By Ben Barrack

Almost as instantly as the news broke that Nelson Mandela had died, the cable news networks – including Fox News – all kicked into high gear, paying incessant tribute to the deceased Communist hero. Much of the reverence for Mandela is quite politically correct in nature. Here was a black man who had been liberated after being jailed for three decades by a ‘white’ government. He then led the country that jailed him. It was “story book”, to quote Joe Biden, who once said of Barack Obama that he was an “articulate and bright and clean and nice looking guy”.

Mandela with his wife Winnie and South African Communist Party President Joe Slovo.

There is a myriad of problems with the elevation of Mandela; he was a leader within the South African Communist Party (SACP), despite his denials to the contrary. On the SACP website is the transcript of a speech Mandela gave at the “Rally to Relaunch the South African Communist Party” on July 29, 1990. At the time, Mandela was identified as the Deputy President (later President) of the African National Congress (ANC). Here are some excerpts from the speech:

We are here today to participate with you in the public launch of the Communist Party, 40 years after it was banned. We do this because during the nearly 70 years of its existence, the Communist Party has distinguished itself as an ally in the common struggle to end the racial oppression and exploitation of the black masses of our country. It has fought side by side with the ANC for the common objective of the National Liberation of people, without seeking to impose its views on our movement.

It has been and is a dependable friend who respected our independence and our policy. Its members have been devoted Congressites who, as members of the ANC, have propagated and defended the policies of our movement, including the Freedom Charter, without hesitation. They have therefore given strength to our own movement, whatever their separate perspectives might be as an independent political formation.

Its leaders have been close friends and colleagues of the leaders of our movement. The general secretary of the Communist Party, comrade Joe Slovo, is an old friend. There is an old established friendship between his family and mine. We went to university together. We were co-accused in the Treason Trial of 1956 to 1961.

In a game of good cop / bad cop, the ANC might be perceived as the good cop and the SACP as the bad. In the speech, Mandela was careful to communicate that he was not a member of the SACP but wanted it and the ANC united (wink, wink):

The ANC is not a Communist Party. But as a defender of democracy, it has fought and will continue to fight for the right of the Communist Party to exist. As a movement for national liberation, the ANC has no mandate to espouse a Marxist ideology. But as a democratic movement, as a Parliament of the people of our country, the ANC has defended and will continue to defend the right of any South African to adhere to the Marxist ideology if that is their wish.

That is inherently contradictory. Marxism, by its very nature, is antithetical to democracy, assuming democracy is supposed to be synonymous with freedom. These are word games. One may debate whether Marxism should be banned but in that speech, Mandela was embracing it; there is a big difference.

Mandela embraced Marxists.

If there is any doubt that this was an attempt to play both sides of the fence, consider the discoveries of Stephen Ellis, a left-leaning professor at Amsterdam University, relayed in an article at the New American. Alex Newman wrote about these discoveries, which revealed Mandela’s allegiances:

Among other evidence, Ellis found minutes from a secret SACP meeting of top leaders in 1982. The papers document a high-level Communist Party functionary’s discussion about Mandela having joined the SACP around 20 years earlier. That would mean he joined in the beginning of the 1960s, probably 1961 or 1962, well before he was prosecuted for, among numerous other crimes, membership in the outlaw party backed by some of the most ruthless tyrants on the face of the Earth.

“There was an accusation that we opposed allowing Nelson [Mandela] and Walter [Sisulu, a fellow activist] into the Family [a code word for the party],” Communist leader and SACP Central Committee member John Pule Motshabi was quoted as saying in the minutes. “We were not informed because this was arising after the 1950 campaigns [a series of street protests]. The recruitment of the two came after.”

As Cliff Kincaid points out at America’s Survival, this would make Mandela a liar.

A bit later in Newman’s article, it’s revealed that apologists for Mandela’s membership seemed to put forth an argument that he had ulterior motives but was well-intentioned:

Experts including Ellis, who first identified and publicized the documents, said it was some of the most compelling evidence to date proving that Mandela was actually a member of the SACP. However, some analysts attempted to dismiss the new finds as insignificant, portraying the former South African president’s party membership as a mere alliance of convenience that was supposedly necessary to overthrow the existing government.

That twisted line of reasoning is reminiscent of what Bill Clinton put forth at the funeral of Democratic U.S. Senator Robert Byrd, who had been a Grand Kleagle with the Ku Klux Klan. Clinton said the former KKK Grand Kleagle joined such a group because it was in the best interests of his constituents.

Becoming a leader within a murderous movement in the name of helping people is the worst kind of oxymoron.

In 2000, international correspondent Anthony C. Lobaido, covered the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), a group assembled to investigate South African atrocities committed both by the Apartheid government and the ANC. According to Lobaido, innocent and defenseless people suffered heinous deaths as a result of Mandela and his wife. Lobaido wrote:

The crimes committed by the ANC in the name of liberation are legion. First, there was the practice of “necklacing,” in which a gasoline-filled tire is placed around the neck of a victim and set ablaze — an action carried out by Winnie Mandela and her minions. Another horror was the “Church Street Massacre,” in which Nelson Mandela approved of a bomb set to explode at rush hour to maximize casualties of Afrikaner women, children and babies.

The same Mandela who told the black youth of South Africa to “burn down” their schools has produced a lawless, unemployable generation. Mandela recently traveled to Libya and presented Gadhafi with South Africa’s highest military medal.

A bit later, Lobaido wrote about the conditions of South Africa just a few short years after the fall of the Apartheid government:

Media coverage of the new South Africa has been muted at best, rarely focusing on ANC-sponsored anarchy. Indeed, South Africa, once a rich and prosperous pro-West, first-world nation, has decayed into anarchy over the past six years.

