Mandela and South Africans deserve apology from the West
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Nelson Mandela
The whole world mourned the death of Nelson Mandela, a person, who, according to several global leaders, celebrities and ordinary folks across the globe, had raised the standard definition of “humanism” to a new height. A new level that many of them rightly believe will not be excelled by anyone any time soon, if ever.
A man, who, according to US President Barack Obama, the world is unlikely ever to come across again. The other world leaders, royalties, celebrities and common folks have equally compared and/or equated Mandela with the world’s greatest and most outstanding personalities.
Logical question: why did apartheid last and thrive for so long?
With this universal recognition of what Mandela had fought for and the unbelievable prices that he and other countless black South Africans had to pay to live free on their own ancestral land in Africa, it beats one’s imagination how the devilish apartheid system, its authors and advocates – in and outside of South Africa – were able to exist for such a long time and wreaked such huge damages on innocent people seeking free accesses to their most basic, God-given liberties on their very own soil.
“Mendala had raised the standard definition of “humanism” to a new height, a new level that many rightly believe will not be excelled by anyone anytime soon, if ever.”
Most people will justifiably argue that now is not the time for finger pointing, that Mandiba himself would not have endorsed such approach today. That would be perfectly true, just as it is also equally true that Mandela, in establishing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, had always maintained that “the past racist regime’s atrocities should not, and can be forgotten.” In other words, the perpetrators and supporters of those atrocities could be forgiven, but never to be forgotten.
Based on this premises, it is our duty to at least try to remember the people, the socio-political and economic forces outside South Africa that had enabled the anti-human segregationist regime to thrive for so long on the African soil.
The position and support or inaction of the West help apartheid survive for a long time
These entities – countries and people – are not difficult to pinpoint today, using the so-called deduction methodology. With the Soviet Union and China vehemently against apartheid and even went as far as providing “all forms of all possible support” for the anti-apartheid activists, this leaves the Western political and business elites. These people and their countries were responsible either directly or indirectly for being silent accomplices by their collective blindness and deafness to raw sufferings and moanings from the innocent Black South Africans dying from the unbearable yoke of racial segregation on their own land.
But everything falls into comprehension when one remembers that the US in those years was brazenly racist, with its own official segregation policy in place, with the Afro-Americans and other so-called peoples of color at the receiving end. US President Obama made a reference to this darkest period of the US history in his speech.
The minority South African white supremacists probably took their examples from the US. However, while the revolt by Rosa Parks against the segregationist sitting order in public transportation facilities and the vocalism of the Black US civil rights activists, such as Martin Luther King, eventually destroyed this “cruel and inhuman policy” in 1964, their South African peers had to live through several more decades before Mandela and his comrades could finally dismantle the apartheid regime in the 1990s. If not for the direct and indirect support of the West, notably, the US and UK, and again with the USSR and China vehemently against, the apartheid system would not have lasted for so long in South Africa. And, consequently, Mandela and his “comrades” would not have had to undergo these unbelievable heroic acts and undergone such heinous maltreatments by entities that could hardly be referred to as humans, to “reach their final destination of a new South Africa, a new nation founded on the foundation of unconditional racial equality, political, economic and social freedoms and liberties.”
Some previous US and UK leaders were at the memorials to show their respect to a man that had to fight against the greatest human odds, made even worse by their “criminal collective silence.” The Western leaders, before and most importantly, from 1948, when apartheid became the official policy, to the late 1980s, could have ended the racist policy, at least, “via humanitarian intervention.”
“The collective inability, or worse still, unwillingness, of those in power or positions in those years to act decisively to end apartheid had made all them accomplices to all the heinous crimes against Black South Africans.”
They did not because they sheered away from moral responsibility as they feared the possible economic and political repercussions from their elites that openly and freely thrived on their ties with racist South Africa. Their collective inability, or worse still, unwillingness, to act decisively, despite the global anti-apartheid activism of their times, have made them accomplices to all the heinous racist crimes against Black South Africans.
However, they can rest assured that they had also been absolved of their crimes via Mandela’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. But if any of them still alive has still any sense of morality, he/she ought to publicly apologise to Mandela and all South Africans – both black and white – in general for doing so little to end their plights.
Absolutization of racial equality is Mandela’s key legacy
“I’ve fought against white domination and I’ve fought against black domination...,” Mandiba said during the “jungle justice” that condemned him to decades in prison. A powerful statement, but it has one factological error that instigated a research stretching into medieval times. The results of this research do not agree with Mandiba on “the black domination” issue.
Africans in Africa, or their descendants on other continents, have bred the worst of despots and dictators who had, and still, oppress people, their own people, on their own lands. But there has never been an instance in the whole of human history, where blacks had oppressed whites. Not, never, in pre- or post-colonial Africa, talkless of Asia, Latin America, Europe, North America and the green continent.
“The principle of absolute racial equality is the biggest legacy of Mandela that all the global leaders, who sincerely mourned the death of Africa’s son, should fully implement in their respective countries.”
On most continents, where there had been – and still are – open racist manifestations, the blacks or aborigines, had been, and still remain, the victims, and not the perpetrators, of such inhuman atrocities. It is one thing to suffer racism in a foreign country, as many non-white athletes are facing in Europe today, but it is quite incomprehensible why Black South Africans had to suffer ‘white racism’ right on their own ancestral soil. This is what made the South African case unique, and Mandela’s struggle a “really special case.”
So Mandiba was being politically correct and magnanimous, when he said he had “fought against black domination,” probably referring to “against other blacks in Africa as a whole.” And this makes sense, because, to anyone, especially, Mandela, any oppression of any kind, either by whites against whites/blacks or blacks against blacks/whites, is equally reprehensible.
The principle of absolute racial equality is the biggest legacy of Mandela that all the global leaders and others, who sincerely mourned the death of one of the greatest African sons, if the not the sole greatest ever, should fully implement in their respective countries. Mandela’s death should put a final stop to “all forms of discriminations on racial grounds” across the world.
The greatest son of Africa has paid the ultimate price for racism – his 27 years behind bars for being born a black boy on his own soil in his native Africa and his long fight for freedom – should be seen as the world’s final sacrifice for racism of all forms and formats, irrespective of geographies.
May his blessed soul rest in absolute peace!
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