[Peace-discuss] Mandela

[Karen Aram]

A brilliant critique by Nick Goodell of the "Peoples History Hour," with a most important statement, making the point that change must come in the form of material, or economic conditions, merely focusing on the political and/or race will not bring about progress.

"because Mandela's ANC embraced the neoliberal politics of the Clintons--the great friends of the Obamas and of neoliberal policies the world over--that South Africa is today almost more unequal than it was during apartheid in terms of land distribution, resource access, and overall income inequality."

The way the Western media portrays Nelson Mandela and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa is atrocious. The Western media would have us believe--like the ten million Roosevelt, Churchill, Hitler, Stalin, Lincoln, and MLK biographies on the shelves of Barnes and Noble--that apartheid was undone solely by Mandela directly controlling the movement, a movement which was non-violent and relied on boycotts and gathering global condemnation. It would have us believe that Mandela was an "activist" and a liberal, who wanted free market capitalism for all and opposed the Soviet Union.

Mandela was nothing like Obama or any Western leader. Obama's attempts to go and "claim him" to make some weird point about Trump are ridiculous. He was a fervent anti-capitalist and member of the Communist Party of South Africa, a friend of Fidel Castro who believed in the radical, forceful redistribution of land and resources to the dispossessed in South Africa and elsewhere where colonialism had forced its evils upon the people. He believed that violence as the self-defense of the oppressed was a necessary part of overcoming the incredible violence wrought by the forces of colonialism. He aided and organized with the FRELIMO in Mozambique, the FLN in Algeria, the ZANU in Zimbabwe, MPLA in Angola, and many other armed liberation movements.

In the same vein as these groups that he aided and received aid from, Mandela and other communists like Joe Slovo organized the armed wing of the African National Congress, Umkhonto we Sizwe. This group staged hundreds of bombings, raids, and other violent acts of resistance against the apartheid regime in the decades after the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960 made plain that such measures were necessary in the name of the self-defense of the people. Western civil society and the Western ruling classes want to convince the world that Mandela practiced exclusively non-violence because they are terrified of people following the actions of the real Mandela and actually organizing to harm the real materials of their capital production, growth, and power.

Mandela rose to power not as the sole, messianic organizer of a revolution, but as just one of the thousands of organizers and leaders who helped bring about the end of apartheid. The media focuses on him being in prison for 27 years because that story of lionizing one man is much better to tell Western minds than the story of how the West fully supported up through Reagan's presidency the apartheid state and backed systems of oppression worldwide throughout history where it suited their profit interests or harmed the Soviet Union. This story also fits with the Western idea that history is shaped exclusively by great men who invest in their personal selves. The West wants us to be thinking of how we can learn to harden our minds from life in prison "like Mandela" so that we can not recognize our own chains and oppression here. People must recognize that the West has so much to gain from propagating these kinds of narratives of Mandela and other revolutionary leaders--like Martin Luther King Jr, whom they attempt to whitewash.

People also must recognize that it's because Mandela's ANC embraced the neoliberal politics of the Clintons--the great friends of the Obamas and of neoliberal policies the world over--that South Africa is today almost more unequal than it was during apartheid in terms of land distribution, resource access, and overall income inequality. As sociologists and global health researchers Jan K Coetzee Asta Rau wrote in 2017: “The ANC came to power with a radical agenda and an overwhelming mandate to redress historical inequities. But, shortly after coming into power, the new ANC government was accused of opting for policy of little initial change with the promise of cautious acceleration at some time in the future... When workers claimed higher wages and threatened with strike action, the fear was expressed—even by the then newly elected President Nelson Mandela—that investors’ confidence would be damaged. Due to this caution the pressing land issue was dealt with by a cumbersome system of tribunals. And the budget failed to allocate enough to do justice to the ANC’s ambitious Reconstruction and Development Programme.”

This is why South Africa's unemployment rate is now at about 26%, their is a massive housing shortage, the vast majority of land still belongs to whites, there is a water crisis in Capetown that is being horribly mismanaged with neoliberal solutions like monitors to cut off water access after certain amounts of usage to poor homes, and many have seen no real change in their material conditions since the apartheid ended in 1990s. The reform programs only empowered a black capitalist elite class alongside the already present white capitalist class--a class which had been largely responsible for apartheid, but was not at all threatened, but rather embraced by the ANC's liberal policies--while the average South African continues to suffer immense hardship.

Like Frantz Fanon predicted, the nationalist party became the new ruling class because it was not a party of the masses, but of the black elites of the country. That's why the liberals now get to happily claim Mandela as their own and produce their Barnes and Noble and Amazon biographies and Hollywood movies and Netflix miniseries about him. That's why Obama--an abhorrent neoliberal whose policies made very little positive material change for anyone and strengthened the power of bankers, the wealthy, corporations, political parties, and state violence globally over the power of the people--that's why he gets to go and make a big speech claiming in essence that Mandela and himself are cut from the same cloth.

GOOD BASIC, EASY TO READ PAPERS ON SOUTH AFRICA ANYONE WITH A UNI ACCOUNT PROBABLY HAS ACCESS TO:

"The making (and remaking) of a revolutionary plan: strategic
dilemmas of the ANC’s armed struggle, 1974–1978"
Thula Simpson

"Oliver Tambo and the Politics of Class, Race and Ethnicity in the African National Congress of South Africa"
by Luli Callinicos

"Between Enslavement and Liberation.
Narratives of Belonging from Two Farm Workers
in Rural South Africa"
by Jan K. Coetzee & Asta Rau

Not to toot my own horn, but there is also an episode of the People's History Hour that Grant Thomas Neal and I did about this which covers some of the material in the papers listed above and more not listed, for those of you that learn by listening vs reading:

STREAM.WRFU.NET<http://stream.wrfu.net>
stream.wrfu.net<https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fstream.wrfu.net%2Fwrfu-recordings%2FThe%2520People%27s%2520History%2520Hour%2520with%2520Grant%2520Neal%2520and%2520Nick%2520Goodell%2F2017-10-08-1800.mp3&h=AT0fz5BUPY0HNPfkivXS7r_I9zNUhwNvA1GjgB_hF3kScrj-0j79chSOIYppstQIEKyXOxYcHx5CkuHOFTerKWkt4FqQsmqycJ3kGZIjHZ7C2mE7m7yo-WjV_PX7E2nSvkNlOlHF9laq1s8>
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