It’s time to stand up against the disgraceful and dishonest assault on the name and legacy of Nelson Mandela.
The former president, we were told by peacetime revolutionary Mbuyiseni Ndlozi in December, opining from the warmth of his taxpayer-funded house, “sold out” black people. The EFF MP was at it again last week, saying “the only thing we can point at is that (Mandela) became the first black president ... Other than that, there’s nothing to show for our freedom. Black people remain landless — 27 years after Mandela’s democracy.”
Ndlozi is not the only one. Anyone who can purchase a cheap army-style combat suit from a department store and pretend to be a firebrand is at it these days. They prattle on and on about Mandela, while they do nothing except tweet.
Their lies must stop. Mandela fought with every sinew of his body to gift SA the immense opportunity that is called freedom and democracy. Our job was to use this opportunity, to turn the thin gruel left to us by apartheid in 1994 into a truly great non-racial democracy and world-class economy. If we have failed to do so, then leave Mandela out if it. His work on this Earth was done, and beautifully so, by the time he left the political stage in May 1999.
Yet today, with nauseating frequency, we are assaulted by the words of political leaders who have achieved nothing except a nasty habit of rubbishing the names of those who have gifted them the freedom and space to be where they are today.
According to Ndlozi, Mandela wasted the 27 years he spent in prison because it “resulted in an empty reconciliation deal”. I am shocked that anyone could be so cruel and callous about someone spending 27 years in jail for fighting for freedom, but I should have expected that from this classless, crass EFF MP. Only an illiterate would be ignorant of the fact that Mandela was confronting white supremacy as far back as the 1940s and 1950s. Mandela was a proud black man throughout his life — Ndlozi’s puerile attempt to paint him as a docile “yes man” of whites is nauseating and ahistorical.
Mandela took up arms and formed a real army, Umkhonto we Sizwe, in the 1960s knowing he could be hanged. Ndlozi tweets populist lies, comfortable in the knowledge that the only danger to him is a tongue-lashing from his boss, Julius Malema.
Mandela took up arms and formed a real army, Umkhonto we Sizwe, in the 1960s knowing he could be hanged. Ndlozi tweets populist lies, comfortable in the knowledge that the only danger to him is a tongue-lashing from his boss, Julius Malema. Mark my word, before long Ndlozi will be singing the praises of former president Jacob Zuma, a man he has called a “constitutional delinquent”, at the instruction of his boss. That’s the kind of spinelessness and hypocrisy we are dealing with here.
What is hilarious about the likes of Ndlozi is that their words scorn Mandela, but their actions flatter him. Malema styles himself “commander in chief” of these peacetime revolutionaries. Well, in the 1950s while leading the Defiance Campaign, Mandela was “volunteer in chief” of the ANC. When he led Umkhonto we Sizwe, a real guerrilla outfit fighting for freedom, Mandela’s title was “commander in chief”. The EFF, a kindergarten army with no identifiable enemy, steals the Mandela nomenclature — and calls its members “fighters”.
It’s laughable.
If Ndlozi read a bit more he would be embarrassed by just how unoriginal his organisation is. Mandela has walked virtually every step and uttered every slogan the EFF is mouthing. He did it all 55 years ago. Yet this imitative lot insults him while stealing his ideas and mimicking his actions.
In the 1950s Mandela went out of his way to embarrass the apartheid regime and draw attention to its cruelty and lack of legitimacy through actions such as the Defiance Campaign. Mandela did not do these things for tweets. He was fighting an illegitimate, oppressive government. He faced death.
The criticism and racist labelling of Mandela is shallow, at best, and dishonest at worst. We are told that the “sunset clauses” are what keeps black South Africans poor. Rubbish. The sunset clauses were put in place to ensure parties that got 10% or more were included in the first government of national unity in 1994. They fell away in 1999.
Since then the powers of any party voted for by South Africans are nearly unfettered if they get the requisite support of the electorate or strike deals with other elected parties. What is needed to transform SA is political will, commitment to clean and efficient government, and imagination. Not the nauseating grievance parade and dishonesty displayed by the EFF and Ndlozi.
Let Nelson Mandela be. He ran his race. He ran it with grace, humility, love, courage and, above all, honesty and dignity. Let him be. The EFF and others must raise their eyes to the future, as Mandela did, and learn to lead with courage, honesty and imagination. Who knows, they might grow to be half the man he was. But I doubt it.
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