The death of Nelson Mandela

[brtmchl]

I remember in the 1993 doing two months of counter terrorist training in Chesapeake Bay, VA. Of the many names focused on during training, two stuck out the most. The first was Chick - fil - a. Apparently this fast food chain secretly sent contributions to supporters of the IRA. Second was Nelson Mandela. We spent the majority of our training focused on Africa. I had always learned, and gained a false idea that Mandela was more of a Ghandi or MLK like leader, wrongfully imprisoned by a racist, white, slave holding class in South Africa. During the class we learned of Mandela's incarceration and some of the crimes he was charged with. Our main focus wasn't necessarily Mandela's stance on overthrowing the current regime. Like you said Rob, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." ( I never could quite understand that, I would rather face my enemy than get shot in the back by some one supposedly fighting along side of me.) Our main focus was on the atrocities of genocide commited by all of these warring tribes. Everyone knows about the Hutu and Tutsi conflicts of Rwanda but crimes against humanity seemed almost the norm in this class.
The worst acts of terror under Mandela, covered, was the purging of the Zulu Inkatha party in Natal.
During the run up to the elections the two main black parties were the Xhosa (a tribe to which Mandela belonged) a faction of the African National Congress, and the Zulu Inkatha party, the largest tribe in South Africa. The ANC, who were now at war with the current government, were afraid they would lose the elections, so, under the orders of Mandela, ANC troops were sent to "persuade" the Zulu´s to support the ANC.
Those who didn't support ANC and anyone with allegiance to Inkatha was simply killed. An estimated 50,000 Zulu´s were killed in a period of 2 years.
Mainly, rural villages were burned to the ground. Anyone fleeing the burning huts were either shot or hacked to death with machetes, men woman and children, animals. Nothing was spared.
All these killings were done in the name of, and with the blessing of, the ANC and Nelson Mandela.Africa, in general, was a heated topic during these training courses. The political leaders in most of the African states were talked about more as criminals and thugs. Gangs were the real leaders. It should come as no suprise that these classes led to an unexpected deployment to Somalia.

We also were told about the a US role in his incarceration. Supposedly JFK's CIA gave the South African police the info on Mandela's whereabouts that led to his incarceration. As of 1993 Mandela was on a terrorist watch list. No US President has ever intervened. Bill Clinton in 8 years never tried to remove Mandela from the terrorism list. Mandela remained on the U.S. terrorism watch list until 2008, when President Bush signed a bill removing him from it.
Prison really changes a man. If he had never gone to prison, would the world remember Mandela as a murderer? Should we look to his successors, military partners, or his wife to gauge who he really was?
While we should always praise the humanitarian efforts to end apartheid, we should never forget his roots.

I say this, not to blast the man. As I said earlier, I believe there are two Nelson Mandelas. A great man and possibly an evil one. He belongs in a class of his own and never compared to Lincoln, Ghandi, or MLK.