CECIL WILLIAMS - FREEDOM FIGHTER

CECIL WILLIAMS – FREEDOM FIGHTER

6 February 2017

Mark Gevisser is a South African writer and journalist. In about 1997 Gevisser made a film called “The Man Who Drove With Mandela which was issued originally on a VCR and in 1998 it was issued in DVD format.

I went to school in Johannesburg, South Africa from 1933 to 1943. The school had a primary school and a secondary school, each with their own premises on separate but related pieces of land next to each other. In those days they were called prep. (preparatory) school and high school, and I went to High school in 1939, the year the second world war started.

The school was called King Edward VII School because it was founded in the new mining town of Johannesburg in 1905 and King Edward VII was on the throne in Great Britain and South Africa was a colony of Great Britain after Great Britain had won the Anglo-Boer War of 1899 to 1902.

In 1910 the four colonies in South Africa were combined and South Africa became a dominion of Great Britain and joined other dominions like Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Our school was very “English” in its education and teachers, and some of our teachers in High School actually came from Britain.

When I got to high school in 1939 we were divided up into different classes from what we had had in primary school, so we had different teachers for different subjects.

One of the teachers of English was, in fact, an Englishman called Cecil Williams, and it was only as time went on during the war and after the war ended in 1945 that Cecil Williams’ name became very well known in South Africa.

I was not fortunate enough to be put in a class taught English by Williams, but somehow – as happens with schoolboys – the boys knew he was homosexual and they also knew where he lived in the City. In those days homosexuals were called queer and many other names, most of which I have now forgotten, and because there are so many different words used in the late 20^th and early 21 centuries.

Williams went from school as a teacher into the Royal Navy during the war, and when he came back to South Africa after 1945 he did not go back to teaching but became a broadcaster for the South African Broadcasting Corporation and also an actor and theatre producer and he was very well known and acclaimed for his productions and acting.

In the mean time there was another side to Williams which most of us didn’t know about and even when we went to university in the mid to late 1940s, he was mostly known for his acting and broadcasting, and basically that is all we know.

Field Marshal Jan Smuts had been one of the generals during the 1899-1902 war and when that war ended he had remained close to the British in his affiliations and politics. When Britain went to war with Germany in 1939, Smuts was in opposition in the South African parliament and when a vote was taken by the South African parliament as to whether South Africa should join the war with Britain or should remain outside the war as many South Africans wanted the government to do, the government lost its majority and Smuts won enough to take over the government and thus joined the British war effort.

After the war ended in 1945, Smuts was still the prime minister, but at the election in 1948 Smuts lost power and the Nationalist party came to power, and that was more or less the beginning of official apartheid although of course it had existed since white settlement started in South Africa in 1652 when the Dutch established a colony in the Cape as a half way house to the Dutch East Indies, now called Indonesia.

At that stage in South Africa, in about 1948, the South African population consisted of about 8 million people of whom six million were black and two million were white.

The whites had the power and ruled the country and the blacks were the labourers without any political rights and were treated as third class citizens of their own country.

The next part of the story is recorded in South African History online:

Cecil Williams was born in Cornwall, England in 1906. He left for Johannesburg in 1928 and worked as an English teacher.

During World War II he switched to journalism and then became a theatre director using black and white actors.

Being gay he often got assaulted.

After the war when South African soldiers returned from Italy and other war zones, the ex-servicemen formed an organisation called the Springbok Legion  and War Veterans Action Committee – formed in 1951 - and Williams became an active member and became chairman of the Springbok Legion.

Williams worked closely with Bram Fischer ( a leading barrister at the time) in bringing the Springbok Legion and the Congress of Democrats (COD) together.

In 1953 The Springbok Legion’s offices were raided by the security police, and the Minister of Police ordered Williams and his colleague Alan Lipman to resign from any organisation they belonged to. They were banned from any gathering or meeting for two years.

In 1954, after the formation of the Congress of Democrats (COD) and the newly revived South African Communist Party (SACP), because these organisations were banned by the Nationalist Party government, they operated underground with freedom fighters which included Rusty Bernstein, Ruth First (later murdered in Mozambique by the South African government) Cecil Williams and Rica Hodgson.

Williams served in the first executive committee later serving as vice-chairman and he later became part of the underground unit.

In 1959 Williams was tried for treason but later acquitted.

Involvement in the activities of the banned SACP and opposition to racism led to contact with Nelson Mandela.

After the banning of the African National Congress (ANC) and the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the military wing of the ANC, Williams became involved in underground work of MK. For instance, when Mandela returned from military training in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia, formerly Abyssinia), he was met by Williams in Bechuanaland (now Botswana) They continued to work together intil 1962 when Mandela was arrested posing as David Motsemayi – a chauffeur for Williams.

The story of how Mandela was caught got much publicity, but there was not much ever about the man he was driving that day.

Though involved in the struggle, Williams kept that part of his life separate from his personal life. Consequently few knew about his political activities and his lifestyle as a gay person.

After Mandela’s arrest, Williams left South Africa for Britain, where he lived until his death in 1979.

Mandela tells of his friendship with, and assistance from Cecil Williams in his biography LONG WALK TO FREEDOM (published by Abacus in 1995) but once Mandela was imprisoned in 1964 he possibly didn’t have the contacts or ability to find out what had happened to Cecil, as he called him in the book.

The film about the Mandela arrest with Cecil Williams is the first paragraph of this story, but what happened to Williams after he left South Africa? Did he get involved in the UK with the anti-apartheid movement in the UK?  I believe research in the UK will be richly rewarded into the later years of Cecil Williams’ life.

There are probably many facets of Williams’ life and political activities in the latter years of his life, but many of us remember some of his life in South Africa which, as far as we knew, was not political.

Cecil Williams was well known as a broadcaster on the airwaves in South Africa with the South African Broadcasting Corporation, but became more widely known as an actor, producer, director and theatre manager which must have made this a very fulfilling life.

I firmly believe Cecil Williams to have been a freedom fighter of our times and someone for whom recognition of his activities and his bravery in the context of the brutal South African apartheid and police state regime need to be recorded and acknowledged for all to know about.

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I graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1951 and have been receiving alumni journals and magazines over the years.

The alumni journal is called WITSReview and an article in a recent issue was about a sculpture erected at the place Mandela was arrested by apartheid police in 1962.

Here is the article, followed by my letter to the journal a few months later:

WITSReview

March 2015 Volume 31

In 2012, an artist and anarchitect collaborated to create Release,

a sculpture honouring Nelson Mandela at the site where he was

captured in KwaZulu-Natal in 1962. Marco Cianfanelli

and Jeremy Rose regrouped in 2014 to craft falcons and

forests in a mall in Abu Dhabi.

Falcons &

Freedom

Fighters

BY DEBORAH MINORS

ARTIST: MARCO CIANFANELLI. ARCHITECT/ARTISTIC COLLABORATOR: JEREMY ROSE OF MASHABANE ROSE ARCHITECTS. 

