Nelson Mandela, a Great Leader, Is Dead. Western Establishment Fawns in Bad Faith

First, it must be said, that what was unusual and outstanding about Nelson Mandela was his magnanimity towards the white racist fascist scum that killed and maimed so many people and caused such misery and oppression. At least, that's the Official Truth nowadays. But perhaps Mandela was a super-cool pragmatist, a man with ice water in his veins who could put aside emotion and view a political situation in the utmost objectivity. Or perhaps he was a cynical operator, who cut a deal enabling the African National Congress to take power from the white racist Boers. Those are also possible explanations, especially in view of his own behavior as President and the selfishness and corruption of the ANC in power. (By all accounts, the economic lot of the mass of black people in South Africa has improved not at all since the overthrow of white racist rule.) We should take with a grain of salt the hosannas of Western media and politicians for the man. If they love him so much, there must be a bad reason.

But let us put such speculations aside for the moment. What has the Western capitalists singing his praises are two main things, one visible and one hidden. The visible reason was the deal Mandela and the ANC struck with the apartheid regime letting them get away with their decades of crimes, which included many acts of murder, torture, and brutality. (Even after Mandela was released from prison in 1990, the apartheid secret police sent a letter bomb to a white priest working against the regime, blowing off both his hands and an eye.)

The covert reason is that Mandela immediately sided with the big capitalists against the class interests of the poor black majority. I will provide more details in a later essay.

Yet it's fair to see Mandela as a great leader. His stature looms especially large since such is the pathetic state of that species that flatters itself by calling itself “humanity” that great leaders are so rare.

Most of the people designated “leaders” are nothing of the kind. They are rulers, or governors. Politicians and strongmen. Mandela was a genuine leader, a man who inspired others to follow him and admire him.

The word “leader” has even been appropriated by the capitalists to replace “boss.” “Boss” now is only used to refer to union officials, as in “union bosses” or “labor bosses.” Read business and company news- you cannot find the word “boss” in reference to actual bosses. They're all “leaders.” Thus is meaning and understanding systematically destroyed by the vandalism of language. Consciousness itself is thus falsified on a mass scale.

So when someone actually is a leader, the contrast makes him appear superhuman.

Now, as to the current bourgeois media and politicians genuflecting to the Man now that he is dead:

Using Half Truths to Lie. We have been treated to yet another example of this common propaganda trick of the bourgeois media. In their incessant reiterations of the fact that Mandela was “imprisoned for 27 years,” a key fact is omitted. Namely, that he was imprisoned for 27 years because THE U.S. CIA TOLD THE SOUTH AFRICAN SECRET POLICE WHERE TO FIND HIM. When you mention that fact, you have a very different impression, a very different picture of reality. Namely the true, accurate, and objective reality, not the cynical, self-serving propaganda version.

Another inconvenient fact which throws the loud praise for the deceased in quite a different light is that Mandela was officially listed by the U.S. Government as a “terrorist” until 2008. Recall that Mandela was freed from prison in 1990, and was elected president of South African in 1994! So of course this rather awkward fact must be erased from memory, and thus it goes unmentioned entirely by the capitalist media without exception. (At least that I have noticed.)

Another inconvenient fact of history, which thus must be suppressed, is that the Boers had the help, until the last few years of their evil rule, of the United States, especially the fascist Reagan regime, and of European powers like “Great” Britain, a loathsome little island whose elite-at least the reactionary section of it- still pines for its lost empire. (They get to be vicarious imperialists by riding on the U.S.' shoulder, like a parrot on a pirate, in its various misbegotten “adventures” such as in Iraq and Afghanistan.) Reagan even vetoed a law passed by Congress imposing sanctions on the horrid apartheid regime (Congress then voted to override the veto.) It was only because of popular political pressure and protest in the U.S. that Congress was forced to act.

I would also like to remind you of a person who once existed, a very brave man, who unlike Mandela receives no lavish praise from the U.S. press- Steven Biko. Biko was also a foe of apartheid, indeed one of the outstanding anti-apartheid activists of the time. At the age of 30, he was arrested, beaten savagely and torture for 22 hours, then thrown, naked, manacled, and comatose, into the back of a truck for a 100 km drive to another prison, where he shortly died from brain injuries. The fascist racists regime that murdered him then put out the grotesquely cynical story that he had killed himself by hunger striking. Some of his writings were posthumously published under the title I Write What I Like.

Biko goes unremembered in the West. Or rather, his memory is suppressed by the same bourgeois propaganda system that cynically hails Nelson Mandela now. As I have described, there's a lot they “don't remember.”