Nelson Mandela

[Psy]

Why didn't Nelson Mandela go down as the world's greatest counter-revolutionary? Say what you want about Chavez creating half a revolution (and we all know what happens with half revolutions) but at least Chavez didn't just hand the country back to the capitalists, Nelson allowing the capitalists to go on business as usually but better because they had a new facade created by Nelson Medela that re-legitimized the under lying system.

<misspelled his name in the subject title>

[communard resolution]

"These Communists influenced us. And we influenced them too. If anyone wants to argue that they used us; we shall retort back to say we used them too!"

(Nelson Mandela 1996)

[comrade stalin guevara]

south africa is the same nation it was 30 years ago,
the diffrence now the faces are black.

[jake williams]

There's a 5-year-old black girl sitting on the couch a few feet away from me listening to a story. She knows a few languages and she's still learning English. Her grandmother(-in-law?) Thoko is basically my adoptive mother. Thoko grew up in the ANC basically. Nelson hid out in a secret hiding place in her grandma's basement. So pretty much this shit is personal for me.

Post-apartheid South Africa is a complex of revolution and counter-revolution. A combination of morality and pragmatism led the West and white South Africa to say, okay, no more. This was partly hard-fought (Thoko has the bullet scar in her calf if you want to see) but partly it was given. It was guiltily given. The West was ready to look contrite. Nelson is friendly or at least appears friendly. So you get him and you put him up and say, look how great, you give him a Nobel prize, peace and love for everyone, we're all happy and working together.

You couldn't do that with, say, Steve Biko. Nelson Mandela worked as well as they could get. That's part of the story.

The situtation now is to some degree a case of replacing a white ruling class with a checkered ruling class, but it isn't even much of that. This is still an important step, for the same reason the freeing of the slaves in the United States was an important step.

About communism - the quote is fairly accurate. The Soviet Union had an easy place to define itself not as the communist power but also as the anti-imperialist power. Western imperialist countries were what Black South Africa was fighting, and the enemy of my enemy and all that. And naturally Soviet rhetoric appealed to the anti-apartheid forces, who were poor. The Soviets offered things to the ANC (funding and arms, for two) and the ANC helped give the Soviet Union the cover of a progressive anti-imperialist anti-racist force. It wasn't all charade and propaganda, but it was a bit of it, even a lot of it.

South Africa was not the same nation it is now. Apartheid, legal apartheid at least, has been demolished, and I think that at least simplistically that's good. But it's also been accompanied by an end of some of the political momentum there used to be, a numbing of former opposition. But there's backlash against that, so it's all very hard to talk about.

We know where the neo-liberal reactionism of the ANC and the SACP and so on comes from though - these are by and large Western-supported, Western-educated, wealthy elites, however black, Thabo Mbeki especially.


So those are some thoughts poorly patched together.

[Red Flag Rising]

Dare we say it? In some respects South africa is WORSE off than it was under Apartheid.

No two ways about it, Mandela betrayed any hope of revolution in SA. He sold out for money and fame. Now he's fit to be a regular on the Oprah Winfrey show. Fuck him. Time to move on ...

[Black Dagger]

south africa is the same nation it was 30 years ago,
the diffrence now the faces are black.

This doesn't make any sense. The 'faces' in SA have always been Black - the majority. But if you're talking more metaphorically, like in terms of power etc. thirty years ago SA had a system of racial segregation enforced by a police-state - this no longer exists. These days the people with political power (the politicans) may be primarily Black, but Black south africans are still at the bottom of the economic ladder. To be sure a lot of white SA's left the country after apartheids collapse but the wealthy SA's are still predominantly white.


Dare we say it? In some respects South africa is WORSE off than it was under Apartheid.

Please justify this statement - i'm sure Black south africans would take a corrupt bourgeois democracy with a neoliberal bent over a police state and quasi-slavery but what do i know?



