[Peace-discuss] Fw: Informed Comment - two articles re Mandela

Sat Dec 7 01:22:31 UTC 2013

Pls read Mandela's declaration to the court from 1964 (see my highlights, below).
Also US and Israel's opposition to Mandela and support for Apartheid. 

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Informed Comment   
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	* Photo of the Day: Mandela Training in Algeria 
	* Mandela:  We want equal Political Rights; When Protest was Outlawed, we chose Sabotage 
	* NAS: From Ice Sheet Collapse to Mass Extinctions, You’re not Ready for Climate Change 
	* United States, Israel opposed Mandela, supported Apartheid 
	* Tunisian Rapper Jailed for 4 Months for Insulting the Police 
Photo of the Day: Mandela Training in Algeria 
Posted: 06 Dec 2013 12:26 PM PST
h/t  Sami Ben Gharbia ‏@ifikra 
Nelson Mandela training with the Algerian Liberation Front in 1962.  The Algerians fought an 8-year war, 1954-1962, to become independent from French imperialism, in the course of which between half a million and a million Algerians died (the population of the country was then 11 million).  In 1962, South Africa was ruled by right wing Afrikaners who denied the black majority basic human rights, including the franchise, while exploiting their labor. 
Mandela:  We want equal Political Rights; When Protest was Outlawed, we chose Sabotage 
Posted: 06 Dec 2013 12:01 AM PST
Mandela’s declaration to the court as his trial began in Pretoria at the Supreme Court of South Africa on April 20, 1964
I am the first accused. I hold a bachelor’s degree in arts and practised as an attorney in Johannesburg for a number of years in partnership with Oliver Tambo. I am a convicted prisoner serving five years for leaving the country without a permit and for inciting people to go on strike at the end of May 1961.
At the outset, I want to say that the suggestion that the struggle in South Africa is under the influence of foreigners or communists is wholly incorrect. I have done whatever I did because of my experience in South Africa and my own proudly felt African background, and not because of what any outsider might have said. In my youth in the Transkei I listened to the elders of my tribe telling stories of the old days. Amongst the tales they related to me were those of wars fought by our ancestors in defence of the fatherland. The names of Dingane and Bambata, Hintsa and Makana, Squngthi and Dalasile, Moshoeshoe and Sekhukhuni, were praised as the glory of the entire African nation. I hoped then that life might offer me the opportunity to serve my people and make my own humble contribution to their freedom struggle.
Some of the things so far told to the court are true and some are untrue. I do not, however, deny that I planned sabotage. I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness, nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation, and oppression of my people by the whites.
I admit immediately that I was one of the persons who helped to form Umkhonto we Sizwe. I deny that Umkhonto was responsible for a number of acts which clearly fell outside the policy of the organisation, and which have been charged in the indictment against us. I, and the others who started the organisation, felt that without violence there would be no way open to the African people to succeed in their struggle against the principle of white supremacy. All lawful modes of expressing opposition to this principle had been closed by legislation, and we were placed in a position in which we had either to accept a permanent state of inferiority, or to defy the government. We chose to defy the law.
We first broke the law in a way which avoided any recourse to violence; when this form was legislated against, and then the government resorted to a show of force to crush opposition to its policies, only then did we decide to answer violence with violence.
The African National Congress was formed in 1912 to defend the rights of the African people, which had been seriously curtailed. For 37 years – that is, until 1949 – it adhered strictly to a constitutional struggle. But white governments remained unmoved, and the rights of Africans became less instead of becoming greater. Even after 1949, the ANC remained determined to avoid violence. At this time, however, the decision was taken to protest against apartheid by peaceful, but unlawful, demonstrations. More than 8,500 people went to jail. Yet there was not a single instance of violence. I and 19 colleagues were convicted for organising the campaign, but our sentences were suspended mainly because the judge found that discipline and non-violence had been stressed throughout.
During the defiance campaign, the Public Safety Act and the Criminal Law Amendment Act were passed. These provided harsher penalties for protests against [the] laws. Despite this, the protests continued and the ANC adhered to its policy of non-violence. In 1956, 156 leading members of the Congress Alliance, including myself, were arrested. The non-violent policy of the ANC was put in issue by the state, but when the court gave judgment some five years later, it found that the ANC did not have a policy of violence.
