Winnie Mandela accuses
Nelson of 'betraying'
the blacks of South Africa
Nelson Mandela has been accused by his former wife of betraying South Africa's black population.
In a savage attack, Winnie Mandela said he had done nothing for the poor and should not have accepted the Nobel peace prize with the man who jailed him, FW de Klerk.
The 73-year-old said her ex-husband had become a 'corporate foundation' who was 'wheeled out' only to raise money for the ANC party he once led.
Nelson Mandela and wife Winnie walk hand-in hand-with after Mandela's release from prison
She said Archbishop Desmond Tutu was a cretin and claimed the sacrifices of Steve Biko and others in the fight against apartheid were being overlooked.
The comments were made in an interview yesterday with Nadira Naipaul, the wife of novelist V S Naipaul.
Mrs Mandela became notorious in 1991 when she was jailed for six years for the kidnap of Stompie Moeketsi - a sentence later cut to a fine.
Stompie, 14, had been murdered three years earlier by members of Mrs Mandela's bodyguard, the Mandela United Football Club.
Party: Nelson and Winnie Mandela in 2004
She also caused outrage by endorsing the punishment of apartheid collaborators with ' necklacing' - putting burning tyres around their necks.
Yesterday she said: 'This name Mandela is an albatross around the necks of my family.
'You all must realise that Mandela was not the only man who suffered. There were many others, hundreds who languished in prison and died.
'Mandela did go to prison and he went in there as a young revolutionary but look what came out.
'Mandela let us down. He agreed to a bad deal for the blacks. Economically we are still on the outside. The economy is very much "white".
'I cannot forgive him for going to receive the Nobel with his jailer de Klerk. Hand in hand they went. Do you think de Klerk released him from the goodness of his heart?
'He had to. The times dictated it, the world had changed.'
The pair pictured together in 1990
The Mandelas, who divorced in 1996, were married for 38 years - although together for only five.
Mrs Mandela criticised her country's Truth and Reconciliation Committee - which she appeared before in 1997 and which implicated her in gross violations of human rights.
She said: 'What good does the truth do? How does it help to anyone to know where and how their loved ones are killed or buried?
'That Bishop Tutu who turned it all into a religious circus came here. He had a cheek to tell me to appear.
'I told him that he and his other like-minded cretins were only sitting there because of our struggle and me. Look what they make him do. The great Mandela. He has no control or say any more.
'They put that huge statue of him right in the middle of the most affluent white area of Johannesburg. Not here [in Soweto] where we spilled our blood.
'Mandela is now like a corporate foundation. He is wheeled out globally to collect the money.'
She said her daughters, Zenani, 51, and Zindzi, 50, had to struggle through red tape to speak to their 91-year-old father, who led South Africa from 1994 to 1999.
Ex-wife criticizes
Nelson Mandela – and
many South Africans agree
Nelson Mandela ‘let us down,’ the London Evening Standard reported ex-wife Winnie Mandela as saying. Many black South Africans expected more economic progress by now.
Schalk van Zuydaml/AP/File
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA
Just days after honoring her former husband, Nelson Mandela, for his courage during the anti-apartheid struggle on the 20th anniversary of his release from prison, Winnie Mandela was quoted this week in an interview in the London Evening Standard, saying the former South Africanpresident and Nobel Peace Prize winner had “agreed to a bad deal for the blacks.”
“Mandela did go to prison and he went in there as a burning revolutionary,” she told journalist Nadira Naipaul, wife of acclaimed writer V.S. Naipaul, in the Evening Standard interview. “But look what came out. Mandela let us down.”
The African National Congress (ANC), the ruling party to which both Nelson Mandela and his ex-wife Winnie Mandela belong, refused to comment, saying that they wished to speak with Mrs. Mandela first to ascertain whether the comments in the newspaper were actually hers. Mrs. Mandela was said to be unreachable by phone, while traveling in the United States.
It would be very easy to chalk up Winnie Mandela’s statements as merely the utterings of a bitter ex-wife who had grown apart from her husband during the 33 years of their 38-year marriage that he spent in prison; who had borne the brunt of the apartheid government’s repression as an above-ground ANC leader; who felt betrayed when her husband didn’t back her during a fraud trial, and a murder trial involving her raucous band of young bodyguards against a teenaged boy; who had difficulty adjusting when the post-apartheid limelight shifted from Winnie to Nelson.