RELEASE 2012. PAINTED LASER-CUT MILD STEEL AND STEEL TUBE CONSTRUCTION/TO BE RUSTED: WIDTH: 5.19-METRES |

HEIGHT: 9.48-METRES | LENGTH: 20.8-METRES

March 2015

Joburg-born Cianfanelli graduated with a distinction in Fine Arts from Wits in 1993.

He is an artist “constantly looking to realise art where one doesn’t expect to find it”.

A rambling road in KwaZulu-Natal’s Midlands is one such space. It was on such a road

that Nelson Mandela, operating “underground”, was driving on 5 August 1962, posing as a

chauffeur. Just outside Howick, he was flagged down by apartheid police. They’d been tipped

off about the driver’s real identity. Mandela was exposed, arrested and eventually imprisoned for 27

years. 

Cianfanelli’s sculpture Release, of Mandela at this capture site, was unveiled 50 years later on

4 August 2012.

The sculpture is made from 50 steel columns, each about 8-metres tall and planted on a concrete

base. The sculpture comes into focus from 35-metres and the image of Mandela emerges.

 

Viewed from the side, however, the design and arrangement of the columns create a sense of

fracture – or release. The sculpture is affected by the changing light around it, and visually shifts

throughout the day. It both exerts influence on and is part of its surroundings.

 

Silhouettes of human figures, like Release, are characteristic of Cianfanelli’s art – colossal works

in steel. He creates monumental silhouettes that juxtapose with other shapes and enable

unexpected connections in social forces to emerge.

Locating Release in the rolling Midlands landscape was thus not only accurate, but deliberate – and

required an architect.

Jeremy Rose (BArch 1988) is Principal Architect at Mashabane Rose Architects in Johannesburg. His consultancy work focuses on museums and cultural heritage site projects, and has included designing the Apartheid Museum and the Robben Island heritage site.

Cianfanelli and Rose regrouped in May 2014.

A property firm commissioned them to install a

sculpture in Yas Mall, which opened on Yas Island

in the United Arab Emirates in November 2014.

The artwork, currently untitled but referred to as

the

Swooping Falcons, is made of 140 tonnes of

steel. The

Swooping Falcons, like

Release, fluctuate

with the viewer’s perspective.

The mall doors open to a massive sculpture of

six falcons aloft 132 columns, each 18-metres

tall. “The idea is that, as you move around the

sculpture, you see different falcons from different

angles,” explains Cianfanelli. “From any position,

you will see one falcon and the others will

break apart, becoming an expression of rhythm,

movement or flight.”

Whichever way you look at it, this artistic alumni

collaboration continues to soar.

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December 2015

WITSReview Volume 33

LETTERS

The Man who drove with Mandela

Dear Editor,

Deborah Minors’ article (WR March 2015) about the sculpture Release honouring Nelson Mandela at the

site where he was captured in 1962, in what was then either Zululand or Natal, is part of the story of that

eventful trip which needs to be told in full, and probably needs a sculpture supplemented to honour the man who was with Mandela when the capture took place.

Cecil Williams had gone to fetch Mandela from a meeting in Natal and they were returning to Johannesburg.

Quoting from the DVD called The Man who Drove with Mandela, the story unfolds as follows:

“Driving a gleaming Austin Westminster, Mandela was able to travel around the country by

disguising himself as a chauffeur for an elegant, impeccably dressed white man. That man, Cecil Williams, was a leading Johannesburg theatre director and a committed anti-apartheid freedom fighter.”

In fact, Cecil Williams was so very much more than that. When WWII started on 3 September 1939, he

was teaching English at King Edward VII High School in Johannesburg.

 

He had a flat in Anstey’s Building in Joubert Street and, apart from his gay activities which some of us

at the school had heard about, he was involved with the South African Communist Party. He also broadcast

on SABC and acted in theatre. When the war started he joined the navy (he was an Englishman) and after the war his political activities increased untithe fateful day when he was in the car with Mandela, the whereabouts of whom had been revealed to the South African authorities by those in the USA who didn’t want apartheid to end.

Cecil Williams needs to be recorded historically in the South African anti-apartheid struggle, and the DVD

of this episode is well worth seeing.

Actor Corin Redgrave plays Cecil Williams in the 1998 film directed by Greta Schiller.

Mannie De Saxe (BSc Eng Mech 1951 Wits.), now living in Australia

 

As I am busy researching information for an obituary I am putting together about Cecil Williams, I came across this item from Peter Tatchell in which he makes reference to the connection between Cecil Williams and Nelson Mandela. The article contains an enormous amount of interesting information about the ANC, homophobia, and the people who worked to challenge and change the ANC's responses to the gay and lesbian communities. (Mannie De Saxe)

Peter Tatchell Foundation

Home » LGBT Rights » South Africa: How the ANC was won for LGBT rights

South Africa: How the ANC was won for LGBT rights

posted by Peter Tatchell ... on Tue, 19 APRIL 2016 

 

And how it came to protect LGBT South Africans against discrimination

By Peter Tatchell
London – 20 April 2016

This essay is dedicated to the many heroic South African LGBT and anti-apartheid activists that I worked with during the period of white minority rule - heroes who helped secure the commitment of the African National Congress of South Africa to LGBT human rights, including the enactment of the world’s first constitution to protect LGBT people against discrimination.

As a gay teenager growing up in Melbourne, Australia, my three great passions were men, surfing and politics. All three came together in the summer of 1971, when at the age of 19, I went on my first anti-apartheid protest. It was against the all-white South African Surf Life-Saving tour. At one of my favourite beaches, Lorne, on a blistering hot morning, 40 of us lay down on the sand in a bid to stop the South African team taking their boat out of the boathouse. We succeeded, for a while, making our symbolic point - before being battered and bloodied, and then carted off by the police. So began my two decades of activism against the apartheid regime: pickets, boycotts, marches and sit-ins.

Over those long years, I kept hearing disconcerting stories about homophobic attitudes within the African National Congress - the main liberation movement and the likely governing party of a post-apartheid South Africa. At the left-wing World Youth Festival in East Berlin in 1973, which I attended as a Gay Liberation Front delegate, there were reports of the victimisation of lesbian and gay ANC members, and warnings that queers would have a tough time when the ANC came to power.

Homophobia existed at high levels in the ANC, even though there was a long history of gay people being involved in the struggle against apartheid. The gay theatre director, Cecil Williams, was one such person. He played a key role in aiding Nelson Mandela when he was on the run from the police in the early 1960s. To enable Mandela to carry on his underground activism and avoid detection, Williams had Mandela disguise himself as his chauffeur.

Despite the contributions of courageous lesbian and gay people such as Cecil Williams, the ANC still had a de facto anti-gay policy or, at best, a stance of not supporting LGBT equality.