In 1960 there was the shooting at Sharpeville, which resulted in the declaration of the ANC as an unlawful organisation. My colleagues man and I, after careful consideration, decided that we would not obey this decree. The African people were not part of the government and did not make the laws by which they were governed. We believed in the words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that “the will of the people shall be the basis of authority of the government”, and for us to accept the banning was equivalent to accepting the silencing of the Africans for all time. The ANC refused to dissolve, but instead went underground.
In 1960 the government held a referendum which led to the establishment of the republic. Africans, who constituted approximately 70% of the population, were not entitled to vote, and were not even consulted. I undertook to be responsible for organising the national stay-at-home called to coincide with the declaration of the republic. As all strikes by Africans are illegal, the person organising such a strike must avoid arrest. I had to leave my home and family and my practice and go into hiding to avoid arrest. The stay-at-home was to be a peaceful demonstration. Careful instructions were given to avoid any recourse to violence.
The government’s answer was to introduce new and harsher laws, to mobilise its armed forces, and to send Saracens, armed vehicles, and soldiers into the townships in a massive show of force designed to intimidate the people. The government had decided to rule by force alone, and this decision was a milestone on the road to Umkhonto. What were we, the leaders of our people, to do? We had no doubt that we had to continue the fight. Anything else would have been abject surrender. Our problem was not whether to fight, but was how to continue the fight.
We of the ANC had always stood for a non-racial democracy, and we shrank from any action which might drive the races further apart. But the hard facts were that 50 years of non-violence had brought the African people nothing but more and more repressive legislation, and fewer and fewer rights. By this time violence had, in fact, become a feature of the South African political scene.
There had been violence in 1957 when the women of Zeerust were ordered to carry passes; there was violence in 1958 with the enforcement of cattle culling in Sekhukhuneland; there was violence in 1959 when the people of Cato Manor protested against pass raids; there was violence in 1960 when the government attempted to impose Bantu authorities in Pondoland. Each disturbance pointed to the inevitable growth among Africans of the belief that violence was the only way out – it showed that a government which uses force to maintain its rule teaches the oppressed to use force to oppose it.
I came to the conclusion that as violence in this country was inevitable, it would be unrealistic to continue preaching peace and non-violence. This conclusion was not easily arrived at. It was only when all else had failed, when all channels of peaceful protest had been barred to us, that the decision was made to embark on violent forms of political struggle. I can only say that I felt morally obliged to do what I did.
Four forms of violence were possible. There is sabotage, there is guerrilla warfare, there is terrorism, and there is open revolution. We chose to adopt the first. Sabotage did not involve loss of life, and it offered the best hope for future race relations. Bitterness would be kept to a minimum and, if the policy bore fruit, democratic government could become a reality. The initial plan was based on a careful analysis of the political and economic situation of our country. We believed that South Africa depended to a large extent on foreign capital. We felt that planned destruction of power plants, and interference with rail and telephone communications, would scare away capital from the country, thus compelling the voters of the country to reconsider their position. Umkhonto had its first operation on December 16 1961, when government buildings in Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth and Durban were attacked. The selection of targets is proof of the policy to
 which I have referred. Had we intended to attack life we would have selected targets where people congregated and not empty buildings and power stations.
The whites failed to respond by suggesting change; they responded to our call by suggesting the laager. In contrast, the response of the Africans was one of encouragement. Suddenly there was hope again. People began to speculate on how soon freedom would be obtained.
But we in Umkhonto weighed up the white response with anxiety. The lines were being drawn. The whites and blacks were moving into separate camps, and the prospects of avoiding a civil war were made less. The white newspapers carried reports that sabotage would be punished by death. If this was so, how could we continue to keep Africans away from terrorism?
We felt it our duty to make preparations to use force in order to defend ourselves against force. We decided, therefore to make provision for the possibility of guerrilla warfare. All whites undergo compulsory military training, but no such training was given to Africans. It was in our view essential to build up a nucleus of trained men who would be able to provide the leadership which would be required if guerrilla warfare started.
