist movements of independence, which especially in the case of America is fraught with irony. After the Second World War, the main reason for that usually is given as the communist leanings of those groups. I think a more powerful explanation, again more prominent in the cases of Britain and France, is colonial hegemony. However, if one was to look at the entire history of those movements, a different picture emerges.

Take, for example, Ho Chi Minh and Vietnam. Ho attended the Paris Peace Conference after World War I and urged the American delegation to put Woodrow Wilson's 14 points, especially the point about the self-determination of peoples, into practice. However, he was rebuffed and the French were allowed to maintain their control of Indochina. There's no question that Ho became a Communist, but he was a nationalist first. He saw China, especially Communist China, as his enemy. Read this quote:

“You fools! Don't you realize what it means if the Chinese remain? Don't you remember your history? The last time the Chinese came, they stayed a thousand years. The French are foreigners. They are weak. Colonialism is dying. The white man is finished in Asia. But if the Chinese stay now, they will never go. As for me, I prefer to sniff French ***** for five years than to eat Chinese ***** for the rest of my life.”

Had the west been less interested in maintaining colonial control of Asia and Africa, who knows if the war in Vietnam would have even occurred?

As for Mandela, his nationalism was much stronger than any ideological commitment to Communism. He was willing to do whatever he had to do to achieve independence for South Africa. After the end of World War II, the two main powers were America and the Soviet Union. Men like Kwame Nkrumah or Patrice Lumumba, who were seeking independence for Ghana and the Congo respectively were murdered by western-backed forces. If you saw that taking place and you had the choice of aligning with the west or the Soviet Communists, who would you choose?

Whether his political legacy puts Mandela in the same league as Lincoln is, of course, a debatable point. I think it does. To be sure there are differences, but the similarities are to strong to ignore, in my opinion.

Best
Rob