Nelson Mandela, whose hero?

I WOULD like to propose a thesis that others will attack me for, which is that the reaction to the death of Mandela has been over the top, and one that exposes the hypocrisy of this world. It is, however, still a good world we live in, because we can freely express our views without fear.

As Niccolo Machiavelli once said: "I know not whether the view I am about to adopt will prove so hard to uphold and so full of difficulties that I shall have either shamefully to abandon it or laboriously to maintain it; for I propose to defend a position which all writers attack, as I have said.

"But, however, that may be, I think, and always shall think, there can be no harm in defending an opinion by arguments so long as one has no intention of appealing either to authority or force."

They came, from all corners of the globe they came. To mourn a son of Africa they came, from Great Britain and the United States of America and all the places in between they came.

Many a time this week we have heard that there will be no other African leader like Mandela.
"We will never see the likes of Nelson Mandela again", we were promised by the president of America. Rather pessimistic, I thought, but okay.

Not given a chance to flash his grin and point a finger at something, David Cameron used the opportunity to grab a Selfie with Obama, no doubt one for the scrapbook. Zuma got booed, or people shouted Zuuuuuma, Zuuulu, and the Western media decided to spin it as he got booed.

It fits their narrative you see.

President Mugabe got applauded, good luck spinning that one! That was not part of the narrative, so cameras quickly move to other things! Shame.

Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in detention, that much is acknowledged.

What is not acknowledged is that that was largely the fault of the regimes in London, Washington DC and other Western capitals, which continued to prop up the Boer regime even after those little school kids were killed at Sharpeville.

They were black you see, and like one American Presidential candidate once said: "The US should stand up for values, shared values. Why are we more shocked when a dozen people are killed in Vilnius than a massacre in Burundi? Because they are white people. That's who we are. That's where America comes from.'' A bunch of black teenagers sympathetic to some jailed terrorist (the same presidential candidate called him a train bomber) and the Western world did not miss a beat.

It seems odd that the very people that did not do anything while the man piled up his frequent stayer nights at Robben Island, who have not done anything to suggest that they are remorseful about it at all, should want to seize on the very suffering that they caused and laud it in front of other African leaders as some sort of sacrifice for them, as if it was the Africans that kept Mandela in chains. If anyone needed an example or lesson to follow, surely it is they, from the West, that needed to acknowledge the resilience and fortitude of an African spirit that withstood the test of time and came out smiling 27 years down the line.

So that instead of peppering their speeches with platitudes about forgiveness and iconic this and that, they should instead have come in sackcloth to beseech our mercies for trying, and failing, to break the African spirit embodied in Mandela.

Mandela as an example of African fortitude, Mandela as a continuation of African charity through reconciliation begun in 1980 by President Mugabe, Mandela as the example of a never say die always smiling African optimism, Mandela as the embodiment of Africa's victory over the chains that the Europeans have put us under since slavery, that is a Mandela I will laud as a hero.

But that is not the hero that they talked about. Their hero was Mandela as the anti-Mugabe, Mandela as the African who behaved so like them that he was one of their own, Mandela as the acceptable face of African leadership, a leadership that knows it's place and does not upset the balance of things and the interests of capital. That Mandela, the one they came to bid farewell to, that Mandela is not my hero.

The Mandela that did not use his international renown for the elimination of Africa's debt, the Mandela that did not attend the funeral of Julius Nyerere because he could not be associated with a Marxist, the Mandela that would not remain married to someone whose image had been tarnished by her "by any means necessary" approach to his liberation, that Mandela is not my hero.

Yes, a son of Africa sits in the White House today, but Jimmy Carter, that 'champion of human rights', also came to the memorial. Was he not president when Mandela was in prison? Did he do anything to get him freed?

Or did he not instead call him a terrorist? Perhaps someone ought to have reminded these Americans that there were more than 10 million Zulus in South Africa, what with one of their presidential candidates having also said, "If we had to take a million immigrants in, say Zulus, next year, or Englishmen, and put them up in Virginia, what group would be easier to assimilate and would cause less problems for the good people of Virginia?"

David Cameron also came.

Now, I am a bit ambivalent about David, because he is the scion of a Conservative tradition that did all it could to undermine the sanctions against the Boer regime, was a student at Oxford when some group that he may or may not have belonged to was running "hang Mandela" posters, which he may or may not have seen but certainly didn't help design, he went to South Africa on a fact finding mission after Oxford and returned without discovering the fact that Mandela languishing in prison was an injustice, but he did apologise, did he not, for the Conservative government of old's stance on sanctions and this whole Mandela business.