At this stage it was decided that I should attend the Conference of the Pan-African Freedom Movement which was to be held early in 1962 in Addis Ababa, and after the conference, I would undertake a tour of the African states with a view to obtaining facilities for the training of soldiers. My tour was a success. Wherever I went I met sympathy for our cause and promises of help. All Africa was united against the stand of white South Africa, and even in London I was received with great sympathy by political leaders, such as Mr Gaitskell and Mr Grimond.
I started to make a study of the art of war and revolution and, whilst abroad, underwent a course in military training. If there was to be guerrilla warfare, I wanted to be able to stand and fight with my people and to share the hazards of war with them.
On my return I found that there had been little alteration in the political scene save, that the threat of a death penalty for sabotage had now become a fact.
Another of the allegations made by the state is that the aims and objects of the ANC and the Communist party are the same. The creed of the ANC is, and always has been, the creed of African nationalism. It is not the concept of African nationalism expressed in the cry, “Drive the white man into the sea.” The African nationalism for which the ANC stands is the concept of freedom and fulfilment for the African people in their own land. The most important political document ever adopted by the ANC is the “freedom charter”. It is by no means a blueprint for a socialist state. It calls for redistribution, but not nationalisation, of land; it provides for nationalisation of mines, banks, and monopoly industry, because big monopolies are owned by one race only, and without such nationalisation racial domination would be perpetuated despite the spread of political power. Under the freedom charter, nationalisation would take place in an economy based on
 private enterprise.
As far as the Communist party is concerned, and if I understand its policy correctly, it stands for the establishment of a state based on the principles of Marxism. The Communist party sought to emphasise class distinctions whilst the ANC seeks to harmonise them. This is a vital distinction.
It is true that there has often been close cooperation between the ANC and the Communist party. But cooperation is merely proof of a common goal – in this case the removal of white supremacy – and is not proof of a complete community of interests. The history of the world is full of similar examples. Perhaps the most striking is the cooperation between Great Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union in the fight against Hitler. Nobody but Hitler would have dared to suggest that such cooperation turned Churchill or Roosevelt into communists. Theoretical differences amongst those fighting against oppression is a luxury we cannot afford at this stage.
What is more, for many decades communists were the only political group in South Africa prepared to treat Africans as human beings and their equals; who were prepared to eat with us; talk with us, live with us, and work with us. They were the only group which was prepared to work with the Africans for the attainment of political rights and a stake in society. Because of this, there are many Africans who, today, tend to equate freedom with communism. They are supported in this belief by a legislature which brands all exponents of democratic government and African freedom as communists and bans many of them (who are not communists) under the Suppression of Communism Act. Although I have never been a member of the Communist party, I myself have been imprisoned under that act.
I have always regarded myself, in the first place, as an African patriot. Today I am attracted by the idea of a classless society, an attraction which springs in part from Marxist reading and, in part, from my admiration of the structure of early African societies. The land belonged to the tribe. There were no rich or poor and there was no exploitation. We all accept the need for some form of socialism to enable our people to catch up with the advanced countries of this world and to overcome their legacy of extreme poverty. But this does not mean we are Marxists.
I have gained the impression that communists regard the parliamentary system of the west as reactionary. But, on the contrary, I am an admirer. The Magna Carta, the Petition of Right, and the Bill of Rights are documents held in veneration by democrats throughout the world. I have great respect for British institutions, and for the country’s system of justice. I regard the British parliament as the most democratic institution in the world, and the impartiality of its judiciary never fails to arouse my admiration. The American Congress, that country’s separation of powers, as well as the independence of its judiciary, arouses in me similar sentiments.
I have been influenced in my thinking by both west and east. I should tie myself to no particular system of society other than of socialism. I must leave myself free to borrow the best from the west and from the east.
Our fight is against real, and not imaginary, hardships or, to use the language of the state prosecutor, “so-called hardships”. Basically, we fight against two features which are the hallmarks of African life in South Africa and which are entrenched by legislation. These features are poverty and lack of human dignity, and we do not need communists or so-called “agitators” to teach us about these things. South Africa is the richest country in Africa, and could be one of the richest countries in the world. But it is a land of remarkable contrasts. The whites enjoy what may be the highest standard of living in the world, whilst Africans live in poverty and misery. Poverty goes hand in hand with malnutrition and disease. Tuberculosis, pellagra and scurvy bring death and destruction of health.