In those days, only a handful of anti-apartheid activists dared challenge the homophobia - and sexism - of the ANC leadership. There was a near-universal expectation that opposition to apartheid involved uncritical support for the liberation struggle. It was deemed betrayal to question the ANC. Criticism was unwelcome - even when it was constructive and came from friends and allies. We were told by the official Anti-Apartheid Movement that any doubts or concerns had to wait until the white supremacist system was overthrown.

Most anti-apartheid activists duly obliged. I was one of them. My fear was that speaking out would give comfort and succour to the white minority regime, and undermine support for the just cause of the ANC. Although I made my concerns known behind the scenes, publicly I remained silent.

In 1987, after nearly 20 years involvement in the anti-apartheid struggle, I felt unable to stay silent any longer. No movement for human liberation has a right to demand unconditional loyalty. Such a demand leads, inexorably, to collusion with injustice. It was, after all, the insistence on uncritical support that resulted in so many people on the left ignoring or excusing the terrible crimes of the Stalin and Mao eras.

True loyalty sometimes involves challenging friends concerning their own shortcomings and mistakes.
My worry was that unless leading members of the ANC were confronted over their homophobia, a post-apartheid ANC-ruled South Africa might pursue the same kind of anti-gay policies that were common in other revolutionary states, such as Cuba, the Soviet Union and China.

This was not an unreasonable fear. When battling to overthrow dictatorship and fascism, most ANC-style liberation movements talked about creating a society with social justice and human rights for all. But after liberation they usually enforced a heterosexist regime that left queers just as victimised - if not more so - than before. Would it be a liberation worthy of the name if a free South Africa perpetuated the homophobia of the apartheid state?

After trying to influence ANC attitudes privately without success, as had many other people before me, I concluded that the only way to change things was by publicly exposing the ANC's rejection of LGBT human rights. My calculation was that the subsequent uproar would embarrass the ANC leadership and this might precipitate its switch to a more gay-sympathetic policy.

Accordingly, in August 1987, on hearing that ANC executive member Ruth Mompati was visiting London to promote South Africa Women's Day, I devised a plan and requested an interview.

A courageous fighter against the apartheid regime, Mompati was one of the leaders of the biggest women's demonstration in South African history. In 1956, 20,000 women marched on the Union Buildings - the seat of government in Pretoria - to protest at the extension of the notorious pass laws to women.

Most of my interview with Mompati was about the struggle for women's emancipation, and was duly published in Labour Weekly. But towards the end, I raised the issue of women's sexual emancipation - in particular the human rights of lesbians and their role in the struggle against apartheid. This provoked an astonishing outburst that reconfirmed all the previous horror stories that I had heard about ANC homophobia.

"I hope that in a liberated South Africa people will live a normal life", Mompati told me. "I emphasise the word normal ... Tell me, are lesbians and gays normal? No, it is not normal".

"I cannot even begin to understand why people want lesbian and gay rights. The gays have no problems. They have nice houses and plenty to eat. I don't see them suffering. No one is persecuting them ... We haven't heard about this problem in South Africa until recently. It seems to be fashionable in the West".
When asked her reaction to the formation of LGBT anti-apartheid organisations inside South Africa, Mompati insisted: "They are not doing the liberation struggle a favour by organising separately and campaigning for their rights. The (gay) issue is being brought up to take attention away from the main struggle against apartheid. These other problems can wait until later. They are red herrings".

Mompati justified the ANC's lack of policy on LGBT human rights with the riposte: "We don't have a policy on flower sellers either". While acknowledging that women have special problems and specific interests that need to be addressed by the ANC, she was adamant that "lesbians and gays do not".

Concerned to be fair, in case Mompati's views were unrepresentative of the ANC's position, I contacted its London office and spoke to the liberation movement's then chief representative in Britain, Solly Smith. He expressed similarly offensive opinions: "We don't have a policy. Lesbian and gay rights do not arise in the ANC. We cannot be diverted from our struggle by these issues. We believe in the majority being equal. These people (lesbians and gays) are in the minority. The majority must rule".

When asked if the ANC was opposed to discrimination against homosexuals and if an ANC-led government would repeal the anti-gay laws of the apartheid state, Smith replied: "I have no comment on that".
This was, to my knowledge, the first time anyone had recorded verbatim accounts of the homophobic attitudes of ANC leaders. I knew these quotes would cause the ANC grief and discomfort. But a bit of pain and short term damage was necessary, I reasoned, in order to overturn homophobia within the liberation movement.

Accordingly, my interviews with Ruth Mompati and Solly Smith were published in the London gay weekly newspaper, Capital Gay, on 18 September 1987, under the headline "ANC dashes hopes for gay rights in SA". As I expected, and hoped, Smith's and Mompati's homophobia provoked an outcry in LGBT and liberal circles – even among many anti-apartheid activists.

To globalise the pressure on the ANC, I then circulated my article for republication in the gay and anti-apartheid press world-wide, including South Africa. My aim was to get the ANC inundated with protests that would (hopefully) pressure it to confront the issue of homophobia and eventually to abandon its refusal to support LGBT equality.

My Capital Gay article did, thankfully, result in the ANC and the anti-apartheid movement internationally being deluged with letters of condemnation. People were appalled that a "liberation movement" like the ANC could be so ignorant, bigoted and intolerant. The ANC leadership was hugely embarrassed.

But embarrassing the ANC was not my goal; it was merely a means to an end. My objective was to win the ANC to the cause of LGBT human rights. I therefore devised a plan to offer the leadership a face-saving solution and a constructive way forward. This involved writing a private appeal to the ANC leadership in exile in Lusaka.

My letter, dated 12 October 1987, was addressed to Thabo Mbeki, then the ANC Director of Information. I chose him on the advice of exiled ANC contacts, David and Norma Kitson. They suggested he was the most liberal-minded of the ANC leaders and senior enough to be able to push for a radical rethink of official policy. My letter was challenging, but friendly and constructive. I argued that support for LGBT liberation was consistent with the principles of the ANC's Freedom Charter:

"Dear Thabo Mbeki,
... Given that the Freedom Charter embodies the principle of civil and human rights for all South Africans, surely those rights should also apply to lesbians and gays? And surely the ANC should be committed to removing all forms of discrimination and oppression in a liberated South Africa? ... To me, the fight against apartheid and the fight for lesbian and gay rights are part of the same fight for human rights.
Yours in comradeship and solidarity, Peter Tatchell".

When writing to Mbeki I also included a sheaf of my published articles about leading lesbian and gay anti-apartheid activists inside South Africa, including Simon Nkoli and Ivan Toms. Simon, a student activist, was a defendant in one of the great cause celebres of the 1980s, the Delmas Treason Trial. Ivan was a doctor who had won acclaim for his work in the Crossroads squatter camp in Cape Town and was active in the campaign against conscription (he was later jailed for refusing to serve in the army of apartheid).