A leader that is willing to change his mind, and apologise, is someone I like.

But you see, I did not see Mandela change his mind about anything. Yes, he forgave his jailers, but was that not just him copying our very own President?

I mean, people talk about reconciliation as if it was invented in 1994. Please! True reconciliation was shown in 1980, with no thanks from the beneficiaries too I might add. No template, no-one to copy from, nothing promised, and President Mugabe turned around and showed them mercy.

And they repaid it with the whirlwind! Ingrates.

Mandela was not the first nationalist to be detained. He was not even the only South African nationalist to be detained. Yet listening to his jailers and their erstwhile supporters you would think that his was a unique fate.

It was not. For their Robben Island we had Gonakudzingwa, and Whawha, and other places.

We are supposed to watch and applaud as the wool is being pulled over our faces, and if you dare act out of step with this collective self-delusion, you are vilified. You wait five minutes before issuing a statement of condolence, and you are condemned.

A stampede to the crying bad, a fact that made our hapless Morgan Tsvangirai rush out a half thought statement which was more an attempted dig at our very own President than it was about Mandela, talking about how he felt "a great void and (was) greatly aggrieved at the sad and tragic loss of this icon" death of Mandela. Please! The man was 95, he had been dying for a while; sad yes, tragic, no. But, we digress.

The point is, a lot of this icon-ing business somehow translated to comparisons between Mandela and other African leaders. Many Zimbabweans took to social media to eulogise the man. Comparisons with our own President were made, and conclusions drawn. The man was a saint, God's gift to mankind, an icon, our Saviour, our hero. Really?

Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't we get independence while the man was in prison? Didn't we in fact suffer bombings for harbouring ANC activists and supporting the cause for his release from prison? Didn't our President lead the effort to form Sadc, the very body whose sole aim was to reduce dependence on the South African economy so that sanctions being maintained by the Non-Aligned Movement but largely ignored by the West could bite further and lead to Mandela's release? How then does the man we helped get out of jail for no gain on our part suddenly become our Saviour?

Back at Chegato High School, Mberengwa ne-dust road, my history teacher, Mr Dande (not his name, but the nickname we used for him, this is my first chance to say it without fear of a beating so let me), thought I was a so-so history student, but I think I was listening when he explained that people like Samora Machel and Julius Nyerere played a "pivotal role" in our fight for independence.
Mandela was not mentioned.

Now, what I know is that Mandela married Samora Machel's widow, soon after ditching the one person that fought to keep his name in the limelight all those 27 years (because the false accusations of kidnap and murder against his wife would not sit well with his image in the West no doubt), and that he pleaded a scheduling conflict as the reason for not attending Nyerere's funeral, but hey, maybe that still makes you a hero in other people's eyes.

I know heroes. Robert Mugabe is a hero, as shown by how people applauded him at the memorial service. I don't hear anyone talking about that, but heroes do not need the sycophantic bleating of empty voices to become heroes. Julius Nyerere is a hero, Mandela's boycott of his funeral notwithstanding.

Heck, Winnie Mandela is a heroine, given how she worked to keep the fire of the struggle burning. Amai Mujuru is a heroine, for standing up for our independence then for the rights of women through the Legal Age of Majority Act once in Parliament way back when. I do not hear talk about these heroes. For they confronted colonialism and won.

Mandela was in prison at the time.

So, Mandela is dead. What shall we say about this great man? Many people have spoken this week, but all I heard was rhetoric, grounded in guilt and insidious plans, and not truth.

For truth, I will let the words of my true South African heroine, Winnie Mandela, speak last:
"Mandela let us down. He agreed to a bad deal for the blacks. Economically, we are still on the outside. The economy is very much 'white'. It has a few token blacks, but so many who gave their life in the struggle have died unrewarded.

"I cannot forgive him for going to receive the Nobel (Peace Prize in 1993) with his jailer (FW) de Klerk. Hand-in-hand they went.

"Do you think de Klerk released him from the goodness of his heart? He had to.

"The times dictated it, the world had changed, and our struggle was not a flash in the pan, it was bloody to say the least and we had given rivers of blood. I had kept it alive with every means at my disposal.

"I am not alone.

"The people of Soweto are still with me. Look what they make him do. The great Mandela. He has no control or say any more.

"They put that huge statue of him right in the middle of the most affluent "white" area of Johannesburg. Not here where we spilled our blood and where it all started. Mandela is now a corporate foundation. He is wheeled out globally to collect the money and he is content doing that.

"The ANC have effectively sidelined him but they keep him as a figurehead for the sake of appearance."

Now that is how the hero they imprisoned, created and now mourned must be remembered.