Mandela, a Role Model?

By Max Musson:

Following last nights extended TV news coverage, the front pages of today’s newspapers prominently feature headline news articles announcing the death of Nelson Mandela and the beginning of several days of mourning that will see every current world leader and every extant ex-world leader gushing in fulsome praise of every aspect of the great man’s being.

Nelson Mandela we will be endlessly reminded, was a man who through his unwavering determination, great courage, and immense personal authority, became an icon and totem of the black man’s struggle for freedom, social justice and self-determination, and ultimately became the victor in South Africa against the wickedness of the White man’s iniquitous racial supremacy.

White racial nationalists may dislike having to admit it, but thus far, the above claims are a pretty accurate reflection of the truth. Nelson Mandela was that man and the Apartheid regime in South Africa was built upon the mistaken belief that a tiny White minority of just over four-million White people could sustain a position of racial supremacy over a black and coloured population ten times as large.

Where those most loudly proclaiming their admiration for Nelson Mandela today go wrong, is in their assertions that he was a man of saintly virtue – in their pretence that he was a man of peace and an advocate of non-violent change – because he was not. He was not a man whose first choice was to use violence to further the cause for which he fought, but he was most certainly a man who was prepared to use deadly force, if peaceful methods failed.

Furthermore, had Mandela been a White man employing identical tactics and living an identical life, save for the fact that he was fighting to free his White nation from exploitation by non-Whites, the people who are now gushing in their praise of him would be denouncing him as a racist, a Nazi and a terrorist. This is the sickening hypocrisy that we see exhibited by so many today.

We racial nationalists may grieve over the loss of what might have been if circumstances and events been different in South Africa – had the colonisation of South Africa and the displacement of the Bantus, proceeded to the point that an enduring White nation could have been created. However the Apartheid regime was not a racial nationalist regime, it was a regime of conservatives, who enjoyed and profited from their domination and exploitation of a black and coloured underclass providing cheap labour.

The South African White elite didn’t want more White settlers with whom they might have to share the rich bounty of their new land. They didn’t want to share the wealth of South Africa with more White people who would be on an equal socio-economic footing with themselves, they wanted to retain their cheap black labour and to remain a small ruling caste so that their per capita share of South Africa’s natural wealth would thereby be greater.

Furthermore they failed to realise that where two racial groups occupy the same nation state, no matter what class, caste or Apartheid system is initially imposed, the racial group with the largest population will always become dominant in the end, and so it was with South Africa.

Under White minority rule, South Africa was undoubtedly the strongest and most successful economy in all of Africa and life for the black and coloured underclass was more comfortable and offered better opportunities than anywhere else on the continent. However, the blacks could see that the Whites had it so much better and living cheek by jowl, in such close proximity, with most White families employing black house servants and with White farmers and White mine owners employing large gangs of black labourers, the blacks were inevitably going to become jealous and resentful of the White’s privileged lifestyle.

In the long-term, blacks, particularly those like Mandela that were more intelligent and ambitious – descended from the kings and various tribal chieftains of the African tribes – were never likely to accept that South Africa’s economic success was primarily due to the work ethic, inspiration and organisational ability of the White man. Despite the obvious correlation; between black majority rule in Africa with poverty; and White minority rule with prosperity, pride and personal ambition would not allow men such as Mandela to acknowledge racial realities.

For Mandela and others like him, the universalism of their Christian upbringing and the influence of Communist doctrine with which they increasingly came into contact later on, taught them that the black man should be the social and political equal of the White, and that any disparity in wealth between the races was evidence only of oppression and exploitation, and consequently they felt they must devote their lives to overcoming this perceived injustice.

The African National Congress (ANC) had been formed in 1912 by a small group of educated black professionals, along with tribal chiefs, community bodies and church organizations, to bring all Africans together as one people to promote their interests and campaign for racial equality. Significantly their inaugural meeting was held at the Waaihoek Wesleyan Church in Bloemfontein.

Throughout the early years of the ANC Mandela was growing up and appeared primarily interested in improving his own position. Then during World War II, when ironically a substantial proportion of South Africa’s White males were away fighting to defeat Nazi Germany, Mandela was introduced by a friend Walter Sisulu, to a firm of Jewish lawyers who were active in promoting the rights of the country’s black and coloured population.

Mandela became an articled clerk at the law firm Witkin, Sidelsky and Eidelman, a company run by a liberal Jew, Lazar Sidelsky. At the firm, Mandela befriended Gaur Redebe, a Xhosa member of the ANC and the South African Communist Party, as well as Nat Bregman, a Jewish communist who became his first ‘white’ friend.