This information about LGBT involvement in the struggle against apartheid was news to many members of the exiled ANC Executive, and apparently had considerable influence in swinging the vote in favour of a pro-LGBT stance.

My letter to Mbeki - following in wake of adverse publicity from my Capital Gay article and subsequent protests - had the desired effect. Within a few weeks, the ANC leadership in exile began a major reevaluation of its stance on LGBT issues. As a result of these internal debates, the ANC officially, for the first time, committed itself to support LGBT equality and human rights.

This new pro-gay rights ANC policy was publicly announced in a telegram to me from Thabo Mbeki, dated 24 November 1987. He wrote:

"Dear Peter,
... The ANC is indeed very firmly committed to removing all forms of discrimination and oppression in a liberated South Africa. You are correct to point this out. That commitment must surely extend to the protection of gay rights ... I would like to believe that that my colleagues, Solly Smith and Ruth Mompati, did not want to suggest in any way that a free South Africa would want to see gays discriminated against or subjected to any form of repression. As a movement, we are of the view that the sexual preferences of an individual are a private matter. We would not wish to compromise anybody's right to privacy ... and would therefore not wish to legislate or decree how people should conduct their private lives ... We would like to apologise for any misunderstanding that might have arisen over these issues ...
Yours in the common struggle, Thabo Mbeki". 

Mbeki's statement was not as strong and comprehensive as many of us would have liked, nor had it been agreed by a formal policy-making conference of the ANC. But it was, nevertheless, a watershed moment. The ANC leadership was publicly aligning itself with the struggle for LGBT emancipation. A first!

At Mbeki's own request, I communicated his letter to gay and anti-apartheid movements world-wide. I also sent a copy to members of South African lesbian and gay groups, such as the long-time lesbian anti-apartheid activists, Sheila Lapinsky and Julia Nicol of the Organisation of Lesbian & Gay Activists (OLGA), based in Cape Town. In addition, I forwarded copies to members of the United Democratic Front - the main anti-apartheid coalition inside South Africa.

Long before me, other people had pressured the ANC to change its homophobic stance, but none of them succeeded. It was, it seems, only the huge torrent of negative publicity generated by my Capital Gay article, and my challenging letter to Thabo Mbeki, that prompted the ANC's rethink. My intervention was, perhaps, merely the culmination of earlier efforts by others - the final straw that broke the camel's back. Maybe I was merely the catalyst for changes that had been in the making for a very long time. What is certain is that without the ANC and international anti-apartheid movements being flooded with howls of protest, my letter to Mbeki may have had no impact at all. Due credit must be given to the many people from all over the world who helped pressure the ANC.

Securing the ANC's official opposition to homophobic discrimination gave the struggle for LGBT emancipation inside South Africa new legitimacy and kudos. It was instrumental in helping persuade some individuals and organisations fighting the white minority regime - both within South Africa and in other countries - to embrace LGBT equality - or at least to not oppose it. By giving the cause of LGBT rights political credibility, the ANC's stance helped pave the way for the subsequent inclusion of a ban on sexual orientation discrimination in the post-apartheid constitution.

Outlawing sexuality discrimination in the post-apartheid constitution


Not long after the ANC came out for LGBT rights, exiled ANC leaders based in London began work on drafting a constitution for a free and democratic South Africa. In 1989, I contacted a member of this constitutional working party, Albie Sachs, at the University of London, urging him to include in the ANC's draft constitution a ban on discrimination based on sexual orientation.

He was initially rather sceptical. So I provided a draft wording, backed up with examples of anti-discrimination statutes from various European countries, such as Denmark, France and the Netherlands. These countries had laws incorporating either comprehensive protection against discrimination or an explicit ban on discrimination on the grounds of sexuality. These concrete legal precedents apparently helped reassure Sachs, and later also helped convince others in the ANC leadership, that a ban on anti-gay discrimination was feasible and practical.

A little later, I sent my own suggested draft wording - together with samples of anti-discrimination laws from other countries - to LGBT groups inside South Africa (especially OLGA and GLOW - the Gay & Lesbian Organisation of the Witwatersrand). I also arranged for them to write direct to Albie Sachs in London and to lobby the anti-apartheid United Democratic Front inside South Africa.

In December 1989, on my initiative, a meeting was held in London between Sachs and OLGA representatives, Derrick Fine and Niezhaam Sampson. They discussed OLGA's constitutional proposals face-to-face. This personal meeting helped to cement Sachs's backing for a constitutional clause prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation. His support later helped win over other key people in the ANC leadership.

After the collapse of the apartheid regime and the unbanning of the ANC in February 1990, OLGA held meetings inside South Africa with senior ANC members, Frene Ginwala, Albie Sachs and Kader Asmal, all of whom expressed a positive attitude towards OLGA's constitutional proposals.

Sach's, in particular, continued to have contact with OLGA and other LGBT organisations to further develop the idea of LGBT rights as part of a broad human rights package within South Africa's new constitution. He did, however, warn OLGA that there was "no guarantee" that a majority in the ANC would endorse constitutional protection for LGBTs; an indication that sections of the liberation movement remained unsupportive or ambivalent on the issue of sexual orientation equality.

Undeterred, in September 1990, OLGA made an extensive submission to the ANC's Constitutional Committee, which was in charge of formulating the movement's draft Bill of Rights. This submission was supported by 11 other South African LGBT organisations, including GLOW. It proposed a Bill of Rights that would "protect the fundamental rights of all citizens" and guarantee "equal rights for all individuals, irrespective of race, colour, gender, creed or sexual orientation".

Simultaneously, OLGA, GLOW and other gay organisations used the ANC's previous endorsement of LGBT equality to lobby the United Democratic Front and other anti-apartheid groups within South Africa. This lobbying helped persuade prominent campaigners in some of these groups to back the inclusion of a constitutional ban on anti-gay discrimination.

These efforts had a successful outcome when, in November 1990, the publication of the ANC's draft post-apartheid constitution included an explicit prohibition on homophobic discrimination.

OLGA also developed and canvassed support for a specific and comprehensive Charter of Lesbian and Gay Rights. In 1993, this proposal won the endorsement of a national conference of LGBT organisations, which had been convened to forge a united campaign for constitutional protection.

The push for LGBT human rights was subsequently carried forward in the post-1994 period by a new umbrella organisation - the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality (NCGLE).

It is thanks to the efforts of these many far-sighted, determined and courageous LGBT people inside South Africa that constitutional rights for LGBTs were finally won; making the South African constitution the first in the world to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation. Bravo!

THE POST-APARTHEID CONSTITUTION OF SOUTH AFRICA 

Chapter 2 - Bill of Rights 

Equality 

9.
(1) Everyone is equal before the law and has the right to equal protection and benefit of the law.

(2) Equality includes the full and equal enjoyment of all rights freedoms. To promote the achievement of equality, legislative and other measures designed to protect or advance persons, or categories of persons, disadvantaged by unfair discrimination may be taken.

