Obama and Mandela
Bill Van Auken: Obama and Mandela ■ The US president was the first of six foreign heads of state to address the crowd assembled in Johannesburg’s FNB Stadium. Filled with demagogic phrases about “struggle,” “liberation,” “freedom” and “revolution,” the speech’s attempt to cloak Obama in the legacy of Mandela’s years of sacrifice, imprisonment and persecution was an obscene exercise in hypocrisy. One would never guess from Obama’s remarks that he is the head of a government that for decades counted the South African apartheid regime as a critical ally on the African continent, and that the CIA, which he now utilizes as a refurbished Murder, Inc., assassinating perceived opponents of US policy with Predator drones, played an instrumental role in Mandela’s 1962 arrest, which led to 27 years of imprisonment. It was not until 2008—nine years after Mandela had stepped down as South Africa’s president—that Washington removed him from its list of foreign terrorists.
Amid the lies and hypocrisy that dominated the platform at Tuesday’s memorial, an element of political reality intruded from the stadium bleachers. The crowd repeatedly booed South African President Jacob Zuma—the subject of endless corruption scandals—upon his arrival, when his face appeared on the giant screens, and upon his introduction as keynote speaker. Cyril Ramaphosa, Zuma’s deputy and former mine workers’ union head-turned multimillionaire capitalist, was forced to intervene repeatedly. According to the South African Daily Maverick, he appealed at one point to the crowd in Zulu: “Don’t embarrass us, we have overseas visitors here. We can deal with present day stuff once the visitors have gone.”