No two ways about it, Mandela betrayed any hope of revolution in SA He sold out for money and fame. Now he's fit to be a regular on the Oprah Winfrey show. Fuck him. Time to move on ... Mandela betrayed nothing - he was never a communist revolutionary. His aim was always the abolition of the apartheid regime and it's place a representative democracy - he was a revolutionary democrat. I think even at his 'speech at the dock'; so before he was imprisoned for plotting 'violent terrorism', the peak of his brief guerrilla period; even then he talked fondly of liberal democracy (the british parliament). So with that said it's fallacious to claim he 'sold out' when he has always been quite honest about his intentions and libdem politics.

[Mujer Libre]

Please justify this statement - i'm sure Black south africans would take a corrupt bourgeois democracy with a neoliberal bent over a police state and quasi-slavery but what do i know?
Don't ya know, the purity of revolution is much more important than the mundane suffering of millions of people of colour... So much so that they should be prepared to suffer in order to further our glorious goals! :rolleyes:

[Black Dagger]

Edited topic title.

[Psy]

Mandela betrayed nothing - he was never a communist revolutionary. His aim was always the abolition of the apartheid regime and it's place a representative democracy - he was a revolutionary democrat. I think even at his 'speech at the dock'; so before he was imprisoned for plotting 'violent terrorism', the peak of his brief guerrilla period; even then he talked fondly of liberal democracy (the british parliament). So with that said it's fallacious to claim he 'sold out' when he has always been quite honest about his intentions and libdem politics.
But even when he took power he couldn't even bring the pigs that oppressed blacks to justice.

[Black Dagger]

What would you have the ANC do? They didn't exactly have the government on its knees.

Given the SA govt's vast military superiority, if the ANC had gone on a killing spree hundreds of thousands of people might have lost their lives (mainly Africans) in a civil war (this may be the official ANC line, maybe the SACP one... i can't remember but the SACP are pretty much ANC lapdogs so the ANC/SACP line is pretty much the same thing).

The USSR had collapsed, waging armed struggle was difficult and had already taken a toll. A violent payback might also have precipitated intervention by one of the major white powers that would have probably ended up even worse for Black south africans. That would also legitimise the 'terrorist' label associated with the ANC name for so long in the west. As it happened the ANC and the National Party supervised a 'peaceful tranisition' with the blessing of the western powers who took photos with Mandela and pretended like they were all best buds. That was all a part of the conditions imposed by the nationals - otherwise they may never have stepped down.

[Pogue]

Why didn't Nelson Mandela go down as the world's greatest counter-revolutionary? Say what you want about Chavez creating half a revolution (and we all know what happens with half revolutions) but at least Chavez didn't just hand the country back to the capitalists, Nelson allowing the capitalists to go on business as usually but better because they had a new facade created by Nelson Medela that re-legitimized the under lying system.

<misspelled his name in the subject title>

He didn't go down as the world's greatest counter-revolutionary because he wasn't/isn't a counter-revolutionary. He is an anti-racist left wing figure of hope and dignity who spent his life fighting against racism and brutal regimes. You're analysis of him is ignorant and narrow-minded.

[communard resolution]

So those are some thoughts poorly patched together.

You're being too humble. :lol: Thanks very much for your contribution, it's great to read someone's thoughts who's 'closer to the source'.

Of course I agree that it was an important step to end Apartheid (and I don't think anybody on here meant to sneer at that), although as has been pointed out, the majority of black people in SA still live in poverty, whether part of the bourgeoise is now black or not. As if to shed whatever remaining left-wing credentials, the ANC has privatized the living daylights out of the country. I was shocked at the xenophobic pogroms in Johannesburg earlier this year, and I don't think such things would be happening had the ANC not steered the country towards a particularly cutthroat, laisser-faire capitalism. To what extent Mandela is personally responsible for that, I have no idea.

So while the end of Apartheid is certainly a good thing, perhaps the developments in SA teach us that the results of anti-racist struggles can never be satisfactory if that anti-racism is detached from a broader class struggle.

As for the Soviet help, I think supporting the anti-racist struggle with funding and arms partly for propaganda reasons is preferable to supporting Apartheid for economic reasons as Reagan's clique did.

My respect goes out to your adoptive mother.

[LiberaCHE]

http://21stcenturysocialism.com/files/fidel%20nelson.jpg


In my view, Mandela went through so much shit and was placed in such a difficult situation ... that I give him a pass.

