Nelson Mandela -- the very, very bad man

His body had barely started to cool when the attacks on Nelson Mandela's remarkable life began to circulate. His supposed communist associations were raised. Bill O'Reilly said, “He was a communist, this man. He was a communist, all right? But he was a great man! What he did for his people was stunning!… He was a great man! But he was a communist!”  Thanks, Bill, for another bit of your patented idiocy.

Why idiotic? Didn't Mandela write a book called "How to be a Good Communist?" Weren't some of his supporters South Africans communists? Might he have held a position in the SACP, or South African Communist Party? True, true and maybe true. Mandela apparently penned the book around 1961. He formed the ANC's militant arm, Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) with help from the SACP. And he may have held some position in the SACP, though he denied it later.

Although initially committed to non-violent protest, he co-founded the militant Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) in 1961 in association with the South African Communist Party, leading a sabotage campaign against the apartheid government. (Source: wikipedia)

So what are we to make of this. If a man ever shows interest in communism, does that forever make him a communist? Has communism then become an indelible part of his character? Or can a moan move on from earlier associations and remake himself?

I call this the Jean Valjean syndrome. If a man is starving and steals a loaf of bread, can he be then forever labeled a thief? This was the view of Jalvert, the antagonist in "Les Miserables," a police official so impervious to the idea of human conversion that he hounded Valjean, even after he had clearly amended his life and transcended his past. Given the number of Les Miz fans worldwide, it's amazing how the views of Jalvert still hold sway.

Consider Mandela's position in the early 1960s. He desperately wants to free his people from the tyranny of the apartheid white regime. He is unable to free them on his own. Western powers, including the US and Britain, show little interest in condemning the brutality of the white supremacist government. With nowhere to turn, he was two choice: accept that his people will have to suffer, probably indefinitely, or to turn to the one model of liberation at his disposal: communist liberation movements.

What would you do?

But the communist label is usefully toxic. To have had any relationship with communism is to choose to be permanently blemished in the eyes of those wishing to discredit you. Those who ignored your pleas for humane treatment can now besmirch your aspirations, and attempt to diminish your legacy.

But Mandela was larger than that. Regardless of to whom he turned for help in liberating his people 50 years ago, he helped to establish a democratic state in which bloodshed between former white oppressors and former black victims was nearly completely avoided. He overcame the bitterness in his own heart and invited his former Robben Island guard to attend his inauguration as the country's first black president.

Those who need to smear Mandela as a communist must do so by ignoring his actual achievements. It's a special kind of white arrogance that allows a person to negate a lifetime of achievements by a black man who suffered personally and who transformed that suffering into a chance or millions of his countrymen to succeed on the world stage. To call Mandela a communist for a past association with the only group interested in advancing the aspirations of his people is to diminish the aspirations of all people to live in freedom, peace and prosperity.

Rest in peace Madiba. Your achievements will outlive the hatred of your detractors.