Until this time, the ANC was primarily engaged in educational, charitable and lobbying activity on behalf of the country’s blacks. Mandela joined the ANC in 1943 and in 1944 together with Sisulu and others, he became a founder member of the ANC Youth League, a new generation of more militant blacks, influenced by communist teachings, and committed to organising strikes and mass demonstrations against the White minority’s position of racial supremacy.

During the war years and in the immediate aftermath, Mandela swam in a milieu composed of militant educated blacks; such as Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo, and Anton Lembede; and composed also of a substantial contingent of Jewish communists and fellow travelers, such as Joe Slovo, Harry Schwartz, Ruth First, Jimmy Kantor and Lionel “Rusty” Bernstein. Some of these Jews had volunteered to fight against Nazi Germany and upon their return from the war they brought with them a determination to continue their fight against White racial supremacy.

Also returning from the war however, were a great many White South Africans among whom there were Afrikaners who were by no means convinced that in fighting for the Allies, they had been fighting for the right side, and they brought with them a political backlash against the rampant liberalism and communism that had made great strides during their absence.

In the South African general election of 1948, in which only whites were permitted to vote, the Afrikaner-dominated Herenigde Nasionale Party under Daniel François Malan took power, quickly uniting with the Afrikaner Party to form the National Party, an openly racialist party. The National Party codified and expanded existed racial segregation with the new Apartheid legislation and during the 1950s, non-Whites were removed from electoral rolls, residence and mobility laws were tightened and radical political activities restricted.

Unfortunately the National Party was not a truly nationalist party, it was a conservative party, which simply aimed to maintain the status quo. Had it been a truly racial nationalist party and introduced measures that would have ensured the creation of a White only population, things might have turned out differently for them, but that was not that case.

In 1950, Mandela was elected to the ANC National Executive and this was the same year that new legislation was introduced by the National Party; the Suppression of Communism Act, 1950, affecting the actions of all protest groups; and the Group Areas Act 1950, creating formal racially segregated zones.

The ANC responded by announcing the Defiance Campaign against unjust laws at their conference in December 1951, and demonstrations in support of the Defiance Principles took place on 6th April 1952, the 300th anniversary of white settlement in the Cape of Southern Africa. Approximately 10,000 attended these demonstrations and in the disturbances that followed thousands were arrested including Nelson Mandela.

In 1953 the Public Safety Act was introduced by the National Party enabling their government to declare a state of emergency and exercise special powers to suppress protest demonstrations and control the movements of significant individuals deemed a threat.

During this time and the years that followed, Mandela was frequently subject to controlling orders prohibiting him from attending meetings, prohibiting him from traveling to certain places and prohibiting him from making speeches. Often Mandela would defy these orders and was frequently arrested and detained by the police.

In 1955, after taking part in an unsuccessful protest to prevent the demolition of the all-black Sophiatown suburb of Johannesburg, and after four decades of largely non-violent protest by members of the ANC, Mandela came to the opinion that there was “no alternative to armed and violent resistance” if the blacks were to rid themselves of Apartheid and White minority rule. Accordingly, he advised Walter Sisulu to approach the People’s Republic of China with a request for weapons and ammunition, but it was not until 1961 that Mandela, together with Sisulu and Joe Slovo formed ‘Umkhonto we Sizwe’ (Spear of the Nation), a military wing of the ANC.

Most early members of Umkhonto we Sizwe (abbreviated to ‘MK’) were Jewish communists; including Joe Slovo, Rusty Bernstein, Wolfie Kodesh, Arthur Goldreich, Harold Wolpe and Harry Schwartz and they received funding via an opaque trust set up by Jewish billionaire Harry Oppenheimer, who was the chairman of Anglo American Corporation for a quarter of a century and chairman of De Beers Consolidated Mines for 27 years until he retired from those positions in the early 1980s.

Mandela moved to the communist-owned Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia, where he and others devised the MK constitution. Operating through a cell structure, the MK agreed to acts of sabotage to exert maximum pressure on the government, bombing military installations, power plants, telephone lines and transport links at night, in order to minimize civilian casualties. Mandela noted that should these tactics fail, MK would resort to “guerilla warfare and terrorism.”

The MK publicly announced its existence on 16th December 1961 with 57 bombings, followed by further attacks on New Year’s Eve.

