Nelson Mandela

As we duly mourn the South African hero, here's a very pertinent comment from Bill Fletcher, via the excellent organisation for Journalists, Institute for Public Accuracy (http://www.accuracy.org)

`Fletcher is a columnist for BlackCommentator.com and a former president of TransAfrica Forum. He just wrote: "Nelson Mandela will be mourned and celebrated. But something else will happen. There will soon, probably very soon, be efforts to reinterpret his life. I do not mean leaving things out, as happened in the otherwise excellent film just released about his life. Rather, as we have experienced here in the USA with great leaders like King and Malcolm, there will be efforts to convert Mandela into a very safe character in order to advance the ends of the global elite. We will, for instance, not hear much about Mandela’s refusal to renounce armed struggle against apartheid, even though such a renunciation could have resulted in his release much earlier. We will not hear much about his expressions of gratitude to the Cuban people for their consistent support to the people of Angola, Namibia and South Africa who were fighting the South African apartheid regime. We will not hear about Mandela’s consistent, unwavering support for the Palestinian people’s struggle for national liberation."'

 

I write at some length about the "cleaning" of Martin Luther King's image in my Book Proposal, "The War On The 60s".

Incidentally, this Blog scored a new record number of hits yesterday: 256.  And we're already at 173 today! Thanks, everyone!