Nelson Mandela

[homeo_apathy]

Hmm...Noone that i've talked to thinks that Nelson Mandela was a communist...I didn't know either until i did a school assignment on him this month. So it kinda surprised me...
This happened after the sharpeville massacre, when the ANC was outlawed....He worked with Joe Slovo in carrying out guerilla attacks...

alot of people here would have probably known this already though?

[The Living Red]

Can you provide a source?

I don't think Mandela was a communist; he was attracted to communist ideas, such as class struggle though. And he did work closely with the communists of South Africa.

[Comrade J]

Yes, Mandela was 100% communist, that's why he set up a communist society in South Africa... oh no, wait, he didn't. Maybe that tells you something?

[Sir Aunty Christ]

He attended meetings of the South African Communist Party in the 1930s I think but ultimately decided that the ANC was more in line with his beliefs.

[Vanguard1917]

Originally posted by Sir Aunty [email protected] 13 2006, 02:05 PM
He attended meetings of the South African Communist Party in the 1930s I think but ultimately decided that the ANC was more in line with his beliefs.
Remember that the SACP had a history of opportunistic racism ('Workers of the world, unite and fight for a white South Africa').

[Black Dagger]

Mandela was 'influenced' by the ideas of many of his close-friends in the South African Communist Party, but at heart he was always a liberal - the conditions of apartheid South Africa forced him (and the ANC) to take bigger and bigger steps in order to stay relevant to the African population, kind of like militant liberalism?

That's a bit of a contradiction of terms, put it this way, Mandela's support for the overthrow of the apartheid state (his involvement with Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC) was not out of a desire to build socialism or communism, but to see the end of apartheid and in its place, the creation of a liberal-democratic, bourgeois state.

There's quote i can't be bothered digging up at the moment where Mandela talks about how much he admires the British house of lords system or something like that.

But yeah, after he became president in 1994, a time when he was the darling of the 'west', a time when perhaps he could have pushed for socialism... nothing.

Then came the IMF and neo-liberalism.

And now South Africa has privatised water :(


Originally posted by Vanguard
Remember that the SACP had a history of opportunistic racism ('Workers of the world, unite and fight for a white South Africa').

In the early 20th century yeah, but by the 1950s and 1960s this rhetoric had long been abandoned. Several of SACP executive were African.

[The Feral Underclass]

I remember a blinding discussion on Mandela that I had years ago on this forumn.

It can be found here (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=25731&hl=Nelson+Mandela)

Controversial...!

[Janus]

Hmm...what's up with all the threads about whether some famous figure was a closet communist or not?

Anyways, no Mandela may have been influenced by communism or sympathetic to certain communist ideas but I don't think he was actually one.

[Rollo]

You're all wrong. Mandela wasn't japanese.

[Severian]

Originally posted by Black [email protected] 13 2006, 09:13 AM
Mandela was 'influenced' by the ideas of many of his close-friends in the South African Communist Party, but at heart he was always a liberal - the conditions of apartheid South Africa forced him (and the ANC) to take bigger and bigger steps in order to stay relevant to the African population, kind of like militant liberalism?
I'd describe him as a revolutionary democrat. Unlike liberalism, which is a tendency of the big bourgeoisie, revolutionary democracy is a middle-class tendency. Liberalism in South Africa was represented by the Progressive Federal Party/Democratic Party.

In Mandela's early political life, he was actually hostile to the role of the SACP in the ANC. When he was head of the ANC Youth League, that is, he said the SACP and particularly its white members had too much influence.

Later he had a more cooperative relationship with them. But.....

Mandela, and those closest to him politically, were more revolutionary than the SACP. The SACP certainly was a major part of the ANC and the "democratic alliance"; but not the most advanced part.

For example, at a critical point during the negotiations with the apartheid regime, SACP leader Slovo wrote a piece advocating the ANC agree to a rotten compromise - including that it should be ready to accept "a 'sunset' clause in the new constitution which would provide for compulsory power-sharing for a fixed number of years...." that is, require the ANC to form a coalition government with the apartheid National Party, no matter what conditions the National Party put on this. source (http://www.liberation.org.za/collections/sacp/slovo/negotiations.php)

This was accepted by the ANC Negotiations Committee - reflecting the influence of the SACP and other reformist elements. But it was, fortunately, rejected by the ANC National Working Committee.

