Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement -- My Homage to Mandela's Life

My Homage to Mandela’s Life

Regarding the mainstream media’s news coverage of Nelson Mandela’s life, death and burial, I am at once disgusted, annoyed and cynically pleased. I’m old enough to have been there when the Boer Apartheid Afrikaner South African government was considered to be one of this country’s closest, most dependable allies. I remember when U.S. government officials ignored and spurned our petitions and demonstrations for a change in our foreign policy, and when the mainstream media ignored and belittled our efforts -- including our call for a boycott of Shell gasoline. I remember when we began demonstrating daily at the South African embassy and, in waves, got arrested (waves that included me and later, my young son); how hard we worked for just a few seconds of news coverage. I remember our commitment, juxtaposed against the feeling of futility.

Now from newspapers, the TV and radio, one would think that everyone in the media and world-power leadership always loved Mandela. I’m sorry. I remember when they called him a radical communist and an anarchist criminal who tried to overthrow the duly elected democratic government -- not paying heed to the fact the government was elected by minority ruling oppressors. Just the other day, I saw on TV an old clip of former National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, the one-time face of our government’s apologist endorsement of apartheid, flip-flopping to suddenly condemn the racist system. Almost daily I see some of the older TV news broadcasters now heaping praise on the same Mandela they once disparaged and belittled and who was still on the U.S. terrorism watch list in 2008.

Well, as they say, ‘History books are written by the victors.’

But some of us remember and would like to set the history straight. Our beloved “democratic” country has had a habit of supporting oppressive governments until it becomes inconvenient and then saying ‘it wasn’t so’ (like the Shah of Iran, Pinochet, Batista, Marcos, Mubarak, and a long list of others). Some of us also remember that it has always been an insiders’ club, with those oppressive governments supporting each other -- especially those that denied human rights to the original inhabitants of a country they occupied and eventually controlled (e.g., South Africa, the U.S. and Israel). [For those who do not know the history, one of the most strident advocates of the creation of the Israeli state in the Palestinian Territories was Apartheid South Africa.]

Therefore, in celebration of Mandela’s life, I would like to offer up my thoughts about ongoing struggles against racism -- including the struggles of the Palestinian and Native American peoples. (Mandela was always a champion of the rights of indigenous peoples, so I write this in his honor.)

First I would like to make some observations about the commonality of the psyche issues shared by some of the recent oppressor groups around the globe (using extremely simplified histories).

South Africa -- In order to escape oppressions in Europe, the Boers (of Dutch, German and French Huguenots ancestry) came to the Cape Colony (Cape Town), Africa when it was being colonized by the Dutch East India Company. The Boers’ independent streak soon caused them to rebel, but soon after, the area came under British rule and they had a new adversary. For the Boers, the discriminatory British colonialism (against them, not Africans) was even worse, and they struck out for the interior, establishing the Boer Republics which would later evolve into South Africa.

Feeling under attack from all sides and oppressed by other white colonizers, the Boers used their European weaponry to subdue the indigenous populations and established a strict policy of segregation between themselves and their semi-enslaved native Africans. Subsequently, even thought they were the dominant population, and even though they presented a demeanor of being in command and control, many Afrikaners never lost their national feeling of insecurity.

The United States -- Note that the above history is strikingly similar to the history of those who settled the part of North America that later became the U.S. -- the same escape to a wide open (but indigenously occupied) foreign land by a people that had been the object of persecution. One major difference was that instead of enslaving the Native Americans, the colonists used their European weaponry, to commit wholesale genocide. That was partially because most Native Americans were difficult to enslave, and partially because they found another source of labor -- Africans who were ripped from their homeland and brought to the Americas bereft of their traditional supportive environments. Years later, when the mass slaughter became unwieldy, Natives were eventually imprisoned on “reservations” (which, interestingly enough, bear a striking resemblance to the South African Bantustans).

As the U.S. government matured and others from all over Europe migrated to the new country, those in the North seemed to shed their feeling of national inferiority. It was different in the South where the economy was heavily dependent on African slaves, and the Civil War soon followed. Unlike the Boers in Africa, after the South lost that war, they had nowhere else to go to establish a new country -- but they were allowed to maintain their mode of governmental segregation and racist oppression in the U.S. So they stayed where they were and established the post-Civil War, segregated society. The legacy was clear to anyone who visited the “Old South” up to and through the 1960s. While the old guard Southerners maintained a swagger of authority, there was an undercurrent sense of insecurity.