(3) The state may not unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth.

(4) No person my unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds in terms of subsection (3). National legislation must be enacted to prevent or prohibit unfair discrimination.

(5) Discrimination on one or more of the grounds listed in subsection (3) is unfair unless it is established that the discrimination is fair.

Note: 

A version of this essay was published in South Africa under the title: The moment the ANC embraced gay rights, in the book, Sex and Politics in South Africa, Neville Hoad, Karen Martin and Graeme Reid (Editors), Double Storey Books, Cape Town, 2005

ENDS

tags: 

African National Congress

Albie Sachs ANC

anti-apartheid

Cecil Williams

emancipation

Ivan Toms

LGBT equality

liberation

National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality

Nelson Mandela

Organisation of Lesbian & Gay Activists

Peter Tatchell Foundation

Peter Tatchell

Ruth Mompati

Simon Nkoli

Solly Smith

South Africa

Thabo Mbeki

white supremacist

Nelson Mandela’s Howick arrest: Was it all a CIA Effort?

• J Brooks Spector
• South Africa
• 17 May 2016 01:30  from Daily Maverick

A real life half-century-old spy thrilleresque mystery is back in the news. How did the South African police manage to capture Nelson Mandela so easily outside Howick in KwaZulu-Natal? J. BROOKS SPECTOR takes a look at a new international wrinkle in this story.

This story reads like one of those really convoluted John LeCarre novels, or perhaps Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent. But before we even begin to tell this tale, the most recent news from Langley, the town in Northern Virginia where the CIA hangs its hat in the US, concerns the rather embarrassing information that the spies have accidentally managed to destroy their only copy of the US Senate’s report on torture at US hands.

In a rather awkward admission, according to Yahoo News, “The CIA inspector general’s office – the spy agency’s internal watchdog – has acknowledged it ‘mistakenly’ destroyed its only copy of a mammoth Senate torture report at the same time lawyers for the Justice Department were assuring a federal judge that copies of the document were being preserved…. The deletion of the document has been portrayed by agency officials to Senate investigators as an ‘inadvertent’ foul-up by the inspector-general. In what one intelligence community source described as a series of errors straight ‘out of the Keystone Cops’, CIA inspector-general officials deleted an uploaded computer file with the report and then accidentally destroyed a disk that also contained the document, filled with thousands of secret files about the CIA’s use of ‘enhanced’ interrogation methods.”

Big oops, that one, although they explained later they still had a computer copy squirrelled away somewhere in their puzzle palace. But mistakes do happen. Fortunately for some, at least, the Senate managed to hang onto its copy. And this latest miscue doesn’t count the exploding cigar they once contemplated as Fidel Castro’s last puff.

But internationally at least, almost certainly the worst blow to the CIA’s reputation in recent days surely has come from a reported deathbed confession made to filmmaker John Irvin, for his upcoming UK-SA joint feature film, “Mandela’s Gun”. The film hangs on the Russian-made Makarov pistol Nelson Mandela received from Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie in 1962 while he was on his journey through Africa to drum up support for the ANC. Among other places, he was in Ethiopia and then Algeria for hands-on tactical military training, before returning home via Bechuanaland (now Botswana, but at that time a British protectorate).

Interestingly, it seems that during this run of military training, while his first thoughts were that this prized pistol would be his first step in a real revolution, he was, instead, guided into considering the alternative idea that conflict was a means towards reaching an inevitable negotiated settlement, rather than serving as an end in itself for achieving a violent victory. 

This insight apparently came to Mandela decades before he publicly advocated that view and brought it fully into liberation struggle policy, after his release from prison, in tandem with ideas espoused by some other ANC/SACP figures like Joe Slovo.

During this period in the ‘60s, Mandela had earned the popular sobriquet, the “Scarlet Pimpernel”, for his ability to evade the South African authorities in his travels within the country, and by virtue of his ability to evade the authorities as he slipped beyond South Africa’s borders. However, Mandela’s return to South Africa and his subsequent travels in the country before his arrest were also a less than perfect demonstration of clandestine agent-style tradecraft in avoiding detection.

He arrived in Bechuanaland where he met theatre director (and SACP member) Cecil Williams in a pre-arranged rendezvous. Mandela was driven to Johannesburg and the ANC’s secret base at Lilliesleaf Farm in Rivonia, without passing through a border passport control gate, while in Williams’ distinctive Austin sedan. Williams and Mandela then used this same car to go on to Durban, and then, after meetings there with Albert Luthuli and others, the plan was to return to Johannesburg, but they were stopped and apprehended by the police at Howick in the Natal Midlands instead.

In Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela had written about the night before his departure from Durban, after meeting with Bruno Ntolo’s sabotage group. (Ntolo would later turn state’s witness in the Rivonia Trial, and some have pointed to him as the man who may have helped set up Mandela’s capture.) Mandela wrote of his day before his arrest, “Later that same evening, at the home of the photojournalist GR Naidoo, where I was staying, I was joined by Ismail and Fatima Meer, Monty Naicker, and JN Singh for what was a combination welcome-home party and going-away party” before setting off to Johannesburg. 

Of that gathering, Fatima Meer described the gathering, saying, “Nelson cut a large military figure in khaki, his laugh booming the familiar welcome as he embraced each friend. They drank and ate and discussed politics. They laughed a lot, excited by their intrigue. The police were looking for Nelson and here they were partying with him, virtually under their noses.” 

Clandestine tradecraft apparently was not much in evidence that evening. Then, the next day, on that return journey, still in the same car, and with Mandela rather casually disguised as Williams’ chauffer, David Motsamayi, the police caught up with the two men on the road, as Williams was driving the car – and the purported chauffeur was in the passenger seat instead.

Mandela biographer Martin Meredith wrote that as soon as word was out that the Pimpernel had been captured, “Everyone was convinced Mandela had been betrayed. Suspicion about who the culprit was ran wild. Even Sisulu was suspected in some quarters, for it was he who had insisted that Mandela should return to South Africa.

“There were persistent rumours that the United States Central Intelligence Agency was involved. Mandela’s links with communists had made him a target for US officials embroiled with the Soviet Union in a murky struggle for influence in a number of newly independent African states and obsessed with the need to contain communist encroachment in Africa. The CIA was active throughout southern Africa, keeping track of the activities of liberation movements there, determined to prevent what it saw as communist-supported armed intervention ‘under the guise of African liberation’. It found an ally in the South African government, which was only too willing to collaborate.

“…The CIA covert-operations section in Johannesburg had expended considerable energy penetrating the ANC. Its chief undercover agent, Millard Shirley, the son of American missionaries who had been born in South Africa had cultivated contacts at all levels of the organisation.”