The complaint of Africans, however, is not only that they are poor and the whites are rich, but that the laws which are made by the whites are designed to preserve this situation. There are two ways to break out of poverty. The first is by formal education, and the second is by the worker acquiring a greater skill at his work and thus higher wages. As far as Africans are concerned, both these avenues of advancement are deliberately curtailed by legislation.
The government has always sought to hamper Africans in their search for education. There is compulsory education for all white children at virtually no cost to their parents, be they rich or poor. African children, however, generally have to pay more for their schooling than whites.
Approximately 40% of African children in the age group seven to 14 do not attend school. For those who do, the standards are vastly different from those afforded to white children. Only 5,660 African children in the whole of South Africa passed their junior certificate in 1962, and only 362 passed matric.
This is presumably consistent with the policy of Bantu education about which the present prime minister said: “When I have control of native education I will reform it so that natives will be taught from childhood to realise that equality with Europeans is not for them. People who believe in equality are not desirable teachers for natives. When my department controls native education it will know for what class of higher education a native is fitted, and whether he will have a chance in life to use his knowledge.”
The other main obstacle to the advancement of the African is the industrial colour-bar under which all the better jobs of industry are reserved for whites only. Moreover, Africans who do obtain employment in the unskilled and semi-skilled occupations open to them are not allowed to form trade unions which have recognition. This means that they are denied the right of collective bargaining, which is permitted to the better-paid white workers.
The government answers its critics by saying that Africans in South Africa are better off than the inhabitants of the other countries in Africa. I do not know whether this statement is true. But even if it is true, as far as the African people are concerned it is irrelevant.
Our complaint is not that we are poor by comparison with people in other countries, but that we are poor by comparison with the white people in our own country, and that we are prevented by legislation from altering this imbalance.
The lack of human dignity experienced by Africans is the direct result of the policy of white supremacy. White supremacy implies black inferiority. Legislation designed to preserve white supremacy entrenches this notion. Menial tasks in South Africa are invariably performed by Africans.
When anything has to be carried or cleaned the white man will look around for an African to do it for him, whether the African is employed by him or not. Because of this sort of attitude, whites tend to regard Africans as a separate breed. They do not look upon them as people with families of their own; they do not realise that they have emotions – that they fall in love like white people do; that they want to be with their wives and children like white people want to be with theirs; that they want to earn enough money to support their families properly, to feed and clothe them and send them to school. And what “house-boy” or “garden-boy” or labourer can ever hope to do this?
Pass laws render any African liable to police surveillance at any time. I doubt whether there is a single African male in South Africa who has not had a brush with the police over his pass. Hundreds and thousands of Africans are thrown into jail each year under pass laws.
Even worse is the fact that pass laws keep husband and wife apart and lead to the breakdown of family life. Poverty and the breakdown of family have secondary effects. Children wander the streets because they have no schools to go to, or no money to enable them to go, or no parents at home to see that they go, because both parents (if there be two) have to work to keep the family alive. This leads to a breakdown in moral standards, to an alarming rise in illegitimacy, and to violence, which erupts not only politically, but everywhere. Life in the townships is dangerous. Not a day goes by without somebody being stabbed or assaulted. And violence is carried out of the townships [into] the white living areas. People are afraid to walk the streets after dark. Housebreakings and robberies are increasing, despite the fact that the death sentence can now be imposed for such offences. Death sentences cannot cure the festering sore.
Africans want to be paid a living wage. Africans want to perform work which they are capable of doing, and not work which the government declares them to be capable of. Africans want to be allowed to live where they obtain work, and not be endorsed out of an area because they were not born there. Africans want to be allowed to own land in places where they work, and not to be obliged to live in rented houses which they can never call their own. Africans want to be part of the general population, and not confined to living in their own ghettoes.
African men want to have their wives and children to live with them where they work, and not be forced into an unnatural existence in men’s hostels. African women want to be with their menfolk and not be left permanently widowed in the reserves. Africans want to be allowed out after 11 o’clock at night and not to be confined to their rooms like little children. Africans want to be allowed to travel in their own country and to seek work where they want to and not where the labour bureau tells them to. Africans want a just share in the whole of South Africa; they want security and a stake in society.