Israel -- After decades of discrimination in Europe and the Soviet Union, an immediate homeland for Jews became the dream of a small set of European Zionist Jews who did not want to wait for the coming of the Messiah. After WWII and revelations about the Holocaust, that call was picked up by many Jews around the world, and they were determined to establish a country where they could feel safe and secure. They considered a number of places, including in South America and northern Africa, but decided on the Palestinian Territories. Using their considerable influence (and goodwill generated by their support for the Allied Powers in the war) they were able to secure international acceptance for their quest, and began to migrate to that area en mass. Unfortunately for the Zionists, the Palestinian inhabitants were not willing to walk away from their ancestral lands, but the Zionists, with their advanced weaponry and Western backing, were able to take over and marginalize the Palestinians.

As was the case in the other examples, the Zionist feeling of superiority was undercut by a national feeling of insecurity and inferiority, and that made peaceful and equal coexistence with Palestinians impossible. The Israeli government instituted what amounts to a modern day policy of apartheid -- with the result that many neighboring (and even European) countries became antagonistic. This only antagonized the Israeli government more, and made them even more belligerent (with understandable pushback repercussions from the Palestinians and their international allies).

The South African freedom struggle was a unique exception in the annals of oppression. While many of the problems of injustice and a stratified society based on race still exist in South Africa today, the end of formalized apartheid in South Africa was the result of an unparalleled confluence of factors.

One, the Boers were only a small minority of the population.
Two, the South African Afrikaner government did not have many reliable patrons in the international community.
Three, in the 1980s, African descendants in the Diaspora (the U.S. and elsewhere) along with their non-Black supporters, took up the cause and began to put pressure on corporations doing business with South Africa and on their respective governments. It took a number of years, but eventually the mass media picked up on the oppression and brutality of the murderous apartheid system, and the boycotts picked up steam. The stranglehold of sanctions eventually led to a loss of confidence by the international global banking complex, and (as with Iran in 2013), South Africa’s internal economy was in shambles.
Four, it should be understood that the fight against Apartheid did not begin in the 1980s. It began when the Boers first moved onto the African tribal lands (and it continues against the vestiges of Apartheid today). Nelson Mandela [one many African National Congress (ANC) past presidents] was not the first leader of the struggle, nor will he be the last. Besides the ANC, there were many indigenous African organizations fighting Apartheid, including the BCM, BEE, BPC, NUSAS, SASO, and others; and there have been more leaders for their struggle than can be listed here. Like many of them, Mandela was bold, brave, insightful and a powerful speaker; but by the mid-1950s he had one quality almost none of the other leaders had -- an interracially loving deportment. (In his earlier years he had been quite militant, even traveling abroad for military training and becoming the Commander in Chief of the combative Spear of the Nation organization.) By the 1960s, he embraced all others, including those who would do harm to him and his cause. (In this way, he was not unlike Gandhi and Dr. King.) As a result, although he called for massive change, he was not as threatening as other freedom fighters to many non-Blacks in South Africa, and he was also easily accepted by the mainstream media abroad. While he definitely was selected by his people to head the ANC, he was not the only leader the South Africans were willing to follow. [Steve Biko for instance, of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM), had a large national following, but except for more militant supporters in other countries, his name was rarely heard abroad.] So, to a certain extent, Mandela was the non-Blacks’ choice of a leader whom they could work with if Apartheid was going to end.
Five, and lastly, the anti-Apartheid struggle was significantly benefited when F.W. de Klerk was elected President after P. W. Botha (a strict hard-liner) resigned during the financial crisis. Although de Klerk was also an advocate of strict segregation, surprisingly he turned out to be more of a realist who helped engineer the end of minority white rule.
The factors were unique: an internationally unpalatable, despotic and cruel minority rule; a sympathetic large majority; a crippling boycott; an acceptable all-loving leader; and a government headed by someone whose sense of insecurity and inferiority did not cause him to become belligerent and self-destructive in order to stave off defeat. Government sponsored Apartheid in South Africa was over.