Back in 1997 when he wrote this biography, Meredith had added that a US vice consul in Durban, Donald Rickard, had been overheard at a party in Durban saying that he had played a key part in Mandela’s arrest. Moreover, Meredith also mentioned a CIA station chief, Paul Eckel, who after his retirement had told a journalist, “We had turned Mandela over to the South African Security Branch. We gave them every detail.” Evaluating all this, Meredith also noted, “Given Mandela’s amateurish conduct in the days before his arrest, it was equally possible that the South African police already knew of his whereabouts from their own efforts.”

Rickard apparently ran with a rather wild crowd in Durban and he had made that comment while apparently inebriated and perhaps given to exaggeration and enthusiasm at a party hosted by the Irish-born “Mad” Mike Hoare. Hoare was the increasingly legendary and thoroughly infamous paratrooper turned mercenary who had carried out a number of raids around the continent for various shady purposes – and eventually carried out at least one coup attempt – in the Seychelles. Interestingly, after Rickard left Durban, despite the persistent rumours – clearly fuelled by his own comments – Rickard spent years denying the story. In 2012, for example, he told the Wall Street Journal, "That story has been floating around for a while. It's untrue. There's no substance to it.”

There things might have stayed, merely unsubstantiated rumours and much quiet finger pointing over who had sold Mandela to the CIA or the SA police, or to both (echoes of the famous line in 1984, “Under the spreading chestnut tree I sold you and you sold me…”), save for the fact that three years ago, in an interview when he was practically on his deathbed, Rickard recanted his repeated recantations and once again embraced his role as the crucial element in Mandela’s capture in 1962.

This interview was carried out for a film directed by John Irvin, a work now nearly finished, and entitled Mandela’s Gun. Rickard was quoted in the media as having told the filmmakers, Mandela was “completely under the control of the Soviet Union, a toy of the communists”. 

Given the nature of the Cold War struggle and a more than an occasional hot one throughout Africa, in Indochina, and given the circumstances of Castro’s Cuba, among other spots, the motivations and actions of CIA operatives, even when they were acting on their own, can be better understood and appreciated, even if not not condoned. Shades of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, perhaps.

The film’s storyline spins out from the now-missing Makarov pistol he had secured while in Ethiopia and Mandela’s travels in Africa on that journey. The point is that Mandela had said he buried it in a secure spot in the garden at Lilliesleaf – but the police never found it then, and it has never been recovered since by the police or anybody else – right until today.

Then, this past weekend, word of Rickard’s final confession in connection with this film leaked out into the world’s media through the British press, stirring up much more than a small cloud of interest, and more than a few frowns in the direction of the CIA – and the US more generally. By the end of the weekend, it had become a lead story on the BBC news broadcasts, and it was being reported globally on many platforms as effective confirmation of the long-circulating rumours about the CIA’s involvement. Yet one more nail in the tattered reputation of that agency, it would seem.

In response to this story, not surprisingly, ANC spokesman Zizi Kodwa announced over the weekend, “That revelation confirms what we have always known, that they are working against [us], even today. It's not thumbsucked, it’s not a conspiracy [theory]. It is now confirmed that it did not only start now [a reference to recent ANC charges that US exchange grants such as Mandela Washington Fellows are an element in a regime change agenda], there is a pattern in history.”

In reply, the US Embassy’s press officer, Cynthia Harvey, told us, “The US Embassy in Pretoria is aware of the story. We have no information about the claims made in these media reports. South Africa is a strategic partner and friend of the United States. The United States does not regard the democratically elected government of South Africa, and its strong democratic institutions, as a ‘regime’. Claims that we seek to undermine South African democracy run contrary to the spirit of the proud and longstanding relationship we have with South Africa.” 

It is almost certainly true that no documentation relating to this charge (one way or the other) would remain in the embassy after more than half a century, but elsewhere? There is, in fact, yet another possible element in this story – material that could have some distressing impacts on US-South African relations, 54 years after the event. Several years ago, an American academic researcher, a doctoral candidate at MIT, Ryan Shapiro, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for all documents still classified and held by various American government agencies, relating to America’s engagement with Nelson Mandela back in the 1960s. The government declined to comply with initial request on the grounds the request constituted a “fishing expedition”. It was far too broad and, therefore, they could not carry it out.

However, the researcher then went to court in January 2014 to compel the CIA to comply with his original FOIA request. So far, there has been no judgment on his appeal of his FOIA request, yet, let alone any disclosure of documents. But, if such a thing does happen and if they confirm what Rickard said at the end of his life, that will be a rather awkward and embarrassing moment for a number of people – and at least one government. DM

Photo: Dark rain clouds cover the newly erected Nelson Mandela Statue in Howick, KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, 06 August 2012. EPA/KIM LUDBROOK.

• J Brooks Spector
• South Africa

NELSON MANDELA DIED ON THURSDAY 5 DECEMBER 2013 - NOW READ,WATCH AND LISTEN TO THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE HYPOCRITICAL BULLSHIT!

Thank you again, Michael Leunig, for saying what I was trying to say in words, but the picture says it better!

The caption reads: Traditional Scene: bullies, liars and hypocrites weeping over the dead saint
(From The Age newspaper, 10 December 2013)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Nelson Mandela has died at the age of 95 after a long illness.

After all the tortures and difficulties he lived through over all those years, it is phenomenal that he lived to such a ripe old age.

And, in all the eulogies and stories about his life and struggles and political activities, those who worked and fought with him should not be forgotten. I refer to Cecil Williams who was in the car that Mandela was driving when he was arrested. The CIA had helped the apartheid regime track them down, and we get back to the tangled web that all of them were busy weaving - and are weaving - in the pernicious political climates of the 20th and 21st centuries.

The blather and bullshit and hypocrisy started on ABC1 television news on the night of Friday 6 December 2013. Bob Hawke was interviewed by Leigh Sales and Hawke stated about human rights and equality and how the blacks suffered in South Africa under the white apartheid regime.

These people don't hear themselves and don't see themselves in the context of apartheid in Australia and Australia's treatment of the Aboriginal communties in Australia.

Hawkes' next item of breathtaking hypocrisy was over economic sanctions to be applied to apartheid South Africa - Hawke stated that apartheid was evil and sanctions were necessary and helped bring the end of the apartheid South African state. However, Hawke is totally - and angrily - opposed to BDS - or economic sanctions - against the apartheid Israeli state - after all Israel is our great ally!

Barak Obama was also holding forth about Mandela and his achievements, but Obama is guilty of some of the biggest crimes we have seen in our lifetimes and we are in our late 80s! Mandela was in jail for 27 years and Private Manning has been jailed for 35 years for being a whistleblower on the crimes of the United States government - only ever increasing daily perpetrated by the Obama administration - just think about the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership agreements being attempted by 12 governments - at the moment!