Above all, we want equal political rights, because without them our disabilities will be permanent. I know this sounds revolutionary to the whites in this country, because the majority of voters will be Africans. This makes the white man fear democracy. But this fear cannot be allowed to stand in the way of the only solution which will guarantee racial harmony and freedom for all. It is not true that the enfranchisement of all will result in racial domination. Political division, based on colour, is entirely artificial and, when it disappears, so will the domination of one colour group by another. The ANC has spent half a century fighting against racialism. When it triumphs it will not change that policy.
This then is what the ANC is fighting. Their struggle is a truly national one. It is a struggle of the African people, inspired by their own suffering and their own experience. It is a struggle for the right to live. During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.
· With thanks to the Nelson Mandela Foundation 
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Related video from AFP : Mandela’s early life in Soweto: 
NAS: From Ice Sheet Collapse to Mass Extinctions, You’re not Ready for Climate Change 
Posted: 05 Dec 2013 11:26 PM PST
By John Queally
Hang on. Get Ready. 
Those are at least two of the takeaways from a new report released by scientists in the National Academy of Sciences on Tuesday which says the sudden impacts of climate change this century and beyond are inevitable but warn that far too little has been done to prepare for them.
"If you think about gradual change, you can see where the road is and where you're going. With abrupt changes and effects, the road suddenly drops out from under you." –Prof. Tony Barnosky
The report, Abrupt Impacts of Climate Change, looks at the issue of abrupt changes in climate, weather patterns, and the impacts that can occur in a matter of years or decades, not the lengthier scenarios that climate scientists sometimes focus on. (The full report can be read online here).
"The most challenging changes are the abrupt ones," said James White, professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado in Boulder and chair of the report committee, at a press conference on Tuesday.
"The planet is going to be warmer than most species living on Earth today have seen it, including humans," added Tony Barnosky, a professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. " The pace of change is orders of magnitude higher than what species have experienced in the last tens of millions of years. "
As journalist Kate Sheppard reports:
Other, more gradually occurring changes can still have abrupt impacts on the ecosystem and human systems, such as the loss of fisheries or shifts in where certain crops can be cultivated. Rapid loss of ice, for example, would mean that sea levels rise at a much faster rate than the current trend, which would have a significant effect on coastal regions. A 3-foot rise in the seas is easier to prepare for if it happens on a 100-year horizon than if it happens within 30 years.
>"If you think about gradual change, you can see where the road is and where you're going," said Barnosky. "With abrupt changes and effects, the road suddenly drops out from under you."
These abrupt impacts, according to the report, have "the potential to severely affect the physical climate system, natural systems, or human systems." Additionally, it is the way that these system changes are interconnected that the report focuses on.
“The reality is that the climate is changing,” said James W. C. White, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Colorado Boulder, who also contributed to the report. “It’s going to continue to happen, and it’s going to be part of everyday life for centuries to come — perhaps longer than that.”
As the New York Times reports, the report's authors specifically warn of the "possible collapse of polar sea ice, the potential for a mass extinction of plant and animal life and the threat of immense dead zones in the ocean."
Among its key recommendations, the scientific panel said that better early warning systems should be put in place to monitor geographic areas or essential natural systems. According to the report summary:
Because of the substantial risks to society and nature posed by abrupt changes, this report recommends the development of an Abrupt Change Early Warning System that would allow for the prediction and possible mitigation of such changes before their societal impacts are severe. Identifying key vulnerabilities can help guide efforts to increase resiliency and avoid large damages from abrupt change in the climate system, or in abrupt impacts of gradual changes in the climate system, and facilitate more informed decisions on the proper balance between mitigation and adaptation.
>Although there is still much to learn about abrupt climate change and abrupt climate impacts, to willfully ignore the threat of abrupt change could lead to more costs, loss of life, suffering, and environmental degradation. Abrupt Impacts of Climate Change makes the case that the time is here to be serious about the threat of tipping points so as to better anticipate and prepare ourselves for the inevitable surprises.
And the Times adds:
The document the panel released Tuesday is the latest in a string of reports to consider whether some changes could occur so suddenly as to produce profound social or environmental stress, even collapse. Like previous reports, the new one considers many potential possibilities and dismisses most of them as unlikely — at least in the near term.