I would have loved nothing more than for him to hold tribunals and send the top few thousand Apartheid goons to a firing squad ... but if he did that in the mid 90's, he would have lost all of the "worldwide" support that he had engendered.

South Africa is decades away from having "revolutionary potential" from a Marxists perspective, but at least Mandela got the ball rolling and was crucial in toppling Apartheid (which was a small start).

[chimx]

Personally I find the Truth and Reconciliation movement pretty inspiring. Before I traveled to South Africa years ago I had a private dinner with Albie Sachs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albie_Sachs), who is a judge in SA's highest court. He had his arm blown off in a car bomb that Apartheid security forces placed in his car. He told me about the process of the Truth and Reconciliation movement: he sat down with the person who had placed a bomb in his car and made him an amputee (and half blind). The man admitted to setting the bomb, and apologized to Albie. Albie talked about how it effected his life, and then forgave him. I find it a pretty inspirational way of breaking down those racist cultural barriers.

The problem with it however was that it only really effected those cultural barriers and left economic matters relatively untouched. In South Africa, there still is very much an economic apartheid that is often racially defined. This is what happens when you ignore the importance of production relationships' impact on our lives

[Psy]

What would you have the ANC do? They didn't exactly have the government on its knees.

Given the SA govt's vast military superiority, if the ANC had gone on a killing spree hundreds of thousands of people might have lost their lives (mainly Africans) in a civil war (this may be the official ANC line, maybe the SACP one... i can't remember but the SACP are pretty much ANC lapdogs so the ANC/SACP line is pretty much the same thing).

The USSR had collapsed, waging armed struggle was difficult and had already taken a toll. A violent payback might also have precipitated intervention by one of the major white powers that would have probably ended up even worse for Black south africans. That would also legitimise the 'terrorist' label associated with the ANC name for so long in the west. As it happened the ANC and the National Party supervised a 'peaceful tranisition' with the blessing of the western powers who took photos with Mandela and pretended like they were all best buds. That was all a part of the conditions imposed by the nationals - otherwise they may never have stepped down.
I would say organize the workers, I.E get miners to occupy the mines, defensibly engaging the South African army as they try to reclaim the means of production. The idea is to expand the movement till it is a full scale proletariat uprising.

[Black Dagger]

The ANC had no interest in a 'full scale proletarian uprising'. Although there were communists in the ANC the ANC itself was not communist, so you can't honestly expect them to be something they're not.

[Psy]

The ANC had no interest in a 'full scale proletarian uprising'. Although there were communists in the ANC the ANC itself was not communist, so you can't honestly expect them to be something they're not.
True but tactically speaking the more hell the masses raise the easier it is for a revolutionary army to overthrow the state, you just have to look at the revolutionaries armies of Italy and Greece during WWII to see how effective revolutionary armies are when the armies of the state are pre-occupied.

[Devrim]

The ANC had no interest in a 'full scale proletarian uprising'. Although there were communists in the ANC the ANC itself was not communist, so you can't honestly expect them to be something they're not.

The 'communists' had no interest in a 'full scale proletarian uprising' either.

Devrim

[Black Dagger]

http://www.revleft.com/vb/../revleft/misc/progress.gif
True but tactically speaking the more hell the masses raise the easier it is for a revolutionary army to overthrow the state, you just have to look at the revolutionaries armies of Italy and Greece during WWII to see how effective revolutionary armies are when the armies of the state are pre-occupied.

Sure, and there were times of intense struggle on the streets that may have grown into an insurrection had it not been for the influence of the ANC. They weren't really thinking in terms of revolution until after Rivona.

[Psy]

http://www.revleft.com/vb/../revleft/misc/progress.gif

Sure, and there were times of intense struggle on the streets that may have grown into an insurrection had it not been for the influence of the ANC. They weren't really thinking in terms of revolution until after Rivona.

No one in the ANC paid attention to the black movement in the USA? With the FBI waging war against the Black Panthers over the free breakfast program (the actions of COINTELPRO was made public knowledge in 1976), didn't the ANC clue in that even if they succeed they would be in the shoes of the blacks in the USA, still having to fight for equality?