In the thirteen years that have passed since Lobaido’s article, the situation in South Africa has gotten worse. Despicable and heinous crimes are being committed by blacks against whites, particularly white farmers.

In an article that appeared at Genocide Watch entitled The Gruesome Reality of Racist South Africa, Arnold Ahlert explains:

In 1994, Nelson Mandela and his Marxist African National Congress (ANC) assumed the reins of power. The international community looked away, satisfied that justice had prevailed. They continue to look away, even as South Africa has degenerated into another racist pit, best described by an Afrikaner farm owner: “It’s politically correct to kill whites these days.”

In July of 2012, Dr. Gregory Stanton, head of the nonprofit group Genocide Watch, conducted a fact- finding mission in South Africa. He concluded that there is a coordinated campaign of genocide being conducted against white farmers, known as Boers. “The farm murders, we have become convinced, are not accidental,” Stanton contended. “It was very clear that the massacres were not common crimes,” he added — especially because of the absolute barbarity used against the victims…

…Many victims, including women and infant children, are raped or tortured before they are killed. Some have boiling water poured down their throats, some are burned with hot pokers, and some are hacked to death with machetes, or disemboweled. Several others have been tied to their own cars and dragged for miles….

The President of both South Africa and The African National Congress (ANC) is a man named Jacob Zuma, who dismisses charges of racist crimes. If the argument against Apartheid was that it was a racist government, one should be able to rightfully expect that those who sought to replace it would want to go out of their way to avoid becoming what they despised. When it comes to Zuma, that doesn’t appear to be the case.

Ahlert writes:

…the ANC celebrated in 100th year anniversary with a song led by President Zuma himself. “Dubula iBhunu” or “Shoot the Boer” was a line in the lyrics of an apartheid-era song, “Ayesaba Amagwala” (“the cowards are scared”) that violates the South Africa constitution prohibiting the “advocacy of hatred that is based on race … and that constitutes incitement to cause harm.” Yet Zuma apparently felt no compunction to refrain from singing it, because the ANC considers it an integral part of the anti- apartheid movement that is part of their heritage.

Jacob Zuma: South Africa’s President.

In 2010, Julius Malema, then leader of the ANC Youth League, revived the practice of singing the song after many years. After the South Africa High Court ruled it was hate speech, the ANC appealed. Last October, the ANC and AfriForum, a lobby group that wanted the song banned from public performance, reached an out-of-court settlement.

After Mandela’s death, Zuma spoke glowingly of the former leader.

Another problem for the pro-Mandela crowd has to do with both his associates and the fruit borne of this ANC / SACP alliance. The word “Apartheid” became synonymous with repressive governance. Now that Apartheid is gone, South Africa is controlled by the black majority, led by Zuma. Yet, the South Africa of today is home to the most brutal manifestations of racism.

Two wrongs do not a right make.

Speaking of Wright, in one of his most notorious speeches, in which he said, “America’s Chickens are coming home to roost”, Barack Obama’s pastor – Jeremiah Wright – equated the plight of blacks in South Africa to the plight of Palestinians at the hands of the Israelis:

“We (U.S. Government) have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans and now we are indignant!”

Consider just how hated the Jews are by the Arab Muslims. They are hated far more than Afrikaners were by blacks. Yet, when the Afrikaners were removed from power, they are subjected to unheard of atrocities. Should we therefore conclude that if the “Apartheid” government of Israel were removed, Jews would be subjected to even worse atrocities?

Mandela’s successor as President of South Africa was a man named Thabo Mbeki. Like Zuma, Mbeki held Mandela in high regard, even penning a poem in Mandela’s honor. In the last paragraph of his 2000 article, Lobaido revealed something very telling about Mbeki, especially in light of what the world has learned about a certain far left-wing billionaire:

In recent weeks, current South African President Thabo Mbeki (who admits he grew up memorizing the works of Karl Marx) has announced that South Africa has formed an alliance with communist China. For decades, South Africa had helped Taiwan, but last year, Mandela switched official recognition from Taiwan to China. Mbeki has applauded the seizures of white-owned farms in neighboring Zimbabwe, even as ANC black revolutionary cadres step up their terror campaign against white farmers in South Africa. His communist flank secure, Mbeki recently announced in a speech to parliament that he is effectively handing over control of South Africa’s economy to international financier George Soros and a group of 12 Western transnational corporations.

There is also a reason why Mandela and Cuba’s longtime Marxist President Fidel Castro were so cozy with one another. The Soviet Union and Castro backed Mandela’s ANC. In particular, both the Soviets and the Cubans sent troops and money to help the ANC fight the Afrikaners in Angola. In this video, Hollywood actor Harry Belafonte refers to the relationship, saying:

“one of the greatest friends that Cuba has is Nelson Mandela and his appreciation for what the Cuban people did and Fidel Castro.”

Belafonte spoke these words as video of Mandela and Castro embracing – multiple times – is seen:

What such people would have one believe is that the Afrikaners were the evil oppressors and the ANC was fighting for its own survival. That’s not accurate, according to Lobaido:

Through the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the gulags of northern Angola — where the ANC mutilated and tortured cadres who would not go along with the terrorist campaign — have also been brought to light. The ANC has admitted that torture and “staggering brutality” were committed at their Angolan re-education camps in the 1980s and “could have caused prisoner deaths.” In an internal report, the ANC documented 17 eyewitness accounts of detainees who survived the camps.

These are the fruits of Nelson Mandela, his ANC, his associations, and his ideology.

Once again, the media is missing in action when it comes to reporting the truth.