Reprinted from http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a92e&id=d8757fa90d&e=3a26d871b2
I can't take it anymore. All week, I've watched Nelson Mandela reduced
to a Barbie doll. From Fox News to the Bush family, the politicians and
media mavens who body-blocked the anti-Apartheid Movement and were happy
to keep Mandela behind bars, now get to dress his image up in any silly
outfit they choose.
It's more nauseating than hypocrisy and ignorance. The Mandela Barbie ( CONTINUED BELOW)
tells us in a squeaky little doll voice, not his own, that apartheid is
now "defeated" - to quote the ridiculous headline in the Times.
Poor Mandela. When he's not a doll, he's a statue. He joins
Martin Luther King as another bronzed monument whose use is to serve a
new version of racism, Apartheid 2.0, worsening both in South Africa -
and in the USA.
The ruling class creates commemorative dolls and statues of
revolutionary leaders as a way to tell us their cause is won, so go
home. For example, just six months ago, the US Supreme Court
overturned the key parts of the Voting Rights Act, Dr. King's greatest
accomplishment, on the specious claim that, "Blatantly discriminatory
evasions are rare," and Jim Crow voting practices are now "eradicated."
"Eradicated?" On what planet? The latest move by Florida
Republicans to purge 181,000 voters of color - like the stench from the
shantytowns of Cape Town - makes clear that neither Jim Crow nor
Apartheid have been defeated. They're just in temporary retreat.
Nevertheless, our betters in the USA and Europe have declared that King
slew segregation, Mandela defeated apartheid; and therefore, the new
victims of racial injustice should just shut the f$#! up and stop
whining.
The Man Who Walked Beside Mandela
To replace the plastic and metal Mandelas with flesh and blood, I spoke
to Danny Schechter. Schechter knew Mandela personally, and more deeply,
than any other American journalist. One of the great reporters of our
generation, Schechter produced South Africa Now, a weekly
program seen on PBS, from 1988-91, bringing Mandela's case to Americans
dumbed and numbed by Ronald Reagan's red-baiting.
Schechter
notes that George W. Bush kept Mandela on the Terrorist Watch List -- no
kidding -- even after Mandela was elected President.
Schechter has just completed the difficult job of making the official
documentary companion to the Hollywood version of Mandela's life, Long Walk to Freedom.
The fictional movie is about triumph and forgiveness. Schechter's documentary, Inside Mandela, and book, Madiba A to Z: The Many Faces of Nelson Mandela,
has this aplenty. But knowing Mandela, Schechter includes Mandela's
anger, despair and his pained legacy: a corroded South Africa still
ruled by a brutal economic apartheid. Today, the average white family
has five times the income of a black family. Welcome to "freedom."
The US and European press have focused on Mandela's saintly ability to
abjure bitterness and all desire for revenge, and for his Christ-like
forgiveness of his captors. This is to reassure us all that "good"
revolutionaries are ones who don't hold anyone to account for murder,
plunder and blood-drenched horror - or demand compensation. That's
Mandela in his Mahatma Gandhi doll outfit - turning the other cheek,
kissing his prison wardens.
Schechter doesn't play with dolls. He knew Mandela the man - and Mandela as one among a group of revolutionary leaders.
Mandela's circle knew this: You can't forgive those you defeat until you defeat them.
Despite the hoo-hah, Mandela didn't defeat apartheid with "nice" alone. In
the 1980s, says Schechter, South African whites faced this reality: The
Cubans who defeated South African troops in neighboring Angola could
move into South Africa. The Vietnamese who had defeated the mighty USA
were advising the ANC military force. Mandela was Commander-in-Chief.
And so, while Mandela held out a hand in forgiveness - in his other hand he held Umkhonto we Sizwe,
a spear to apartheid's heart. And Mandela's comrades tied a noose: an
international embargo, leaky though it was, that lay siege to South
Africa's economy.
Seeing the writing on the wall (and envisioning their blood on the
floor), the white-owned gold and diamond cartels, Anglo-American and
DeBeers, backed by the World Bank, came to Mandela with a bargain: black
Africans could have voting power . . . but not economic power.
Mandela chose to shake hands with this devil and accept the continuation
of economic apartheid. In return for safeguarding the diamond and gold
interests and protecting white ownership of land, mines and businesses,
he was allowed the presidency, or at least the office and title.
It is a bargain that ate at Mandela's heart. He was faced with the
direct threat of an embargo of capital, and taking note of the beating
endured by his Cuban allies over resource nationalization, Mandela
swallowed the poison with a forced grin. Yes, a new South African black
middle class has been handed a slice of the mineral pie, but that just
changes the color of the hand holding the whip.
The 1% Rainbow
In the end, all revolutions are about one thing: the 99% versus the 1%.
Time and history can change the hue of the aristocrat, but not their
greed, against which Mandela appeared nearly powerless.
So was Mandela's life a waste, his bio-pic a fraud? Not at all. No man is a revolution.
We have much to learn from Mandela's long view of history, his
much-lauded pacific warm-heartedness as well as his much-concealed cold
and cruel resolve. The crack in the prison wall of apartheid, the end of
racial warfare, if not yet racial peace, is a real accomplishment of
Mandela - and his comrade revolutionaries - most of whose names will
never be cast in bronze.
Reading Schechter's new book Madiba (as Mandela is known to
Black South Africans) and seeing Schechter's un-Hollywood film, you can
take away one strong impression: From Moses to Martin to Mandela, our
prophets never reach the Promised Land.
That is for us still to accomplish. The journey is long. Start walking.
Greg Palast's new film Vultures and Vote Rustlers was released this week.
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse and the highly acclaimed Vultures' Picnic.
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