In the late ’80s, the apartheid Security Branch raided my place a couple of times. That sounds more grandiose than it really was: my part in the destruction of the racist regime was minute. The fact that the SB was investigating at all me shows just how pervasive the bastards really were. I also hasten to point out that by the second raid, they had dispatched the intellectual rejects from the absolute bottom of their inbreds’ gene pool. Captain Domgat’s line of interrogation included the question: "Are your friends European?", employing the popular noun by which the racists liked to describe themselves. I could muster no greater wit than to reply that they were all born in South Africa. Captain Domgat was too feeble to rephrase his question. A fearsome interrogator he was not.All the while a strong wind was blowing through the window, making the pages of my Marilyn Monroe calendar flutter. That made me nervous, because behind the calendar hung a picture of Nelson Mandela. That was contraband: it was illegal to own images or writings by banned persons, such as Mandela (especially Mandela), and illegal to publish these.
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7 comments:
Heavy shit, reading your brush with the Security Branch, AMD; and all the more poignant that I am reading it on your blog. I think the major thng, obviously, is that you were in the thick out there, whereas here in Glasgow local councilors were simply falling over themselves to rename half of the city's main thoroughfares - Nelson Mandela Place, for example - and using, I felt then, the apartheid struggle as an excuse to host some feeble party. Grinning like loons and congratulating themselves on being 'cosmopolitan'and "international'.
On the subject of Mandela's birthday, I would be hypocritical if I didn't point out how disappointed I was that he didn't speak out earlier against Mugabe.
That, and the banqueting with Kofi Anan while the shit went down in Rwanda.
Forgive me if all this comes over as being disrespectful to his huge role in creating an anti apartheid legacy. I can't help but have considerable reservations.
I don't recall the Rwanda thing, but on Mugabe I think one must see that in context of ANC politics. A few years ago, Mandela spoke out strongly against Thabo Mbeki's disastrous HIV/AIDS policy. Essentially, Mandela was told to shut the fuck up, old man. Even by people in the ANC who agreed with him.
To speak out against government policy on Zimbabwe would have been seen again as a challenge to his successor, undermining the government et cetera in defiance of the party discipline he had himself fostered. Even Archbishop Tutu was heavily criticised by the ANC for going heavy guns against Mugabe a few years ago. And Tutu is not accountable to the ANC.
As soon as the ANC started to condemn Mugabe (in a big fuck you to Mbeki), Mandela did so as well. Of course I wish he had done so sooner -- Mad Bob doubtless would've attacked him for being a senile has-been -- but I understand why he didn't.
I have no doubt that Mandela would himself acknowledge that he has made mistakes. But I don't think he made them for reasons of callousness or indifference.
Thanks, AMD, for responding to my comment so eloquently. My understanding of the intricacies of ANC politics is not served well by my distance from events.
My ambivalence to celebration is partly informed by what I see - from afar - as an eagerness by many only to embrace Mandela as a figurehead for their own self-serving ends.
Respect.
Oh yeah, I despise these piggybackers. And I hold Mandela's people responsible for commoditising their boss by letting these leeches reflect in his glory. But I don't think the motivation of Bono & Blair types diminishes Mandela himself. That was sort of the reason for the paragraphs about that whole 46664 deal.
It's like that in South Africa as well. All those people who thought of Mandela as a terrorist now carry on about "Madiba". Grudging respect to FW de Klerk, who at least doesn't pretend that he has anything more than respect for the man.
A real compelling read...thank you...
I was going to write something about him, but how can it compare with this?
Thank you for sharing this. Nelson Mandela is a well respected man even in the Philippines. I can't believe that he's 90 already.
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