Progress, but not enough
But Winnie was speaking for many black South Africans, who had been told to expect economic prosperity, better homes, schools, and health care; who wanted not only political freedom but a complete rearrangement of the power structure in South Africa, where the black majority was truly in control.
That, after 15 years of majority rule, still hasn’t happened.
“There does seem to be some semblance of truth to what she says,” says Adam Habib, deputy vice chancellor of University of Johannesburg, and a prominent South African political observer. “In terms of the settlement [with the apartheid-era government] poor people were not sufficiently taken care of. The rich people’s interests were protected, without the poor people’s living standards improving substantially.”
The frustration is evidenced by the almost-daily headlines of what are called “service delivery strikes.” Residents in black townships, tired of failed promises of electricity, clean drinking water, functioning schools, and other basic government services, have increasingly taken their frustrations to the streets. Some townships like Meyerton and Balfour shut down for days and even weeks, their roads blocked by burning tires, their streets filled with angry young men with sticks, throwing stones at local police. If they blame the government, they are blaming the ANC. And if they are blaming the ANC, they are also blaming the ANC’s top icon, Nelson Mandela.
While Mandela left power in 1999, and his successors Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma have done less than was expected in spreading out the benefits of South Africa's booming economy to the poorer black majority, many South Africans feel that it was Mandela who lost the narrow window of opportunity to strike a hard bargain with white South Africans and transform the country's economic power structure.
“This name Mandela is an albatross around the necks of my family,” Mrs. Mandela told Mrs. Naipaul. “You all must realize that Mandela was not the only man who suffered.”
An enduring icon
“Mandela is now a corporate foundation,” she said, adding the even Mandela’s daughters, Zenani and Zindzi, have to go through “red tape” to book a meeting with their own father. “He is wheeled out globally to collect the money, and he is content doing that. The ANC have effectively sidelined him, but they keep him as a figurehead for the sake of appearance.”
This is not the image of Mandela one often sees in the South African news media – which generally prints smiling portraits of the ailing leader, who now mostly lives in seclusion with his second wife, Graca Machel – and it is certainly not the view of most white South Africans, who were relieved that their own worst fears of a bloody campaign of revenge of blacks against whites was forestalled by the old revolutionary’s power of gentle persuasion. Even black South Africans often sport T-shirts of Mandela as nostalgia for the hopeful days of early black majority rule, and a kind of rebuke to the next generation of apparently corrupt ANC leaders
Did he do the best he could?
It is easy, after all, to suggest that Nelson Mandela should have pushed whites to give up control of the economy. But at that time, Mandela had his hands full just keeping the country from tipping into civil war. In townships, ANC youth were battling with the ethnically based Zulu party, theInkatha Freedom Party. In white Afrikaans-speaking communities, white militia groups threatened to launch a coup. Bold redistribution of wealth and power, in those times, could have broken whatever trust was needed to lay the foundations of a tolerant, multicultural society and a prosperous economy.
So while white South Africans may be shocked at Winnie’s statements, casual conversations with black South Africans of all economic levels reveal that plenty of people share Winnie Mandela’s bitter disappointment with Nelson Mandela.
“He should have stayed in office a second term, and he should have bargained harder to get a better deal for the majority,” a black South African businessman who is a member of the ANC said recently. “We have freedom, but the wealth remains with the whites, and the lives of ordinary blacks in the townships have not improved that much.”
“The question I pose is this, ‘What is the alternative?’” says Mr. Habib, the political analyst. “The liberation movement could make townships ungovernable. But they could not defeat the apartheid machinery. So I see two scenarios. You either get the South Africa of 2010, with all its warts and with all its problems. Or you get Israel-Palestine. For me, I say South Africa of 2010 is still better.”
__________________________
A.N.C., Admitting Failures,
Weighs How to Lift
South Africans
By LYDIA POLGREEN
Published: June 26, 2012
Themba Hadebe/Associated Press
President Jacob Zuma addressed delegates at the start of the African National Congress conference in Johannesburg on Tuesday.
JOHANNESBURG — During apartheid, in the coastal municipality of Overstrand, just east of Cape Town, whites lived in plush, seaside enclaves whereas blacks and mixed race people lived in ugly townships and shacks. Whites owned almost all the businesses, and had access to the best jobs, health care and schools.