In 1962 after attending a Pan-African Freedom Movement conference in Addis Ababa, Mandela began a six-month course in guerrilla warfare but completed only two months before being recalled to South Africa. Then on 5th August 1962, Mandela was captured by the South African police.

On 11 July 1963, the police raided Liliesleaf Farm, arresting those they found there and uncovering paperwork, which documented MK activities and which implicated Mandela. The subsequent Rivonia Trial at Pretoria Supreme Court saw Mandela and his comrades charged with four counts of sabotage and conspiracy to violently overthrow the government. Mandela and most of his comrades were found guilty and served long prison sentences, initially on Robben Island. Mandela was not released until 1988, although he had the opportunity to secure earlier release conditional upon him renouncing violence, but this he refused to do.

During Mandela’s imprisonment units of ANC exiles set up MK bases in the states neighbouring South Africa, most prominently Angola where MK was allied to the MPLA government.

They had frequent skirmishes with both the South African and Rhodesian security forces and their bombing campaign within South Africa descended into terrorism with the Church Street Bombing in Pretoria in 1983 killing nineteen people and injuring 217 more.

In the Amanzimtoti bomb on the Natal South Coast in 1985, five civilians were killed and 40 were injured when the MK detonated an explosive in a rubbish bin at a shopping centre killing five people, including three children, shortly before Christmas.

A bomb was detonated by the MK in Magoo’s Bar on the Durban beach-front in 1986, killing three civilians and injuring 69. That same year a bomb exploded outside the court building in Newcastle injuring 24 people.

In 1987, an explosion outside a Johannesburg court killed three people and injured 10; and that same year a bomb exploded at a military command centre in Johannesburg, killing one person and injuring 68 personnel.

The bombing campaign continued with attacks on a series of soft targets, including a bank in Roodepoort in 1988, in which four civilians were killed and 18 injured. Also in 1988, in a bomb detonation outside a magistrate’s court killed three.

At the Ellis Park rugby stadium in Johannesburg, a car bomb killed two and injured 37 civilians.

A multitude of bombings occured in “Wimpy Bar” fast food outlets and supermarkets during the late 1980s, killing and wounding many people. Wimpy were specifically targeted because of their perceived rigid enforcement of many Apartheid-era laws, including excluding people of colour from their restaurants.

Several other bombings occurred, with smaller numbers of casualties.

From 1985 to 1987, there was also a campaign to place anti-tank mines in rural roads in what was then the Northern Transvaal. This tactic was abandoned due to the high rate of civilian casualties, especially amongst black labourers. The ANC estimated 30 landmine explosions resulting in 23 deaths, while the government submitted a figure of 57 explosions resulting in 25 deaths.

The Truth and Reconciliation Courts instigated following the fall of the Apartheid regime found that torture was “routine” and was official policy – as were executions “without due process” at ANC detention camps particularly in the period of 1979–1989.

South African police statistics indicate that, in the period 1976 to 1986, approximately 130 deaths were attributed to the Umkhonto we Sizwe. Of these, about thirty were members of various security forces and one hundred were civilians. Of the civilians, 40 were white and 60 black

Throughout this period, Mandela sat in prison and refused to renounce violence knowing that the organization he had formed and which he still nominally led, was engaged in a campaign of terrorism.

That this campaign in combination with the propaganda campaign waged by the world’s media and the economic sanctions applied by the United Nations was eventually successful, doesn’t change the fact that Mandela was not the kindly and affable old ‘Grandad’ figure that we see presented to us by the mass media today.

He was a ruthless man, determined to stop at absolutely nothing in order to achieve his political ends.

In many ways reading Mandela’s life story is rather like reading one of Harold Covington’s Northwest novels and it demonstrates that the revolutionary principles outlined in Harold Covington’s books do work, providing the revolutionaries concerned are determined and courageous enough to wage a guerilla war – long enough to wear down the enemy – even an enemy who seemingly ‘holds all of the aces’ in the beginning.

This then exposes the mistake that men such as David Cameron make today in lauding Nelson Mandela’s achievements. Just a few days ago David Cameron commended to the House of Commons a series of measures designed to combat ‘terrorism and extremism’ in Britain, yet today he holds up as a shining example and as an inspiration, a man who violated every principle enshrined within those new measures.

In order to comply with the multi-culti narrative of our time, and fawn over the black man who defeated a White supremacist state, David Cameron and his ilk are giving out a confused massage that appears to condone guerilla warfare and terrorism, as long as the end justifies the means. Let us hope for all our sakes that they don’t go giving people ideas!

By Max Musson ©2013

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