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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote (edited )

I don't have an appropriately formed opinion of Mandela, but this is a short article worth reading on the topic:
Did Nelson Mandela sell out?

Probably the most worthwhile documentary on post-apartheid South Africa is Miners Shot Down. The bad guy in that movie is the former freedom fighter turned supercapitalist current president of South Africa.
(Content Warning: The film starts with some graphic video of a massacre of workers by police and is based around that event) There are better quality versions to be found if you have a look around.

As for the ANC, they seem like pretty typical communists in that they got their power, were corrupted, and are now capitalist with wholly coopted communist pretences.

Why do you ask?

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retiredshared2 OP wrote

I was hoping to get an African or at least educated perspective on it, given the amount of racists I have to face using South Africa and Zimbabwe as examples they use to feed that, as well as tankies doing the same in reverse.

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote

To feed what specifically? What kind of arguments are you engaged with?

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retiredshared2 OP wrote (edited )

"Once Apartheid/Rhodesia ended their economy crashed and quality of life went down" from racists, and "ZANU/ZAPU did nothing wrong they liberated Zimbabwe from imperialism" from tankies, both of which feel incredibly flawed (especially the racist one though knowing ZANU I feel the second is also pretty wrong.) I was hoping to find a more middle-of-the road for the ANC.

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote

Generally quality of life hasn't gone down in South Africa, afaik, including for whites, though they'll complain about affirmative action and reverse racism and white genocide like white people do everywhere.

And most radicals I know from there would rather Mandela had done more radical things, not less. Generally the sentiment I'm used to from South African radicals is "Mandela was a sellout but who cares about just one person's politics let's destroy all hierarchy".

For the most part it seems like both the things that happened in Zim and the things that happened in SA are complicated as fuck and people are still grappling with their post-colonial realities and histories.

In Zim and throughout southern Africa also there are authoritarian communists etc who are Mugabe fans, but in Mugabe's case I'm pretty sure he has a lot of his people's blood on his hands whereas in Mandela's case he was mostly just coopted by capitalism. I'm no authority on the subject though.

Another worthwhile documentary to watch on this is the recent one on his ex-Wife Winnie who was consistently more radical than him. It's hard not to take a nuanced approach to him after that.

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therealmidnite wrote (edited )

Mandela wasn't co-opted by capitalists. The ANC wanted to get their hands on the state-apparatus - and that's exactly what they did.

He also wasn't a sellout - the ANC was created to serve the interests of black capitalists and royalty, and to this day they have never strayed from serving those classes at the expense of everybody else. Everything else is just pr and realpolitik (which they are pretty good at). Mandela himself was a blue-blood. The people who brand Mandela a "sellout" simply doesn't know that he was never really one of them. Apparently, we don't have class in this country - only race.

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therealmidnite wrote

You mean, apart from the fact that he was a politician, and the ANC is a political party (with all that this implies)? The less said the better, in my opinion.

I have to mention this, though - the idea that the same brand of neoliberal turds who branded him a terrorist a mere decade before suddenly falling over themselves to rush over here and kiss his behind in public for a photo-op still gives me the giggles.

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