>But some of the risks are real, the panel found, and in several cases have happened already.
>It cited the outbreak of mountain pine beetles in the American West and in Canada. The disappearance of bitterly cold winter nights that used to kill off the beetles has allowed them to ravage tens of millions of acres of forests, damage so severe it can be seen from space.
>Likewise, a drastic decline of summer sea ice in the Arctic has occurred much faster than scientists expected. The panel warned that Arctic sea ice could disappear in the summer within several decades, with severe impacts on wildlife and human communities in the region, and unknown effects on the world’s weather patterns.
>Among the greatest risks in coming years, the panel said, is that climate change could greatly increase the extinction rate of plants and animals, essentially provoking the sixth mass extinction in the earth’s history. The panel said many of the world’s coral reefs, a vital source of fish that feed millions of people, already seemed fated to die within decades.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Mirrored from Commondreams.org
Related video:
NASA explains the impact of climate change on humans: 
United States, Israel opposed Mandela, supported Apartheid 
Posted: 05 Dec 2013 09:16 PM PST
The attempt to make Nelson Mandela respectable is an ongoing effort of Western government spokesmen and the Western media.
He wasn’t respectable in the business circles of twentieth-century New York or Atlanta, or inside the Beltway of Washington, D.C.  He wasn’t respectable for many of the allies of the United States in the Cold War, including Britain and Israel.
I visited Soweto in 2012 and went to Mandela’s old house.  It was a moving experience.  I don’t want him to be reduced to a commercialized icon on this day of all days.
We should remember that for much of the West in the Cold War, South Africa’s thriving capitalist economy was what was important.  Its resources were important.  Its government, solely staffed by Afrikaners and solely for Afrikaners, was seen as a counter-weight to Soviet and Communist influence in Africa.  Washington in the 1980s obsessed about Cuba’s relationship to Angola (yes). 
That the Afrikaners treated black Africans like dirt and discriminated against them viciously, denying them the franchise or any hint of equality, was considered in Western capitals at most an unfortunate idiosyncrasy that could not be allowed to interfere with the West’s dependence on Pretoria in fighting the international Left.
The African National Congress had attempted nonviolent protest in the 1950s, but the white Afrikaaner government outlawed all those techniques and replied with deadly force.  In the early 1960s when Nelson Mandela turned to sabotage, the United States was a nakedly capitalist country engaged in an attempt to ensure that peasants and workers did not come to power.  It was a deeply racist society that practiced Apartheid, a.k.a. Jim Crow in its own South. 
The US considered the African National Congress to be a form of Communism, and sided with the racist Prime Ministers Hendrik Verwoerd and P.W. Botha against Mandela.
Decades later, in the 1980s, the United States was still supporting the white Apartheid government of South Africa, where a tiny minority of Afrikaaners dominated the economy and refused to allow black Africans to shop in their shops or fraternize with them, though they were happy to employ them in the mines.  Ronald Reagan declared Nelson Mandela, then still in jail, a terrorist, and the US did not get around to removing him from the list until 2008!  Reagan, while delivering pro forma denunciations of Apartheid or enforced black separation and subjugation, nevertheless opposed sanctions with teeth on Pretoria.  Reagan let the racist authoritarian P.W. Botha come to Washington and met with him.
Likewise British PM Margaret Thatcher befriended Botha and castigated Mandela’s ANC as terrorists. As if the Afrikaners weren’t terrorizing the black majority!  She may have suggested to Botha that he release Mandela for PR purposes, but there is not any doubt on whose side she stood.
The Israeli government had extremely warm relations with Apartheid South Africa, to the point where Tel Aviv offered the Afrikaners a nuclear weapon (presumably for brandishing at the leftist states of black Africa).  That the Israelis accuse Iran of being a nuclear proliferator is actually hilarious if you know the history.  Iran doesn’t appear ever to have attempted to construct a nuclear weapon, whereas Israel has hundreds and seems entirely willing to share.
In the US, the vehemently anti-Palestinian Anti-Defamation League in San Francisco spied on American anti-Apartheid activists on behalf of the Apartheid state.  If the ADL ever calls you a racist, you can revel in the irony.