The following is a post on Mondoweiss on 7 December 2013:

Obama’s Mandela eulogy — moving, and hypocritical
Dec 06, 2013 07:50 am | Matthew Taylor
“My very first political action, the first thing I ever did that involved an issue or a policy or politics, was a protest against apartheid,” President Obama said in his eloquent, moving, and hypocritical eulogy of Nelson Mandela. As a citizen activist Obama opposed apartheid, and today as president he is presiding over billions of dollars in military aid to an Israeli regime that, by any reading of international law, is committing the Crime of Apartheid against the Palestinian people.
“Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians,” Mandela famously said in 1997, and he favorably characterized the UN’s stance as “recognition that injustice and gross human rights violations were being perpetrated in Palestine” going as far back as 1977. Archbishop Demond Tutu and other South African leaders have equated Israel’s regime to Apartheid or worse, calling for boycott, divestment, and sanctions.
If Obama withheld aid to Israel conditional on Israel respecting international law, human rights, equality, and the relevant U.N. resolutions, his eulogy of Mandela would be delivered by a leader worthy of the stage. As it is, Obama is doing what so many other Presidents have done: co-opting a revolutionary to hide his own shame. It’s reminiscent of those in the U.S. government (including Obama) who glorify Dr. King’s “I have a dream speech” and the movement for racial equality, entirely eliding King’s criticism of the Vietnam War, his strident insistence on nonviolence as the basis for a just society, and his indictment of the U.S. Empire as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.”
Perhaps Obama feels he can do no better than he’s done, that he’s tied to the mat by the Israel lobby and any move to confront the Israelis on colonization, human rights violations, and so forth would be political suicide. However, in a second term with no re-election around the corner, could he not at least be as courageous as Bush Senior and condition some of the aid on a change in behavior? As ex-President, freed of political constraints, will he recover the courage he had as a citizen activist, and join today’s struggle against apartheid?

The following item is from Nation of Change, posted on 7 December 2013:

From Freedom Fighter to Political Prisoner to South African President

Juan Gonzalez

Democracy Now! / Video Feature

Published: Friday 6 December 2013

Democracy Now! air highlights of Mandela in his own words over the years including a rare TV interview from the eraly 1960s.

Former South African president and anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela has died at the age of 95. South African President Jacob Zuma announced Mandela's death Thursday saying, "Our nation has lost its greatest son. Our people have lost their father." Mandela was held as a political prisoner for 27 years from 1962 to 1990. In 1994, four years after his release from prison, Mandela became South Africa's first black president. We air highlights of Mandela in his own words over the years including a rare tv interview from the early 1960s.

The following is from Mondoweiss on 8 December 2013:

ISRAEL CELEBRATES MANDELA'S DEATH IN TRADITIONAL ISRAELI APARTHEID STYLE - WITH THEIR USUAL PANACHE AND FINESSE! 

Israeli military attacks Palestinian commemorations of Nelson Mandela
Dec 07, 2013 09:55 am | Kate

(Photo via Twitter)

Israeli forces attack protests commemorating Mandela across West Bank
[photos] RAMALLAH (Ma‘an) 6 Dec — Dozens of Palestinians were injured and one detained as Israeli forces opened fire to disperse protests against the Israeli occupation and commemorating Nelson Mandela’s death across the West Bank on Friday afternoon. Protests against the Israeli occupation and separation wall took place in villages across the West Bank, including in Bil‘in, al-Ma‘sara, Kafr Qaddum, and Nabi Saleh. Demonstrators raised slogans and posters of South African anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela in many villages, commemorating the legacy of the “freedom fighter” who passed away on Thursday … In Nabi Saleh, Israeli forces dispersed demonstrators who marched throughout the village raising Palestinian flags as well as photographs of Mustafa Tamimi, who was shot dead by Israeli forces at a similar rally in 2011. Israeli forces opened fire on the demonstrations throughout the day with tear gas, stun grenades, and rubber bullets. [details from all these villages]
link to www.maannews.net

........and this also from Mondoweiss on 6 December 2013 with Israeli hypocrisy and distortions shining through:

Shimon Peres on Mandela and Apartheid: Now & Then

Adam Horowitz on December 6, 2013 11

Now:

The world lost a great leader who changed the course of history. On behalf of the citizens of Israel we mourn alongside the nations of the world and the people of South Africa, who lost an exceptional leader. Nelson Mandela was a fighter for human rights who left an indelible mark on the struggle against racism and discrimination. He was a passionate advocate for democracy, a respected mediator, a Nobel peace prize laureate and above all a builder of bridges of peace and dialogue who paid a heavy personal price for his struggle in the years he spent in prison and fighting for his people. Nelson Mandela’s legacy for his people and for the world will forever remain engraved in the pages of history and the hearts of all those who were touched by him. He will be remembered forever.

From Shimon Peres’s Facebook page.

Then:

In November 1974, Shimon Peres came to Pretoria to meet secretly with South African leaders. After the trip he wrote to his hosts thanking them for helping to establish a “vitally important” link between the two governments. Peres — who routinely denounced apartheid in public — went on to stress that “this cooperation is based not only on common interests and on the determination to resist equally our enemies, but also on the unshakeable foundations of our common hatred of injustice and out refusal to submit to it.” Peres predicted that “the new links which you have helped to forge between our two countries will develop into a close identity of aspirations and interests which will turn out to be of longstanding benefit to our countries.” Over the next two decades Peres’s prediction would prove to be remarkably accurate.
He met South African defense minister P.W. Botha the following year in Switzerland, and it was there that the two ministers laid the foundation for an enduring military relationship.

From The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa,

 p. 80.

*************************************************************
From Antony Loewenstein, 10 December 2013:

What Mandela teaches Israel (but she isn’t listening)

The great Gideon Levy in Haaretz (and one of the finest columns on the death of the great South African, though Jonathan Cook’s dis­sent­ing view is vital):

South African Pres­i­dent Nel­son Man­dela, in his ad­dress for In­ter­na­tional Sol­i­dar­ity Day with the Pales­tin­ian Peo­ple on De­cem­ber 4, 1997, said: “We know too well that our free­dom is in­com­plete with­out the free­dom of the Pales­tini­ans.” And Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu said after Man­dela’s death: “Nel­son Man­dela was among the great­est fig­ures of our time … a man of vi­sion and … a moral leader of the high­est order.”

The sharp-eyed surely no­ticed the pic­ture in the back­ground when Ne­tanyahu de­liv­ered his state­ment: an Is­raeli flag and the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City. There he was, eu­lo­giz­ing the “moral leader” against the back­ground of the oc­cu­pied city, whose Pales­tin­ian res­i­dents are op­pressed and dis­pos­sessed. It’s a city where a sep­a­ra­tion regime pre­vails – an ex­am­ple of Is­raeli apartheid, even if it’s not the worst ex­am­ple. The sharp-eared must have no­ticed how false his flow­ery words sounded.