[Pogue]

Mandela is a left wing, libertarian hero, who took part in the revolutionary overthrow of a racist, authoritarian regime. The criticism I have seen of him is the usual bullshit thrown out by arogant members of the far left who judge people by standards they're no where near close to themselves. Like people who'd call Galloway 'reformist', when he does more for leftism than most people ever will.

[Psy]

Mandela is a left wing, libertarian hero, who took part in the revolutionary overthrow of a racist, authoritarian regime. The criticism I have seen of him is the usual bullshit thrown out by arogant members of the far left who judge people by standards they're no where near close to themselves. Like people who'd call Galloway 'reformist', when he does more for leftism than most people ever will.

The criticism is the bourgeoisie still exploit blacks but now they have a humane facade thanks the Mandela. Basically that Mandela was no Huey P Newton or Fred Hampton.

[Black Dagger]

Mandela is a left wing, libertarian hero, who took part in the revolutionary overthrow of a racist, authoritarian regime.

Mandela is not a 'libertarian', nor was his election as president a 'revolutionary overthrow' of any kind.


Basically that Mandela was no Huey P Newton or Fred Hampton.

Right, but he never tried to be. The dude was in jail for nearly ten years before those two had started making waves politically.

[Psy]

Right, but he never tried to be. The dude was in jail for nearly ten years before those two had started making waves politically.
No one sent him the 10 point program of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defence? No one told him of the Black Panther community services like the breakfast program?

[Black Dagger]

I really doubt the apartheid government would deliver that kind of stuff to his cell??? Even if they did i'm not really sure what you expect he would with that? It's not like Mandela ran the anti-apartheid resistance from his gaol cell.

[Psy]

I really doubt the apartheid government would deliver that kind of stuff to his cell??? Even if they did i'm not really sure what you expect he would with that? It's not like Mandela ran the anti-apartheid resistance from his gaol cell.
I mean afterwords, so when Mandela was in office he can implement relief programs in South Africa.

[comrade stalin guevara]

Mandela is a hero regardless what his politic is,

Its a sham in south africa however,
the blacks are still poor the whites still own every thing important
diamond mines included.

What i think is upsetting though is nelson doesent talk about it,
i guess as an old man now he is over that part of his life,
or maybe power has dislusioned the anc so much they cant see it,
sort of like mugabe in zimbabwe.

[Red Flag Rising]

Its a sham in south africa however,
the blacks are still poor the whites still own every thing important
diamond mines included.

If this is true, then Mandela is no hero.

[secret invader]

Money and power=corruption!

[BobKKKindle$]

The comments in this thread show that members need to take a more critical position and not simply accept the predominant image of individuals.


Mandela betrayed nothing - he was never a communist revolutionary.

Mandela was never a communist, but he still pledged to overturn economic inequality and improve the conditions of the black majority once the ANC was in a position of power - this is not a promise the party has implemented, as prior to the abolition of Apartheid in 1990 the main leaders of the party conducted meetings with the white economic elite and promised that they would protect private property and would not attempt to threaten the social position of the white elite. The meetings were conducted in secret and were not announced to the lower membership of the party, as the party leaders recognized that the lower members would interpret the agreement as a betrayal of the principles they fought for under the Apartheid regime. The most fertile land in South Africa is still subject to the control of a small group of white farmers who comprise a small share of the total agricultural workforce, and the government still persists in removing poor urban residents from land which is designated for redevelopment and forcing them to move to rural areas where there is a severe lack of basic facilities.


Please justify this statement - i'm sure Black south africans would take a corrupt bourgeois democracy with a neoliberal bent over a police state and quasi-slavery but what do i know?

Since the collapse of Apartheid, the average income of white households has risen by 15 percent, according to government statistics, whereas average black income has fallen by 19 percent, alongside rapid increases in the prices of power and water, such that black households are often forced to pay almost a third of total income to retain access to these utilities. (Source: Statistics South Africa, Earning and Spending in South Africa, 2002, also cited in 'Freedom Next Time' by John Pilger)

[Black Dagger]

Bob i have no idea why you have quoted my posts?

Nothing you've said contradicts what i have said, or think (as i'm sure you would not be suggesting that Black south africans would prefer apartheid to their current government).

I'm not sure what to say? Uh, i agree?