In the United States, it was different. In the struggles for human rights by Native Americans and the Black descendants of Africans there have been some limited successes and some mitigated failures.

For Blacks in the U.S., there were many parallels to the anti-Apartheid struggle (as there continues to be). Their struggles against enslavement began when their ancestors were loaded onto boats, and continued through a multitude of organizations they created, led by a wide variety of leaders. Their eventual successes in the 1960s were aided by the media’s designation of an interracially loving leader, Dr. King (the media’s choice from a cacophony of much more militant voices), and also by Kennedy’s assassination and the ensuing installation of President, Lyndon Johnson (a Southern voice who surprisingly became a champion of change).
In the U.S., for Blacks there were also some differences -- differences that comparatively made the movement towards equality less effective. Blacks, while a sizable minority, did not have percentages rivaling those of Black South Africans; and while the brutality in the mid-twentieth century was onerous, it did not rise to the level of the beatings, lynchings and other acts of violence from an earlier time (nor to the levels in South Africa). Finally, when the international spotlight focused on the dogs and fire hoses in Birmingham, Alabama, and the local Southern white leaders evidenced the same insecurity and inferiority coupled with the bravado seen in South Africa; huge numbers of whites in other parts of the U.S. and (more importantly) in the U.S. government felt a sense of shame. Collectively, those whites decided it was time for change. That was the death knell for the old overt Southern segregation.
On the other hand, for Native Americans in the U.S., the picture has been much more dire -- and the future does not look much better. The most obvious parallels to the South African situation are that the colonizers/invaders came to a populated continent, stole the land, murdered thousands of the indigenous people, imprisoned them in penal-like colonies (reservations); and continue to treat them as second-class citizens.
There were many dissimilarities. Natives were divided into many, sometimes warring, tribes and did not present anything near a united front. While there was almost complete accord among Natives against European occupation, they were divided and easily subjected, so that by the mid-twentieth century, colonization had reached the stage where Natives were flocking to join the Marine Corps to prove their patriotism. Other dissimilarities include: population percentages were small compared to non-Natives (especially by the mid-twentieth century); there has never been support from national-elected U.S. leadership (or the non-Native public in general) for the Native American struggles; nor has there ever been significant external pressure from other countries to address the inequities suffered by Natives. Finally, and possibly most importantly, during the time when Natives were battling against colonization, no major Native leader came forth to offer a compromise solution -- no interracially loving leader who could bridge the divide between Native anger/resentment and European avarice.
The result is that, in 2013, inequity is still rampant, life on the reservations is horrendous for most; and despite the fact that almost nobody would ever think of using the “N word” publically about Blacks, a major national-franchise football team continues to use the Native slur equivalent with impunity.

In Israel, for the Palestinians, the outlook also looks dim.

At this time, despite the many similarities with the anti-Apartheid struggle, over the past two decades the plight of the Palestinians and the potential for improvement may have gotten worse. To understand why, it is important to understand the conflicting calls for the “right of return.” Before WWII, most Jews around the world were content to wait for the coming of the Messiah and the call for a right of return for a homeland was more theoretical. For the Palestinians who had been living there before Israel was created, the right of return is more concrete, and many still have the keys for their pre-invasion houses. The Holocaust changed that for most Jews, but even so, not all Jews are Zionists, and not even all Jews in Israel are Zionists. Some do believe in a pluralist, democratic state, and back in the early 1990s, things were actually looking up . . . until 1995 when the liberal Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, was assonated by right-wing Zionists. Since then, things have gone downhill and there is almost no talk of compromise with Palestinians in the occupied territories, or of equal treatment for Israeli-Palestinians within the country. The hardening of attitude and the ascendency of the extreme hard-liners has been incredible. (Notably this happened in tandem with intensified feelings of insecurity and defensiveness in the population -- feelings that are fueled by bombastic, belligerent leaders and willing internal media.)
The similarities to South Africa include: colonizers/invaders that stole the land and treated the indigenous as second-class citizens; a history of valiant struggle against the occupiers; and an international community (with the exception of the U.S.) that supports their struggle for equality.
The dissimilarities include: a combined total Palestinian population that leaves them in the minority, although probably a larger percentage of the population than Blacks had in the U.S. in the 1960s -- that is inclusive of Palestinians in Israel (Palestinian-Israeli citizens), Palestinians in the occupied territories (the West Bank and Gaza), and Palestinians in the dreary and hopeless refugee camps located in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria; the schism over the conflicting dreams for the right to return; Israel’s economic independence coupled with patronage from the U.S. that renders boycott attempts mostly ineffective; and a totally unsympathetic Zionist government that shows no sign of acknowledging that any of their policies could be inhumane or counterproductive. Also missing is an interracially loving Palestinian leader who can bridge the gap between the anger and frustration of his/her people and the deep-seated insecurities of the Zionist Jews.