Ronald Reagan imagined that there were “moderates” in the Botha government. There weren’t.  He wanted “constructive engagement” with them.  It failed.  The Afrikaners imposed martial law.  Reagan tried to veto Congressional sanctions on Pretoria in 1986 but Congress over-rode him. 
Nelson Mandela was a socialist who believed in the ideal of economic equality or at least of a decent life for everyone in society.  He was also a believer in parliamentary government.  So, he was a democratic socialist.
The current Republican Party is implementing Apartheid policies of making it difficult for minorities to exercise their right to vote.  And they are changing tax laws to throw ever more of society’s wealth to the top 1%.  And they just threw millions of Americans off food stamps, including children and Veterans.  The US House of Representatives still stands against everything Mandela stood for.
President Obama first became interested in politics at Occidental College in California and attended anti-Apartheid demonstrations.  It was then that fellow activists informed him that Barack would be a better name for such an activist than “Barry.”  In many ways Mandela’s cause started Obama on his path to the White House. 
In the meantime the UK also has a right wing government that is punishing students and the poor on behalf of the rich.  And the Likud Foreign Minister in Israel, Avigdor Lieberman, wants to take away the citizenship of Palestinian-Israelis (20% of the population) just as the Afrikaners took citizenship away from blacks and pushed them into Bantustans. Mandela said,  ““We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” 
The world will celebrate Nelson Mandela.  But for most of those global leaders, it is only lip service.  With the partial exception of President Obama, they don’t share his actual ideals and wouldn’t approve of him when he was at his most active, in the early 1960s, trying to figure out how to sabotage the Afrikaner establishment.  (I say partial in Obama’s case because obviously he admires the struggle against Apartheid, but on economic issues he is an Eisenhower Republican and Mandela wouldn’t approve). In the 1990s on his release from prison Mandela did stand out for his belief in peace and reconciliation.  But that was only because the Afrikaners had lost and he could afford to be magnanimous in victory.  He was not a pacifist.  He did not believe in taking lives as part of his struggle, but he was willing to resort to violence.  He was not a capitalist.  He wanted uplift for the workers.  He could not overlook racism the way Reagan, Thatcher
 and Shamir did.
South Africa itself, for all its economic and social dynamism, has also not fully attained Mandela’s ideals.  Its poor are becoming worse off.  Labor relations are roiled.  And the ANC leadership is in disarray.
Mandela is not a birthday cake to be celebrated.  The funeral with its hypocritical heads of state won’t honor him.  He is a pioneer to be emulated.  We honor him by standing up for justice even in the face of enormous opposition from the rich and powerful, by taking risks for high ideals.  We won’t meet his standards.  But if all of us tried, we’d make the world better.  As he did.
—–
Related video
The BBC “Story of Nelson Mandela”  
Tunisian Rapper Jailed for 4 Months for Insulting the Police 
Posted: 05 Dec 2013 09:10 PM PST
Tunisia Live reports that: 
“Rapper Ala Yaacoubi, known by his stage name Weld el 15, turned himself in to a court in Hammamet today, where his 21-month prison sentence was reduced to four months.” 
He was sentenced for public indecency (because of his rap lyrics) and for insulting officers of the state (his most famous rap song is “The Police are Dogs.”) 
Police in Tunisia felt unfairly blamed for the excesses of former dictator Zine El Abdin Ben Ali in the aftermath of the 2011 revolution, and elements in the bureaucracy originally appointed by the Ben Ali government, who are still in office, have pushed back against revolutionary youth culture.  Some of the officials have been replaced by or now have as their superiors supporters of the Muslim religious party, al-Nahda or Renaissance.  Many secularists suspect al-Nahda of influencing the tone of such prosecutions, and of trying to make Tunisia a conservative Muslim state.
AFP reports the rapper as saying, 
“The revolution took place in the name of freedom of expression… “I handed myself in because I can’t spend my life on the run, but I’m not ready to go back to prison.” 
AFP reports 
Nawaat.org argues that Weld el 15  should not be politicized because his song, “The Police are Dogs,” is about their harassment of drug users, not about human rights.
That Tunisia is stepping back from the new freedom of expression gained in 2011, however, is certainly clear.  Weld el 15 is not the only rapper to be charged and is the second to be jailed on similar charges. 
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