Mandela was great, Mugabe is greater
Now President Mugabe is being criticised in some quarters for pointing out that Mandela may have had his priorities mixed up.
MAKE no mistake, Nelson Mandela was a great man. South Africa, too, is a great country. But that will not stop us from criticising Mandela’s flaws or South Africa’s shortcomings today.
Indeed, Mandela was a great man. Many will have read his statement at the Rivonia trial just before he was sent to life imprisonment.
His statement from the dock at the opening of the defence case in the Pretoria Supreme Court on April 20, 1964 has a conclusion that can never be forgotten: “Above all, we want equal political rights, because without them our disabilities will be permanent. I know this sounds revolutionary to the whites in this country, because the majority of voters will be Africans. This makes the white man fear democracy.
“But this fear cannot be allowed to stand in the way of the only solution which will guarantee racial harmony and freedom for all. It is not true that the enfranchisement of all will result in racial domination.
“Political division, based on colour, is entirely artificial and, when it disappears, so will the domination of one colour group by another.
“The ANC has spent half-a-century fighting against racialism. When it triumphs it will not change that policy.
“This then is what the ANC is fighting. Their struggle is a truly national one. It is a struggle of the African people, inspired by their own suffering and their own experience. It is a struggle for the right to live.
“During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination.
“I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal, which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”
Now President Mugabe is being criticised in some quarters for pointing out that Mandela may have had his priorities mixed up.
“What was the most important thing for (Mandela) was his release from prison and nothing else.
“He cherished that freedom more than anything else and forgot why he was put in jail,” said President Mugabe recently.
From the very beginning, Mandela was not interested in economic emancipation for black people, he was merely focused on harmony and integration rather than fairer distribution of wealth.
Whichever way one may want to look at it, that is the brutal truth.
Today, South Africa has integration (harmony is another thing) but the great divide between the white aristocrats and the black proletariats is as glaring as it is wretched.
Twenty-three years after the end of apartheid, a great percentage of the wealth in South Africa is still in the hands of white people and it seems it will be with them for foreseeable decades.
We all know that an Achilles’ heel is a weakness in spite of overall strength; therefore, while Gwede Mantashe — the ANC secretary-general — may huff and puff about Mandela’s legacy being trampled upon, he should instead borrow from the wisdom of Cde Mugabe.
It can never be in doubt that South Africa needs equitable distribution of wealth and resources.
The fact that Mandela managed to broker a peace deal to end apartheid does not exonerate him from the flaws his political approach created.
Mandela was a great man, but he was no saint.
His lack of revolutionary radicalism is the very reason why black South Africans are as poor as they are today, living in slums like Alexandra Park, Diepsloot, Nyanga, Gugulethu, Khayelitsha, Inada, Soshanguve, Umlazi, Mamelodi, Tembisa and so on.
If the truth were to be told, Mandela betrayed the revolution and he failed to carry it out to its logical conclusion. In the end, he died a free but landless man.
Mandela’s legacy remains an inheritance of integration with the enemy but not an inheritance of sharing the same dinner at the same table. The majority of South Africans are still eating from the kitchen, leftovers from the dinner table.
So instead of reacting stupidly to the wisdom of Cde Mugabe, Mantashe and like-minded comrades must remember that in Zimbabwe, in the not too distant future, we will be telling a story around the fire for our grandchildren.
We will be telling them: “Once upon a time, in the land of the land, a great many white people came and grabbed the land from the black owners and for almost a century they owned the land.
“However, through a series of Chimurengas, the black men took back their land and chased the white people away. For a few years, the black people struggled because the white people sabotaged the fruits of the Chimurenga.
“The white people stifled trade and imposed sanctions on the black people of the land.
Nevertheless, through resilience and determination the black people managed to command their agriculture and in the end they lived happily ever after!”
Yes, Mandela was a great man but Mugabe is a greater man.
Dubulaizitha!