Successfully arguing for this rejection, ANC leader Pallo Jordan wrote of Slovo's proposal:

While we will not get at the [negotiating] table what we have not won on other fronts, we should be equally careful not to give away what we have won on those fronts at the negotiating table. I fear "Strategic Perspecitve" is a prescription to do that. This attempt to revise the ANC's strategic perspective forms a composite whole, linked by a radically misguided conception of what is possible in the present. It must resolve itself in a perspective that projects or accomodates the piecemeal eradication of the substantive elements of CST - a reformist perspective!

Unfortunately, it does not work! Look at the history of social democracy!
(CST = "colonialism of a special type", one way of referring to apartheid.)

(This document, and others rejecting Slovo's proposal, aren't available on the web. But it is printed in the Dec. 25, 1992 issue of the Militant among other places.)

So in conclusion: No, Mandela was and isn't a communist. But he, and other ANC leaders, acted in a more revolutionary way than the Moscow-following "Communists" of the SACP!

[homeo_apathy]

How to be a good communist by Nelson Mandela


http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1255245/posts

[homeo_apathy]

..hmm okay that source dosn't actually state he was one, sory i shoulda read it more closley first

[Chicom]

Originally posted by [email protected] 13 2006, 12:26 PM
Hmm...Noone that i've talked to thinks that Nelson Mandela was a communist...I didn't know either until i did a school assignment on him this month. So it kinda surprised me...
This happened after the sharpeville massacre, when the ANC was outlawed....He worked with Joe Slovo in carrying out guerilla attacks...

alot of people here would have probably known this already though?
Here's a picture

http://www.suntimes.co.za/longlive/images/image62.jpg
Nelson mandela (middle) Joe Slovo (right)

[Severian]

Does illustrate why this subject should be treated with caution: right-wingers often make false claims that someone is "Communist".

The apartheid regime and its supporters all claimed Mandela was a "Communist" and the ANC was "Communist-dominated". By which they sometimes meant: part of the "world Communist conspiracy" led by Moscow. And sometimes just meant: they opposed racism and apartheid.
(In the southern U.S. also, sometimes anyone who opposed racism was labelled a "Communist.")

That Free Republic page mentions Mandela's prosecution under the "Suppression of Communism Act". Well, that law defined any opposition to the apartheid system as "Communism." So Mandela and other ANC leaders were found guilty of, as the judge put it, "statutory communism" - as opposed to what "is commonly known as communism."

In conclusion: besides being false - as I've shown earlier - you gotta be careful of these kind of assertions because they dovetail with right-wing propaganda.

***

The manuscript reprinted on the Free Republic page, "How to be a good Communist" was written by Mandela, and used as evidence against him in court.

Mandela says the document was written to prove a point in an argument with SACP leader Moses Kotane. "I had long argued that Communist literature was, for the most part, dull, esoteric, and Western-centered, but ought to be simple, clear and relevant to the African masses. Moses insisted it could not be done. To prove my point, I had taken Liu's essay and rewritten it for an African audience." from p.315 of "Long Walk to Freedom", Mandela's autobiography. He's referring to an essay by the same title by Liu Shao-Chi.

If anyone wants to check Mandela's explanation, you could take the text of his manuscript and compare it to the text of Liu's essay - which is available on marxists.org.

[ItalianCommie]

I think he was just sympathetic to Communist ideas. Nothing near to be a real communist, though. I still admire him for his outstanding courage to defend rights in general... He spent 18 years on a prison island, remember? When he came out of prison he was freaked out by a journalist's microphone because he tought it was some kind of a weapon.

[Patchd]

Originally posted by [email protected] 13 2006, 11:33 PM
http://www.suntimes.co.za/longlive/images/image62.jpg
Nelson mandela (middle) Joe Slovo (right)
He doesn't look very happy or interested in whats going on. :lol: :lol:

[Hiero]

I would label Nelsom Mandela and the ANC as revisionist. Before national liberation the ANC promoted nationalisation, but after 1994 from internal and external pressure the ANC drop nationalisation. If you read any current ANC documents they still claim to be upholidng the National Democractic Revolution. Though i doubt they have an intention to begin the socialist revolution.

The most progressive groups in South Africa are the COSATU (Coalition of South African Trade Unions) and maybe the SACP. Which are in alliance with the ANC. There has to be a point where either group are going to step up and further the revolution.