Pres­i­dent Shi­mon Peres also of­fered high praise for the “leader of im­mense stature,” and his words were no less hyp­o­crit­i­cal. The man who was in­volved up to his neck in the dis­grace­ful co­op­er­a­tion be­tween Is­rael and apartheid South Africa, who hosted its prime min­is­ters with pomp and cir­cum­stance while Man­dela lan­guished in prison, is sud­denly ad­mir­ing the man who sym­bol­ized the strug­gle with that regime.

Nei­ther Peres nor Ne­tanyahu have any right to eu­lo­gize Man­dela; both are re­spon­si­ble, more than any other states­men in the free world, for un­der­min­ing his legacy and es­tab­lish­ing the (non­iden­ti­cal) twin of the regime he bat­tled. They’re eu­lo­giz­ing him? Man­dela will turn in his grave and his­tory will laugh bit­terly.

Is­raeli pub­lic opin­ion tol­er­ates every­thing, even in­tol­er­a­ble, two-faced eu­lo­gies. But Is­raeli co­op­er­a­tion with the apartheid regime, and the con­tin­u­a­tion of its legacy in the oc­cu­pied ter­ri­to­ries, cry out be­yond the gloomy skies of a griev­ing South Africa.

The world’s mourn­ing should in­spire some pointed ques­tions here as well. Why was Is­rael vir­tu­ally the only coun­try that col­lab­o­rated with that evil regime? Why are so many good peo­ple con­vinced that Is­rael is an apartheid state? While it may not pay to dwell on past shame – even Man­dela for­gave Is­rael – ques­tions about the pre­sent should dis­turb us greatly.

In April I vis­ited the new South Africa that Man­dela had forged as a guest of its For­eign Min­istry. The visit was etched deeply in my heart, as com­par­isons to the Is­raeli oc­cu­pa­tion regime cried out from every stone, and with them also hope for change.

For ex­am­ple, there was the Supreme Court in Jo­han­nes­burg, built on the ruins of the prison where blacks were thrown when they dared enter for­bid­den areas to find work. And in Soweto I vis­ited Man­dela’s home, where you can still see the bul­let holes of a failed at­tempt at a “tar­geted killing.”

The com­par­isons echoed, as did the lessons. Roelf Meyer – a de­fense min­is­ter, con­sti­tu­tion min­is­ter and deputy min­is­ter of law and order dur­ing apartheid, and later chief ne­go­tia­tor with the African Na­tional Con­gress – told me: “If we had started a few years ear­lier, we could have pre­vented a lot of blood­shed and got­ten a bet­ter deal.” After beat­ing his breast over many sins, Meyer is now part of the new regime, like many whites.

An un­just state be­comes a just state; dis­crim­i­na­tion and dis­pos­ses­sion are re­placed by equal­ity and democ­racy. The scowl­ing faces tell of South Africa’s back­ward­ness and ris­ing crime, which are se­ri­ous prob­lems. But they don’t re­duce the enor­mity of the his­toric achieve­ment and its les­son for Is­rael: When a coun­try turns from un­just to just, every­thing else is dwarfed in com­par­i­son.

Man­dela proved that the dream is re­al­is­tic, that what seemed like a fan­tasy only 20 years ago is achiev­able, and with­out much blood­shed. He showed that en­e­mies of the past can live to­gether in one coun­try and even have equal­ity; that a new chap­ter can be opened against all odds.

Man­dela said he was not lib­er­ated as long as the Pales­tini­ans were not free. Those in Is­rael who seek to eu­lo­gize him can’t con­tinue to ig­nore this.

From Jonathan Cook's blog, 6 December 2013:

A dissenting opinion on Nelson Mandela

6 December 2013

What I am going to write here will doubtless make me unpopular with some readers, even if only because they will assume that what follows about Nelson Mandela is disrespectful. It is not.
So let me start by recognising Mandela’s huge achievement in helping to bring down South African apartheid, and make clear my enormous respect for the great personal sacrifices he made, including spending so many years caged up for his part in the struggle to liberate his people. These are things impossible to forget or ignore when assessing someone’s life.

Nonetheless it is important to pause during the general acclamation of his legacy, mostly by people who have never demonstrated a fraction of his integrity, to consider a lesson that most observers want to overlook.

Perhaps the best way to make my point is to highlight a mock memo written in 2001 by Arjan el-Fassed, from Nelson Mandela to the NYT’s columnist Thomas Friedman. It is a wonderful, humane denunciation of Friedman’s hypocrisy and a demand for justice for the Palestinians that Mandela should have written.

Soon afterwards, the memo spread online, stripped of el-Fassed’s closing byline. Many people, including a few senior journalists, assumed it was written by Mandela and published it as such. It seemed they wanted to believe that Mandela had written something as morally clear-sighted as this about another apartheid system, one at least the equal of that imposed for decades on black South Africans.

However, the reality is that it was not written by Mandela, and his staff even went so far as to threaten legal action against the author.

Mandela spent most his adult life treated as a “terrorist”. There was a price to be paid for his long walk to freedom, and the end of South Africa’s system of racial apartheid. Mandela was rehabilitated into an “elder statesman” in return for South Africa being rapidly transformed into an outpost of neoliberalism, prioritising the kind of economic apartheid most of us in the west are getting a strong dose of now.

In my view, Mandela suffered a double tragedy in his post-prison years.

First, he was reinvented as a bloodless icon, one that other leaders could appropriate to legitimise their own claims, as the figureheads of the “democratic west”, to integrity and moral superiority. After finally being allowed to join the western “club”, he could be regularly paraded as proof of the club’s democratic credentials and its ethical sensibility.



Second, and even more tragically, this very status as icon became a trap in which he was forced to act the “responsible” elder statesman, careful in what he said and which causes he was seen to espouse. He was forced to become a kind of Princess Diana, someone we could be allowed to love because he rarely said anything too threatening to the interests of the corporate elite who run the planet.

It is an indication of what Mandela was up against that the man who fought so hard and long against a brutal apartheid regime was so completely defeated when he took power in South Africa. That was because he was no longer struggling against a rogue regime but against the existing order, a global corporate system of power that he had no hope of challenging alone.

It is for that reason, rather than simply to be contrarian, that I raise these failings. Or rather, they were not Mandela’s failings, but ours. Because, as I suspect Mandela realised only too well, one cannot lead a revolution when there are no followers.

For too long we have slumbered through the theft and pillage of our planet and the erosion of our democratic rights, preferring to wake only for the release of the next iPad or smart phone.

The very outpouring of grief from our leaders for Mandela’s loss helps to feed our slumber. Our willingness to suspend our anger this week, to listen respectfully to those leaders who forced Mandela to reform from a fighter into a notable, keeps us in our slumber. Next week there will be another reason not to struggle for our rights and our grandchildren’s rights to a decent life and a sustainable planet. There will always be a reason to worship at the feet of those who have no real power but are there to distract us from what truly matters.

No one, not even a Mandela, can change things by him or herself. There are no Messiahs on their way, but there are many false gods designed to keep us pacified, divided and weak.