Eighteen years after the end of apartheid, not much has changed, said Maurencia Gillion, a local politician who grew up and still lives in Overstrand.
“The rich white people live in their beautiful holiday homes,” Ms. Gillion said. “The rest are in slums, in squatter areas. Even after 18 years, in reality apartheid remains.”
That would seem a harsh critique of the party that has governed South Africa since the end of minority rule in 1994, the century-old African National Congress. It came not from an opposition leader, but one of the party’s own. Ms. Gillion is a senior A.N.C. leader in her province, and her words were simply an echo of what the party’s leader, President Jacob Zuma, said in a speech minutes earlier.
“The structure of the apartheid economy has remained largely intact,” Mr. Zuma said, in a speech to thousands of delegates to the A.N.C.’s policy conference, held every five years, before the presidential election, to work out the party’s platform. “The ownership of the economy is still primarily in the hands of white males, as it has always been.”
The four-day conference here, which began Tuesday, has been devoted to considerable soul-searching about what the A.N.C. has, and has not, achieved in 18 years in power. With unemployment at 25 percent, and much higher for young blacks, and corruption widespread, there is a growing perception that the A.N.C. has become the party of a small black elite interested only in its own enrichment. To counter this perception, the party has released a set of back-to-basics policy proposals that it claims will help deliver on its old election slogan: “A better life for all.”
The party’s own analysis had this to say about South Africa’s predicament nearly two decades after the end of apartheid: “Too few people work; the standard of education of most black learners is of poor quality; infrastructure is poorly located, under-maintained and insufficient to foster higher growth; spatial patterns exclude the poor from the fruits of development; the economy is overly and unsustainably resource-intensive; a widespread disease burden is compounded by a failing health system; public services are uneven and often of poor quality; corruption is widespread; and South Africa remains a divided society.”
Officials were quick to say that 18 years is a short time to reverse centuries of discrimination under colonial and apartheid rule that left black South Africans ill equipped to compete in a liberalized economy. And Mr. Zuma ticked off a list of major achievements: millions of new houses for the poor; millions more connected to the electric grid and piped water systems; and a growing and vibrant black middle class.
Embedded in the policy documents and Mr. Zuma’s remarks is an argument that the process of transforming the country’s economy to put more wealth in the hands of blacks was hampered by the need to make peace with the former white rulers.
“We had to make certain compromises in the national interest,” Mr. Zuma said. “We had to be cautious about restructuring the economy in order to maintain economic stability and confidence at the time. Thus the economic power relations of the apartheid era have remained intact.”
The party is thus proposing what it calls a “second transition,” this one focused on economic, rather than political, change.
The policy proposals take a hard look at some of the most difficult issues facing South Africa, and at the A.N.C.’s internal struggles. One asks whether the government should dispense with the current policy of land redistribution and replace it with a more aggressive one. Another contemplates nationalizing the country’s mines.
Taken together, the proposals would, if adopted, represent a sharp leftward shift for the A.N.C., which despite its roots has largely backed a free-market economy with minimal state intervention. The proposals are being discussed this week and will be decided upon when the party holds its convention in December.
Some A.N.C. members have been pushing for a more radical program of redistribution of wealth from whites to blacks. The party’s Youth League, under the firebrand leader Julius Malema, had demanded that gold, platinum and diamond mines be nationalized. Cosatu, an alliance of trade unions that is one of the A.N.C.’s main allies, has pushed for banks to be nationalized.
Yet, according to the A.N.C.’s own analysis, its failure to deliver economic progress may be its own fault. The party has experienced “a silent shift from transformative politics to palace politics wherein internal strife and factional battles over power and resources define the political life of the movement,” a far cry from its founding as a liberation movement built on socialist principles.
For all the fears of a leftward shift that could lead to the repossession of white-owned land, as happened in Zimbabwe, or the nationalization of mines, such moves are highly unlikely, said Steven Friedman, a political analyst at the Center for the Study of Democracy at the University of Johannesburg.
“There is going to be lots of fairly radical rhetoric, and the actual proposals are going to be actually quite meek and mild,” Mr. Friedman said. “This has been the pattern all along.”