In conclusion (and in tribute to Mandela’s memory) it is easy for an outsider to second-guess Palestinian leadership. For years Yasser Arafat, [Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and past President of the Palestinian National Authority] directly challenged Israel’s right to exist. In fact, in effect, Mandela also challenged his own country’s right to exist and worked for its government’s destruction, but he was insightful enough not to say so directly. Arafat’s challenge, as well as by others in the PLO and in the more hard-line Hamas, was taken by the Zionists as a direct threat to their right to exist, and it played on their worst fears. That confrontation has led to continued violence on both sides and even more belligerence by the Zionists.

(In retrospect, Arafat’s words, not his end goal, were as much a part of the problem as the Zionists’ insecurities. Mandela spoke of coexistence and loving his former oppressors, with the result that the old Afrikaner South African government has met its demise and now ceases to exist. If Arafat could have challenged the bigotry instead of the terminology, and made Zionists feel at least somewhat comfortable with a pluralist society, maybe things would be different today.)

In all fairness, it was easier in South Africa where Blacks were in the vast majority, and yielding to give them the vote led inexorably to the Boer regime’s demise. Also, the Boers knew in their hearts they were not Africans, but colonizers in the truest sense of the word. Most Jews in Israel seem to believe they are the direct descendants of the original inhabitants of that region, and despite their European features and physical appearance, they feel they have a legitimate claim to the land on which Israel sits.

[Sidebar note -- This bears some resemblance to the attitude of many U.S. non-Natives who call themselves “Americans” and seem to have totally wiped out the memory that their ancestors came from other places: and the reality that their homes, farms and businesses sit on land stolen from the indigenous people.]

The Palestinian struggle for justice is also made more complicated by the populations divided between the occupied territories and Israeli-Palestinian (who, despite their second-class status, often seem to be more timid about rocking the boat). The general consensus among Palestinian leaders in the occupied territories is that they now want a “two-state” solution (an Israel country AND a Palestine country; i.e., accepting the Jewish state’s right to exist and requesting a similar one for the Palestinians) -- but how does that help the Israeli-Palestinians who have built their lives in Israel? Putting aside for the moment whether the Zionists would allow the creation of a Palestinian country, how would the two separate islands of Palestinian populations in “occupied” land (the West Bank and Gaza) combine to create a single viable country? How could they prosper economically? What would happen to the impoverished refugees in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria? (Israel certainly would not vacate their commandeered Palestinian properties -- they have already changed the locks.)

Another possibility of course, is a single state solution. Assuming the Zionists would be willing to grant Palestinians full citizenship and the right to vote (which is doubtful), the combined Palestinians populations would insure them a powerful, and possibly almost equal voice in the Knesset (Israel’s legislature). If the Zionists refused to have free and fair elections, the international pressure to force Israel to implement true democracy might be too powerful for even the U.S. to counteract. Unfortunately, given the deep-seated anger of the Palestinians, especially those in the occupied territories, it seems highly unlikely that they would consider such a solution, and even more unlikely that they would be willing to support an interracially loving leader who could pull it all together.

One truth about Mandela seems to be that he was BOTH a revolutionary and a pragmatist. He was not afraid of fighting and of dying for his cause, but he took the axiom “by any means necessary” to mean that if a peaceful/loving solution worked better than a violent one, then he would leave the latter behind and become an advocate of the former. It worked, and so today, millions around the world have conveniently forgotten how they once disparaged him and they now sing his praises.

Rest easy great warrior. Others will carry on your struggle.

Copyright ©
Copyright to this web page, as a web page, belongs to this web site.
� Copyright to the article above belongs to the author.

Webspinner: webmaster@crmvet.org
(Labor donated)