Rescuing The Mandela Legacy: Treacherous Shortcuts To Catch up With The Wealthy White Community
30 December 2013
By Reason Wafawarova
THERE are peculiar and bugged out narratives about the
life story of Nelson Mandela that sometimes one feels
compelled to rescue the name of this legendary son of
Africa. No amount of malevolence can ever take away
the greatness in the name Nelson Mandela, and whatever
measure of spleen may drive the anti-Mandela crusade,
it cannot be enough to take away the aura of heroism
synonymous with Mandela's personality, perceived or
real.
It is not from his detractors that the Mandela legacy
needs to be rescued. Rather the Mandela legacy needs
to be rescued from the claws of those who praise sing
a fabricated Mandela created out of the fancifulness
of their own imaginations. It is a creation tactically
contrived to set an example of a mythical hero whose
character must be emulated so that humanity sanitises
the sins of history to appear as if they totally do
not matter in shaping the future of victims of
historical injustices.
We are all supposed to mourn and venerate this
mythical all-loving Nelson Mandela that sees all human
beings as equally righteous and equally culpable over
any form of sin or injustice. It is a Mandela that
sees no difference between a perpetrator of injustice
and his victim.
Once we endorse and immortalise this mythical Mandela
we are supposed to forever idolise this angelic
character as the arbiter of excellence the dizzy
height of eminence that every heroic politician will
have to aspire to become. Not to disappoint many
African leaders are already stepping all over each
other trying to impress in the mould of this mythical
heroic character so gracefully bestowed upon our own
forebear.
There is this myth that in Mandela we have a
reincarnation of the foregone glories of history an
undefiled custodian of all the heroic good that ever
happened to the history of the black race. This myth
decrees that in Mandela we have a Marcus Garvey, a
Malcolm X and a Martin Luther King all put together,
and nicely decorated by the pacifism of Mahatma
Gandhi.
No doubt the Mandela loyalists across the globe will
not take it kindly when any form of shortcoming is
attributed to the hero, and that is quite normal in
any form of idol worship.
In January 1996 Louis Farrakhan visited South Africa
and received what the Western media described as "a
verbal dress down" from Nelson Mandela. As usual the
firebrand Farrakhan had called for an immediate
reversal of white hegemony in South Africa, and he
made it very clear that it was not supposed to be
Mandela's headache what the feeling of the privileged
whites would be.
Nelson Mandela responded by giving Farrakhan a little
lecture.
He said: "In the 1950s, one of the principles we
established was non-racialism, We have defended that
policy without fear, and have now triumphed and are
building a non-racial society in this country. Our
basic objectives are to address the demands of the
black majority, which have been disadvantaged . . .
but in carrying out this mandate, we will make sure we
do not do anything which could be seen as reverse
racism."
Why then do we have a racially skewed economy in South
Africa if the iconic' Mandela is to be unquestionably
idolised for his beliefs? Is it not criminal to
idolise a man for his principle while we negate the
principle itself?
Mandela joined an ANC that had a significant level of
support from a sizeable minority of the white
community, just like Zanla and Zipra forces that
fought for the liberation of Zimbabwe counted among
their supporters the likes of Guy-Clutton Brock or Sir
Garfield Todd. It is the ANC that taught Mandela
racial tolerance, not the other way round.
Neil Agget and David Webster were brutally killed by
the apartheid white police force just like Steve Biko
and Matthew Goniwe were, but the aspiration of these
four fallen South African heroes has not yet been
achieved in South Africa.
There is very little cause for celebration in as far
as achieving non-racialism is concerned for as long as
South Africa's land remains undistributed, and for as
long as the means of production is still predominantly
white controlled. We cannot immortalize the legacy of
a non-racial Mandela and put up with the status quo in
South Africa without making huge fools of ourselves.
We cannot as Africans celebrate a Mandela of Western
fantasies while we ignore the real Mandela we are
burying shortly. We have a duty to rescue the true
Mandela legacy, and that duty goes far beyond the
borders of South Africa.
One of the Mandela miracles we are supposed to
passionately respect is the myth that says had it not
been for his miraculous spirit of generosity South
Africa would have exploded into an uncontrollable
racial war draconically driving all white people
right into the ocean. So we have this mythical
miracle-working messianic Mandela that supposedly
restrained the barbarous vengeful hordes of unthinking
blacks.
This assumption that black South Africans were about
to unleash wholesome violence against whites is
arrogantly racist, and to use this assumption in
elevating Nelson Mandela to iconic status is a gross
insult to the people of South Africa. It is
unacceptable.
