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THE DEATH OF A COMRADE

Dec 11, 2013 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

 

It is hard to tell whether the world is mourning Nelson Mandela or whether they are celebrating his life. Glowing tributes are being showered on the former President of South Africa and the mood in South Africa as it is around the world is one in which people are saddened by his passing, but are feverishly celebrating his life.
There have been glowing tributes that have been paid to Mandela and all of them reflect the tremendous impact that his life has had on the freedom struggle and on the struggles for freedom throughout the world.
Mandela belonged first and foremost to the struggle for the liberation of his people from racial apartheid. He rejected the idea that there should be separate development of peoples based on their race. He was also part of a larger struggle for liberation, not just from apartheid, but from all forms of political and economic oppression.
Like Cheddi Jagan, Fidel Castro and so many others, Mandela was a communist. And like so many communists, he was reviled and deemed a terrorist during the early years of his life.
Last year, historical research unearthed the fact that he was not just a rebel within the bosom of the African National Congress (ANC), but he was also within the top leadership of the Communist Party of South Africa, which had long held close ties and had supported the African National Congress.
He has never failed to defend the Cuban Revolution which he admired and which was the inspiration behind his decision to advocate armed struggle against the system of apartheid, a system that was supported by many of the countries whose leaders are now waxing lyrically about the inspiration that Mandela was to them and to the cause of freedom worldwide.
The struggle for freedom of the people of South Africa was an important period in the life of Mandela, whose life had many stages. In almost all of those stages, Mandela benefited from a lucky hand.
Mandela was one lucky fellow. Even to the end. He lived to the extra-ripe age of ninety-five. Even when he could no longer recognize the members of his family, his body refused to expire.
Mandela was fortunate that he was arrested and charged, unlike so many others of his colleagues who met a violent end at the hands of a merciless regime.
Mandela never claimed that he was innocent of the charges that were laid against him. His defence was that his cause was just.
He was fortunate to have been imprisoned. He himself must have anticipated during his trial that he would have received the death sentence. Instead he got life imprisonment.
He was fortunate to have been married to Winnie Mandela, whose campaign for his release converted him into a global symbol for the end to apartheid, at a time when there were more fitting candidates for that role.
He was fortunate that the ANC, though in exile, was strongly supported by leftist parties and governments throughout the world. While Mandela languished in prison it was the great Oliver Tambo who kept the ANC intact and allowed it to remain the centre of resistance to apartheid in South Africa.
History gifted him his freedom after the Cold War had ended and the justification for western support of the apartheid system could no longer be sustained.
Mandela was fortunate when he became President to have by his side so many able and capable freedom fighters in their own right. He was lucky to end his term as the first black president of South Africa before the rot that has now engulfed the ANC leadership and threatened to remove the gloss from his presidency.
He eventually handed over power to Thabo Mbeki, who took care of things until he (Mbeki) was unfortunately booted out from the leadership of the party after the mad grab for power began.
As South Africa and the ANC bury its communist comrade, it needs to be asked whether with the death of Mandela, the luck of the ANC has run out. Or will Mandela inspire from the grave a revival of the ANC and the fortunes of the government in South Africa?
If from the Great Beyond, Mandela can rescue South Africa from the mess that it is presently in, he will have to be crowned much more than a superman!

 

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