It wasn't always like this. For many years, The US media treated Mandela as a communist and terrorist, respecting South African censorship laws that kept his image secret. Reports about the CIA's role in capturing him were few and far between. Ditto for evidence of US spying documented in cables released by Wikileaks.
In the Reagan years, his law partner Oliver Tambo, then the leader of the ANC while he was in prison, was barred from coming to the US and then, when he did, meeting with top officials. Later, Dick Cheney refused to support a Congressional call for his release from jail.
In 1988, I, among other TV producers, launched the TV series South Africa Now to cover the unrest the networks were largely ignoring as stories shot by US crews ended up on "the shelf," not on the air.
A 1988 concert
to free Mandela was shown by the Fox Network as a "freedom fest" with artists
told not to mention his name, less they "politicize" all the fun. When he was
released in 2000, a jammed all-star celebration at London's Wembley Stadium was
shown everywhere in the world, except by the American networks.
Once he adopted reconciliation as his principal political tenet and dropped demands for nationalization anchored in the ANC's "Freedom Charter," his image in the US was quickly rehabilitated. He was elevated into a symbolic hero for all praised by the people and the global elite alike. Little mention was made of his role as the creator of an Armed Struggle, and its Commander in Chief.
US networks also did not cover the role played by the US dominated IMF and World Bank in steering the economy in a market -oriented neo-liberal direction, assuring the new government could not erase deep inequality and massive poverty and that the whites would retain privleges.
The American
press shaped how Mandela was portrayed in the US. The lawyer and anti-nuclear
campaigner, Alice Slater, tells a story of her efforts to win Mandela's support
for nuclear disarmament.
"(When)" Nelson Mandela announced that he would be retiring from the presidency of South Africa, we organized a world-wide letter writing campaign, urging him to call for the abolition of nuclear weapons at his farewell address to the United Nations. The gambit worked. At the UN, Nelson Mandela called for the elimination of nuclear weapons, saying, "these terrible and terrifying weapons of mass destruction --why do they need them anyway?"
The London Guardian had a picture of Mandela on its front page, with the headline, "Nelson Mandela Calls for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons." The New York Times had a story buried on page 46, announcing Mandela's retirement from the Presidency of South Africa and speculating on who might succeed him, reporting that he gave his last speech as President to the UN, while omitting to mention the content of his speech."
And so it goes, with his death seeming to be imminent, he has become reduced to a symbolic mythic figure, a moral voice, not the politician he always was. He became an adorable grandfather praised for his charities with his political ideas and values often buried in the either of his celebrity. He has insisted that he not be treated as a saint or a savior. Tell that to the media.
As
ANC veteran Pallo Jordan told me, "To call him a celebrity is to treat him like
Madonna. And that's not what he is. At the same time, he deserves to be
celebrated as the freedom fighter he was."
Watch the coverage and see if that message is coming through, with all of its implications for the struggle in South Africa that still lies ahead. Obama seems to be culturally appropriating Mandela's legacy--but with no comparable history of political activism. He is seeking praise by association.
News
Dissector Danny Schechter made six documentaries about Nelson Mandela. He blogs
at newsdissector.net and edits Mediachannel.org.
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