Indeed, some delegates at the conference advocated a go-slow approach.
“I support the sharing of wealth, but I don’t think we should go for a radical approach,” said Tim Mkhari, a delegate from Limpopo, a province on the country’s northern edge.
“We should not take the Zimbabwe route,” he said.
__________________________
The African National Regress
– South Africa’s democracy:
pending…
07/06/2012 #
What is it like being a member of the least intelligent race that according to YouTube posterR3ind33r destroyed the whole nation in its majority?
Cindy Dladla explains.
Our country as a rainbow nation is booming with minerals, vibrancy, agriculture and shower heads that water it, not to mention baby Julius being kicked out of the crib because he learnt how to walk. When the ANC came into power, most blacks – if not all – were excited about the mere fact that a black person is finally in power. The question of that person being competent enough and equipped to play a role in the successful development of our country was beside the point. Our parents and grandparents fought hard for the liberation of non-whites. I wonder if they have come to regret their struggle, looking at the way things have gone downhill since then. It’s rather distasteful.
The very same people who were fighting with us for our rights are the very same people who are now corrupt and exploit the hard work of the lowest common denominator. The people who fought for their leaders were below the poverty line before 1994. Sixteen years down the line, the very same people who were oppressed by the apartheid government are oppressed by the ANC government in this new democratic country. The difference is that the situation has become worse and it’s now black-on-black violence. The story is getting old. Some of the white people in our country are probably saying: “they wanted to rule the country right? We gave them the opportunity that they wanted so bad but look at them, they are screwing their own people over”. We are now probably a laughing stock.
I am sure most people are familiar with the 2008 xenophobic attacks. People’s homes being burnt down with no care of how this will affect them and their families. Babies being shot whilst on their mothers’ backs. Men who failed to say the word ‘elbow’ in Zulu to prove that they are true South Africans being beaten and burnt alive. I am sure if we could take a trip back to 1955 following the Sophiatown removals, people fought back because they didn’t want to be foreigners in their own land. They did not want to be removed from their homes where they had established friendships, created memories whilst watching their children dancing in the dust. Black South Africans seem to have forgotten how it feels to be chased away from your own home, tortured and being considered as insignificant as if you don’t matter. During the apartheid uproar, most South Africans sought for refuge in neighboring countries, Zimbabwe especially, and were welcomed with warm and empathetic arms.
I am ashamed to see that we lack to understand that all blacks, including all other races, belong to Africa, therefore to South Africa as well. Growing up, I have always praised the saying ‘Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu’ that means ‘I am because we are’. The African ubuntuspirit that our parents have always prided themselves on seems to be reserved for the black South African nation only. Derogative terms such as ‘kwerekwere’ and ‘ikwang’ have emerged over the years, but the one thing I don’t understand is: why are black foreign nationals referred to in such terms?
If it is a white foreign national, the same term suddenly doesn’t seem to apply. I don’t understand what is really wrong with our mentality as black people. When a white person calls a black person ‘nigger’ or ‘kaffer’, fists are flying. The black person would be fighting and defending their race and honour. The white perpetrator is called racist. However, when a black person physically or verbally insults a white person, it’s okay for s/he is not considered as not being racist. It’s seen as just pure human conflict. Colour, all of a sudden, is not involved. There is this sick notion that has been going around that black people can’t be racist. Just think about it. It is ridiculous.
Going back to the ANC, the amount of corruption that has been taking place since the party came into power is such that you could easily mistake this government for the Apartheid government. I am sure you are familiar with the book Animal Farm by George Orwell. Politically speaking, this is a great piece of literature. The novel includes the use of allegorical characters which represent various official delegates who are corrupt and abuse their power at the expense of others. The thematic concerns of dystopia, false consciousness and abuse of power are very brave and give insight to those who confuse optimism and reality. The quote “all animals are equal but some are more equal than others” exactly epitomizes what is going on in South Africa.
In the year 2012, we are living in a world of freedom of expression, human rights and rainbow colour that joined us together after Zuma’s shower had rained on us. On paper, we are enjoying the fruits of the struggle and liberation as black people; we are free. However, in reality the situation the country is in seems to contradict this statement. The distribution of wealth is only for the elite few at the top of the ladder. It is similar to helping a friend climb a peach tree in order to indulge in the succulent, sweet and bright orange ones at the top. But then your dearest friend gets to the top and greedily keeps all the fruit to himself and throws you the seeds, forgetting that if it was not for your assistance he would not be there at the top – literally.
