Nelson Mandela 'proven' to be a member of the Communist Party after decades of denial

[alp227]

WTF? I just saw this article by the UK Telegraph on my Android news dashboard.

...research by a British historian, Professor Stephen Ellis, has unearthed fresh evidence that during his early years as an activist, Mr Mandela did hold senior rank in the South African Communist Party, or SACP. He says Mr Mandela joined the SACP to enlist the help of the Communist superpowers for the ANC's campaign of armed resistance to white rule.

His book also provides fresh detail on how the ANC's military wing had bomb-making lessons from the IRA, and intelligence training from the East German Stasi, which it used to carry out brutal interrogations of suspected "spies" at secret prison camps.

As evidence of Mr Mandela's Communist party membership, Prof Ellis cites minutes from a secret 1982 SACP meeting, discovered in a collection of private papers at the University of Cape Town, in which a veteran former party member, the late John Pule Motshabi, talks about how Mr Mandela was a party member some two decades before.

Published right when Mandela was hospitalized? And how did this new information suddenly surface at this moment?

Oh, don't try to read the comments section. The most-recommended comment: "Bottom line is this, both SA, Zimbabwe, Haiti and just about every other former African colony were better off under white minority rule and control. That is why liberals dont want to talk about them anymore, because they know they have been proved utterly wrong about the native Africans ability to run their own nations successfully, though of course, SA, Zimbabwe and Haiti were built by Europeans not Africans."

[Ken Burch]

1. Even if he was, so what?

That doesn't mean apartheid was right after all. And it doesn't mean that the anti-apartheid movement wasn't real and valid. It just means that, for once, the international Communist movement actually lived up to its ideals(as it usually didn't)and helped a country liberate itself from oppression.

(BTW...this article illustrates, once again, why the paper that published it is known throughout the UK as "The Torygraph".

[WCGreen]

2. Well, we turned our backs on evey nascent oppositions to colonial rule in te world...

I would be surprised if there wasn't a little cozying up to the USSR and their satellites.

[Samjm]

3. This is news?

The ANC and the SA Communist Party have long been very comfortable bedfellows with many of the leaders holding rank in both parties. Many of the cabinet positions in Mandela's first term were openly members of the SACP.

[burrowowl]

4. Well, good for him!

[applegrove]

5. Right. People in SA were better off when 75 % of the population

got excommunicated into bantustands, that had no land, no tax base, no services whenever they required something from government like: school, retirement, illness, unemployment (which are parts of life everyone goes through). They were only let into 90% of SA when they were working at dirt wages for apartheid. Right. Yup. They are not better off now.

[HiPointDem]

7. i recently read that miners in south africa still make the same wage they did in 1947 once you

adjust for inflation.

whites & global capital still run south africa, and all of africa. they just run it through compradors.

putting black faces in positions of power changes very little. white people will gladly fuck other white people over for profit; why would black people (or women, mexicans, arabs, protestants, catholics, etc.) be any different?

this is why identity politics is ultimately a dead end. some fraction of the former despised caste gets into positions of power -- fine & good. but if little changes for the majority of people, what difference does it really make?

[former-republican]

10. greed knows no color

[Ken Burch]

12. What your observations there show is that the liberation project isn't OVER in S. Africa

That, as political apartheid had to be defeated in the past, economic apartheid has to be defeated now. It doesn't mean that there should not have been a fight for majority rule...it's just that it now needs to be majority economic rule.

[HiPointDem]

13. ethnic/racial discrimination is part of the toolbox of economic "discrimination". it doesn't exist

independent of it. and it takes many shapes. those miners are black. their management is white. their supervisors are black, or white. this is 'progress'.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=1954873

and i'll add again: this is class/racial/ethnic discrimination every bit as pernicious as old-style jim crow & even nastier, as it's dressed up under the rubric of 'choice' & concern about 'failing minorities'.

but under cover they're sending poor minority students to a warehouse building with substandard facilities so that a private school can take over a state-of-the-art facility paid for with public money.

[Ken Burch]

16. That's true.

The main cause of post-apartheid South Africa's problems is that the "free market" countries have forced it to live under a crippling austerity program from the start, a program that has made the achievement of full racial equality(which requires full economic equality as well) impossible.

[HiPointDem]

17. agreed.

[HiPointDem]

6. whites still run south africa, and all of africa. decolonialization didn't change that. they just

run it through compradors, big surprise. just like all countries are run by the rich through political compradors who get a cut of the spoils.

[newfie11]

8. SO???

Who cares?

[marmar]

9. "help of the Communist superpowers for the ANC's campaign of armed resistance to white rule. "

And this is a bad thing how?

[gollygee]

11. South Africa was a victim of the shock doctrine

And again I mention the book Shock Doctrine. There is a chapter on how radical free market capitalists took advantage of South Africa at that time period. South Africa is still under minority white control economically.

[HiPointDem]

14. as are we all.

[gollygee]

15. Very true! nt