Mandela’s sharp statements rarely cited in lame-stream media + The real Mandela: Don’t let his legacy be abused

RT: As the world remembers Nelson Mandela’s legacy as South Africa's first black president and anti-apartheid icon, he was also deeply skeptical of American power, the Iraq invasion, and was a key supporter of the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

Here are seven quotes from the leader that are less likely to be published as his life is honored and his death commemorated in the mainstream media.
Prior to the US invasion of Iraq, Mandela slammed the actions of the US at a speech made at the International Women’s Forum in Johannesburg, declaring that former President George W. Bush’s primary motive was ‘oil’, while adding that Bush was undermining the UN.
“If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America. They don’t care for human beings,” Mandela said.
Mandela did not hold back from making hard-hitting statements against the US, and repeatedly spoke out against the prospect of the country invading Iraq. As the US prepared its mass-action in 2002, Mandela told Newsweek:
“If you look at those matters, you will come to the conclusion that the attitude of the United States of America is a threat to world peace.”


Mandela was a long-time supporter of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and made a speech to reporters in 1999, in which he agreed to be a political mediator between Israel and its neighbors.
“Israel should withdraw from all the areas which it won from the Arabs in 1967, and in particular Israel should withdraw completely from the Golan Heights, from south Lebanon and from the West Bank,” Mandela stated, according to the Jewish Telegraph Agency’s Suzanne Belling.
Mandela met with Fidel Castro in 1991, giving a speech alongside him entitled “How Far We Slaves Have Come.” The country was commemorating the 38th anniversary of the storming of the Moncada, and Mandela hailed Cuba’s ‘special place’ in the heart of the people of Africa, its revolution, and how far the country had come.
“From its earliest days, the Cuban Revolution has also been a source of inspiration to all freedom-loving people. We admire the sacrifices of the Cuban people in maintaining their independence and sovereignty in the face of the vicious imperialist-orchestrated campaign to destroy the impressive gain made in the Cuban Revolution….Long live the Cuban Revolution. Long live comrade Fidel Castro.”
Mandela urged for the end to harsh UN sanctions imposed upon Libya in 1997, and pledged his support for Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who was a longtime supporter of his.
“It is our duty to give support to the brother leader…especially in regards to the sanctions which are not hitting just him, they are hitting the ordinary masses of the people … our African brothers and sisters,” Mandela said.

On the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, December 4. 1997, Mandela assembled a group “as South Africans, our Palestinian guests and as humanists to express our solidarity with the people of Palestine.” At the speech, he called for the metaphorical flames of solidarity, justice, and freedom to be kept burning.
“The UN took a strong stand against apartheid; and over the years, an international consensus was built, which helped to bring an end to this iniquitous system. But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

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The real Mandela: Don’t let his legacy be abused

By John Wight: The manner in which Nelson Mandela's legacy is being misinterpreted and appropriated is an obscenity. This has been brought into sharp focus in the immediate aftermath of his passing.
The driving force and inspiration of the anti-apartheid campaign in South Africa, Mandela was a man driven by a fierce belief in justice as the universal right of all people – regardless of race, religion, nationality or wealth. He stood utterly opposed to the notion that justice is a gift of the rich and powerful, either in South Africa or anywhere in the world. This makes it all the more nauseous to witness the likes of Tony Blair and David Cameron issuing public tributes to him. While Nelson Mandela was a champion of the dispossessed and oppressed throughout his life, people such as Blair and Cameron are servants of the rich.
Likewise, the sight of President Obama paying giving a public eulogy in Washington also reflects hypocrisy. The only thing that Nelson Mandela had in common with Barack Obama was the color of his skin. Other than that, along with Tony Blair and David Cameron, Obama is a moral dwarf compared to a man who endured untold privation and hardship during the struggle against apartheid, especially as Obama is the CEO of an empire the barbarity and violence of which is unparalleled in human history.
The current US President's visit to Robben Island earlier this year came at a time when prisoners incarcerated at Guantanamo were engaged in a hunger strike, demanding an end to the harsh conditions they are subjected to. The fact that Guantanamo still exists at all as an offshore US penal establishment, where hundreds of prisoners are being held in a state of legal limbo, is an indictment of Obama's presidency. Worse is the drone war he has waged throughout the Global South, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of civilians, including women and children.


But even for the rest of us, the danger of misinterpreting Nelson Mandela's legacy is clear. Regarding him solely as the benign and universally loved elder statesman that he certainly became in his later years would be a travesty. When engaged in the struggle for the freedom of his people, Nelson Mandela was a lion who refused to countenance any compromise when it came resisting the evil of apartheid. As a consequence he was widely reviled by many of those who are now seeking to outdo each other in eulogizing the man upon his death.
In the UK, Thatcher and the Tories regarded Nelson Mandela as a terrorist, while the current Prime Minister, David Cameron in 1989 accepted an all-expenses paid trip to apartheid South Africa while Mandela was still in prison, funded by a firm that was lobbying against the trade and economic sanctions that played a key role in finally bringing apartheid to an end one year later. Cameron's visit was manna from heaven for an apartheid regime desperately seeking allies around the world at the very point when its legitimacy was crumbling.
While we're at it, it would be immoral to airbrush from history the peoples and nations that stood with Mandela and the ANC when their struggle wasn't the cause celebre it later became in the West. Prime among those is Fidel Castro, the first leader Mandela visited after being released from prison in 1990. Cuba's role in defeating the South African apartheid forces in Africa in the late 1980s Mandela always acknowledged as a seminal moment in the destroying the myth of white superiority.
Mandela said of Cuba's solidarity with his people:

Long live the Cuban Revolution. Long live comrade Fidel Castro... Cuban internationalists have done so much for African independence, freedom and justice. We admire the sacrifices of the Cuban people in maintaining their independence and sovereignty in the face of a vicious imperialist campaign designed to destroy the advances of the Cuban revolution. We too want to control our destiny... There can be no surrender. It is a case of freedom or death. The Cuban revolution has been a source of inspiration to all freedom-loving people.

The former Soviet Union supplied the ANC with money and weapons at a time when the West was a strong supporter of the apartheid government in South Africa, as did the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. During a speech he gave in Libya in 1999, just before retiring from political office, Mandela said:

It was pure expediency to call on democratic South Africa to turn its back on Libya and Qaddafi, who had assisted us in obtaining democracy at a time when those who now made that call were the friends of the enemies of democracy in South Africa. Had we heeded those demands, we would have betrayed the very values and attitudes that allowed us as a nation to have adversaries sitting down and negotiating in a spirit of compromise. It would have meant denying that the South African experience could be a model and example for international behavior.

Nelson Mandela and everything he stood for was once vilified and despised by many of those who are now paying tribute to him upon his death. In this regard, history doesn't lie.

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