My grandma – sagacious and knowledgeable as she is – has always told me that you can never correct one wrong with another. The implementation of the Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) system was to some level a big failure when taking into consideration the needs of the country as a whole, and not just those people who are sitting at the top, feeling entitled to what they have been rewarded because they fought in the struggle. In South African companies, your worth, competence and value are marked by whether you were in the struggle or not, regardless of your skills, ability to make the right decisions, ability to think logically and critically, and educational qualifications. I feel that the government plays the lottery on a big scale; the people chosen for positions are randomly selected. Their resumes probably have this written: educational qualifications – 10% in woodwork; criminal record – fought in the struggle. They are good enough to go. BEE seems a temporal solution to a long-term problem. It’s similar to putting a band aid on an arm that has been amputated.
Most people overseas have always had the ignorant assumption that South Africa and the rest of Africa is a jungle with lion pets and squirrel friends that talk in clicks while we sing ‘kumbaya’ around the fire and tell old stories at night time. We seem to be offended but when taking our barbaric actions into consideration, you can’t help feel sorry for the already tainted reputation of our country. The country’s blame, ignorance, lack of mental and emotional intelligence and lack of education. Not even Zuma’s shower can cure that disease. People from overseas are probably laughing at us. Before 1994, we were fighting the whites, and then 16 years into democracy we are fighting each other. Barbaric indeed like monkeys in a cage fighting for a banana peel.
The reason I feel the attack on foreign nationals was predominantly from the blacks is because their determination, dedication and work ethic exposes our flaws. Next to them we feel naked and the world can see what we are incapable of. I have come across various people from Zimbabwe, Malawi, Nigeria, Somalia who have top educational qualifications but are street vendors and gardeners. They don’t mind getting paid R100 a week, because they know what it feels like to have nothing. They have seen their children with bellies sticking out and flies in their eyes, and those flies with flies in their eyes. However, we as black South Africans want to get paid more or be employed in higher posts even though we don’t have a single qualification. Now think about it, does getting 83% in Life Orientation and Home Economics count? I don’t think so!
I still think that because of the struggle we are entitled to these things, like somebody owes us. Another similar plot point that I picked up whilst reading Animal Farm, is that Mr Jones who (in this case the apartheid government) has always been viewed as the only threat to the animals (in this case black people in South Africa). It is as if we are saying “as long as white man (Mr Jones) doesn’t rule, the country is fine because we are in a supposed democratic country”. What we fail to see is that our own people are oppressing us. Manipulators such as Julius Malema have kept the black mass preoccupied with songs like ‘Shoot the Boer’ which apparently strives for black liberation from whites. I thought we passed that phase in 1994. The song is used to divert people’s attention from what is actually going on in the country. It is propelling people to fight an invisible struggle that does not exist.
Like the animals in the book, blacks are blind to the corruption that is happening in the government. Was it better for blacks when the white man ruled? One can also look at the enforcement of the Media Tribunal and the Secrecy Bill. Apparently, these are implemented to protect the privacy of the government. The question we have failed to ask is: “to what extent are they protected?”, so that means they can get away with anything. I see this whole thing as a scapegoat to avoid being caught in the heat of corruption. We are always complaining as victims, saying that power has been taken from us but the truth is that we have handed over that power to the ANC. What happened to the right to freedom of expression and access to information?
I understand that South Africa is still in its baby steps of democracy. However, in 20 years we cannot be using the same excuse. So for now the government can get away with no service delivery and use that excuse. Boxer, who is a faithful and loyal animal, epitomizes all of the best qualities of the black mass who are now being exploited. I wonder how it feels for Nelson Mandela to see everything that he has built and worked hard for crumble into dust in his sight, before he has even turned into dust. The instructions on a varnish tin always read “make sure all dust is removed before use”. However, it seems that we are varnishing over the dust we have crumbled into for the sake of being a supposedly democratic country.
I am a troubled young person because I don’t understand what is going on with our government! They seem to have lost touch with the essence of the struggle. I can’t really tell the difference between the apartheid government and the ANC. The pig from the man.