Nelson Mandela, at last…

  Well, it seems that the last whisks of the Great Mandela Mania are sweeping past to their ultimate oblivion. It must certainly have been a major expression of global adoration the world has ever witnessed in historical times. I cannot think of any one person that has caused such a universal enthusiasm for reasons not well understood but must have been in the sense how the downtrodden can rise and triumph over their captors. How Mr. Mandela managed to achieve that almost sublime status is a complete mystery to me and to many others I expect.

After all, South Africa is rather an obscure country in world matters, still much more so in 1963 when a young black man was jailed for life and only just escaped the rope. He was convicted of treason which crime can only be proclaimed by treasonable governments upon their citizens. As a youngster I was almost caught several times for treasonable actions against a government that had been accepted as legitimate by all the statesmen of Europe and America. Had I been caught it would have been a bullet as this murderous Hitler government had invaded the Netherlands and, with others, I tried to get back our freedom.

However, Mandela was locked up by regime of people who knew all about fighting for their liberty, their battle had lasted for more than a hundred years against the, then, almighty English, inventors, under the noble Kitchener, of concentration camps that inspired Hitler thirty years later.

Idiot commentators have tried to compare this Afrikaner government to Hitler’s nazis.  Had this been the case, Robben Island would have remained empty, as prisoners would not have stayed alive.

The truth is, the Afrikaners were caught between opposing powerful forces; Stalin’s communist, armed invasion into Africa and the start of the European socialist welfare state that condemned partial oppression of a population and insisted on a one man, one vote state. Just after WW2, no one in his right mind in South Africa was going to suggest a regime of one-man one vote because, without doubt, the building work, after the devastating Boer War whereby the British had wrecked the country and the Boer population, would have been destroyed. A black president and government in 1948 would have turned the country into a very large Haiti. This notion is so self-evident that  there’s no need to insist.

And so Nelson Mandela stayed locked up for 27 years. There must have been occasions when he could have escaped but apparently he didn’t bother, after a while he was well looked after by his Afrikaner gaolers as Robben Island fulfilled its function as The University for black students in South Africa.

During the eighties when I was often in England it seemed that his adoration had not yet taken off because ‘Free Mandela’ graffiti was often turned into “Free Mandela, with every packet of rice crispies.” Not very complimentary!

I think his popularity really took off with Afrikaner president De Klerk’s announcement of his liberation when the communist Berlin Wall came down. It seemed to the Mandela worshippers that, at last, the people of the struggle against apartheid with Mandela as leader had vanquished the detestable apartheid government.

Quite a wrong notion of course because the strugglers could not have moved an inch military wise.

All that happened was that president de Klerk had kept his Afrikaner political promise that, once bolshevik communism was no more a threat, apartheid would be disbanded.

If anyone knows of kept political promises, please let me know.

That year, 1990, started verily the veneration for Nelson Mandela and I‘ve often wondered who his promoter or publicity agent was. I can’t find anyone. Of course he had aged well, undoubtedly learned from his Afrikaner friends that their government could not have acted differently. Almost 30 years is a long apprenticeship!  While many of his ‘comrades’ were only interested to acquire ‘Power’ in order to become seriously rich, Mandela managed to steer white and black towards a compromise that finished up as the country’s much lauded constitution that, apparently, is still much admired today. It’s full of human rights and similar bullshit but its great flaw is that 4000 members of the reigning political party can decide who will be the president, bugger the rest of the 20 million voters. It’s easy to buy only 2500 members, 5000 dollars of tax money per crook will do.

Before Mandela became president in 1994 he had a few ideas that, fortunately, were not put into practice such as his notion that the vote should be given to 14 year old children and, of course, the nationalisation of the gold mines, banks and whatever business that showed a profit.

Don’t forget, showing a profit is anathema in socialist thinking. Had Mandela’s notions been put into practice, war would have resulted but saner ideas were put forward and ruinous socialist ideas were abandoned. The result is that many of his admirers now blame him for having sold out to the bloody capitalists in 1994.

These same admirers now feel free to rob the state blind and rake in what they could have stolen legitimately under a socialist regime.

Mandela’s popularity rose and rose and  even eclipsed drugged, drunk and stoned rappers and shouters of the bunny and tit brigade who, today, are called artists.

Just as well.

He was lucky to have some smart people to help in his new government because, after all, what could be expected of a fellow who had never worked in his life, whose studies had been paid for by the government he had strived against, who, in fact, had lived his whole life from other people’s money (OPM).  But then, most governments today are directed by people who could never earn any honest money in private business, they are all members of the OPM  club.

At the end of his presidency, the president with many of his colleagues had made sure that starvation threats had been taken care off. He had realised that the Afrikaners had had a much tougher battle against the English than the black people against the Afrikaners and he made good friends with them. Personally, he did not want any black people to assist him, he much preferred an Afrikaans young lady.

We will never know what he thought of his successors but I think it can’t have been good. Last year the 15^th of December I wrote that he had to be dead, what with a wrecked aeroplane full of doctors about which all news was silenced, and a miraculous appearance of Madiba in a Pretoria hospital. Since that day a full year later minus a week, Mr. Mandela has not uttered one word or, if he did, it has been muffled. How can it have happened that this so much beloved man has been kept in silent secrecy for a year? For certain, it must be the present government that is behind this mystery or is it only its president? Will we ever know?

His body, of course, has been shown around with much pump and circumstance. Presidents of countries had a good laugh with their photocell phones as another black statesman had kicked the bucket. There are so many, you know.

Evidently, the military did the necessary carting around. These well-fed officers of a now totally defunct army and navy were in luck to have uniform jackets with a slit in the back to accommodate their fat arses, quite comical.

Just as well there was still a white governed engineering company to hastily construct a very well built dome for the ultimate ceremony of Madiba’s burial, otherwise the cows grazing the same ground would have participated. He might have liked that.