NELSON MANDELA, A "TERRORIS" AND COMMUNIST-TURNED DEMOCRAT

On December 6, a day after the death of Nelson Mandela, Solly Maipaila, the Deputy General of the South African Communist Party [SACP], revealed what analysts like Jiri Valenta have known for years.  Mandela was not only a member of this communist party but on its Central Committeee.  He was also chaiman of the African National Congress [ANC], a Leninist revolutionary front linked to the USSR´s International Department.

Neither is there any question that Mandela, in his early years, was an advocate of the use of  violence against the apartheid regime of South Africa.  Yet during more than a score of years in jail, Mandela transcended into a  genuine democrat  The buring question is why?

During research trips to South Africa, Namibia, Swaziland, and many to the former USSR in the late 1980´s and early ´90´s,  Dr Valenta was able to interview ANC  senior members and activists, Soviet diplomats and experts, apartheid leaders, anti-apartheid spokesmen an senior military.  Already then, Mandela was listing to the more democratic wing of a divided ANC, slowly repudiating both Leninist violence and the building of a vanguard party.

The connection between Mandela and the revolutionary changes in Easter Europe and the former Soviet Union have not been highlighted. Not well known is that the transformation of Mandela and  other ANC leaders happened under the infuence of some prominent East European and Russian reform-minded thinkers. One of these was professror Apollon Davidson, a consultant to the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs and distinguished professor of African Studies at Moscow State University. When Jiri invited him to lecture at his then Institute of Soviet and East European Studies [ISEES] in Miami, it was clear to him that while Davidson supported the ANC´s struggle, he had tried to shape its thinking away from Leninism towards peaceful struggle.

In 1992 Jiri participated in a historic  meeting at the Uppsala University African Center in Sweden between Mandela´s ANC senior colleagues and East European scholars. The dialogue included personal friends of Mandela.  They led Jiri to understand that Mandela was an aristocratic figure, a uniqe individual with high intelligence and a born politician.  On his own he came to understand that the continuous violent path against apartheid was too costly for his country.  Thus, under the influence of the largely peaceful revolutions in Eastern Europe and the USSR, he decided to foster dialogue and reconciliation. He was particularly impressed with U.S.-Soviet dialogues between President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

There was also the 1989 Czech Velvet Revolution, basically a reconciliation between Czech dissidents and reform-minded leaders under the late Vaclav Havel.  During the Soviet era, Czecholslovakia had been a key supporter of rogue states and terrorist groups.  Subsequently, the Czech foreign minister´s first deputy, Martin Palous, initiated a new policy, cutting off radical clients and supporting democracy. Havel once expained to Jiri that he was very much influenced by Mandela, one reason why he invited South African President F. de klerk  to  Prague in 1991.   Both Mandela and de Klerk received the 1993 Nobel Prize  for national dialogue and peaceful repudiation of apartheid.

When Mandela became president of South Africa, he like Havel was able to sit down with his former jailers. He also looked after the plight of all the ethnic groups and tribes in that multi-ethnic society.  Reconciliation became his national strategy. Perhaps some of our divisive politicians in both political parties can lean something from his example before they jump on the bandwagon of his admirers.