Neslson Mandela: A Courageous, Dangerous, and Delusional Man

[David Edward Bloch]

Courageous:  Nelson Mandela was the main leader of the opposition that ended decades of white-rule apartheid in South Africa. He endured 27 years of imprisonment, emerging as the elected post-apartheid South African President.  As President, Mandela was magnanimous and did not seek revenge but instead reconciliation with the previous white rulers.   

Dangerous: Mandela was a life time member of the African National Congress (ANC), a terrorist organization whose signature method of creating terror and eliminating their opponents is to put a gasoline filled automobile tire around their neck and body and then setting it on fire; this act is called a “necklacing” (it would take the victim 20 minutes to die).  Mandela was a life-long hard line communist stating, “The cause of communism is the greatest cause in the history of mankind.”  He praised Cuba’s Fidel Castro:  “There is one thing in that country that stands out head and shoulders above the rest.  That is its love of human rights and liberty.”  He praised Libya’s Momar Gadhaf’s “commitment to fight for human rights in the world.”  He visited and was close friends with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.  At the same time that he was heaping praise on the world’s most ruthlessly bloody communist dictators, Mandela was condemning the United States. Mandela stated, “If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America.”

Delusional:  Mandela fought and defeated one form of tyranny (apartheid) only to replace it with another form of tyranny that is worse, more severe and more violent - communism.  After defeating apartheid, Mandela legitimatized his ANC terrorist organization as a “political party” and proclaimed South Africa to be a communist ruled country. Mandela stated, “Under a Communist Party Government, South Africa will become a land of milk and honey.  Political, economic and social rights will cease to be enjoyed by Whites only.  They will be shared equally by Whites and Non-Whites.  There will be enough land and houses for all.  There will be no unemployment, starvation and disease.”  This was Mandela’s socialist/communist utopia illusion.  In reality, Mandela died and left his country in chaos, much worse than when he assumed control. South Africa has a 26% unemployment rate and a 17% HIV infection rate. White farmers were murdered and their lands confiscated.  White flight has caused a critical skills shortage in the country.  South Africa is a country of one party rule – The ANC Party.  All South African citizens live in anxiety, terrified of the ANC.  This is the delusional Mandela’s “land of milk and honey.” 

In his tragic play “Julius Caesar,” Shakespeare wrote (in a speech given my Mark Antony):  “I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.  The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”   

The same can be said of Nelson Mandela.