The principle of reconciliation within the ANC cannot
be described as a Mandela founded doctrine.
The political culture of the ANC is that it has always
been a non-racial movement, and that is precisely why
the Soweto massacre was never reciprocated by an
equally barbaric targeting of the white civilian
population a path so glaringly tempting at the time.
Like Zanla's Josiah Tongogara, cadres like Chris Hani
were unwaveringly opposed to the idea of a racial war,
and it is hard to trace Hani's racial tolerance to
anything personally done by Nelson Mandela. Both Hani
and Mandela were products of the ANC doctrine.
Nelson Mandela was truly an advocate of genuine
reconciliation, but even him had reservation on some
forms of reconciliation, rightly or wrongly.
In 1989, Nelson Mandela released a statement to the
media declaring that the reunification of the two
Germans was such a stupendously terrible idea that if
released from prison, he would all by himself try to
stop it. We can forgive Madiba by blaming it all on
prison isolation, and perhaps telling ourselves that
he was just a bit out of touch. That is
understandable, like it is equally understandable to
say the man was not exactly a reconciliation miracle
worker of unwavering tendencies.
Nelson Mandela had a triumphant prison release in
1990, but he carried with him no epiphany or magic by
which South Africa was supposedly inspired to a
reconciliatory non-racial outcome. That thinking
isolates Mandela from his own people. It is an insult
to the millions of South Africans who sacrificed so
much of their lives to free Mandela. This racist myth
that says before Mandela came onto the scene there
were hordes of angry black South Africans ready to
wipe out the white race must be discredited for what
it is a disparaging view of the black South African.
South Africans have always understood what freedom
means, and that understanding has nothing to do with
revenge, otherwise white economic hegemony wouldn't be
standing the way it does in South Africa today. Not
even Mandela could stop it if revenge was South
Africa's idea of freedom.
There is also the myth that immortalises Nelson
Mandela as a pacifist in the mould of Mahatma Gandhi
and Martin Luther King.
When apartheid South Africa brutally descended on
non-violent protesters following the Gandhi pacifist
model Mandela did not advocate for more pacifism.
He said, "The time comes in the life of any nation
when there remains only two choices submit or fight.
That time has now come to South Africa. We shall not
submit and we have no choice but to hit back by all
means in our power in defence of our people, our
future, and our freedom."
Not only did Nelson Mandela play a leading role in
setting up UmkhontoWesizwe, the ANC military wing; he
also did military training himself in Algeria. The
mythical Mandela indoctrinated into the innocent heads
of children across the world today is not a guerrilla
fighter, not a comrade of Che Guevara. That
vaingloriously saintly Mandela myth has to be
corrected.
Nelson Mandela was not an erroneously jailed pacifist
that never really believed in any form of
confrontation. He was jailed for genuine participation
in the leadership of the revolutionary walk that
crumbled the evil of apartheid. That indeed is heroic
and the true legacy for which we Africans hail him.
According to Tony Karon, an anti-apartheid South
African Jewish activist, Nelson Mandela smuggled a
message from prison to explain the relationship
between the armed struggle and non-violent civil
disobedience.
The note read, "between the hammer of armed struggle
and the anvil of united mass action, the enemy will be
crushed." Such words cannot be attributed to this
iconic pacifist Mandela after whom we are supposed to
follow.
Tony Karon also writes on what Nelson Mandela said
while on trial. He told the court, "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."
Dead Mandela is today, but his ideal is still in the
pipeline for ordinary South Africans perhaps not so
much for Zuma and his ruling elites who have secured
for themselves treacherous shortcuts to catch up with
the wealthy white community in South Africa.
Zuma can now afford a R1 million cattle enclosure
while ordinary South Africans lurch in untold poverty,
just like ZBC CEO Happison Muchechetere goes four
years unnoticed gobbling over US$2 million in
outrageous salaries and allowance while the Zimbabwe
Broadcasting Corporation workers go for half a year
without any salary. It is ironic that the name
Muchechetere means equality of all. What irony.
The Mandela legacy we need to rescue today calls for a
South Africa and an Africa with equal opportunities
for all its denizens, not this South Africa where
there is a racially determined unemployment ratio for
various racial groups in the country 1:20 for the
white community, and one 1:4 for the black community.
South Africa we are one and together we will overcome.
It is homeland or death!!
REASON WAFAWAROVA is a Zimbabwean political writer
based in SYDNEY, Australia.
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