Mandelamania - Nelson Mandela's trip to the U.S

National Review, July 9, 1990

Mandelamania

THE BEST THING about Nelson Mandela's trip to this country is its carnival atmosphere. The sword-swallowing and the hoop-jumping make it difficult for the radical Left to propagate the details of Mandela's beliefs. They also, unfortunately, make in difficult for normal people to notice them.

Nelson Mandela apparently likes to keep up with old allies from his revolutionary days. He agreed to share a podium in New York with the three aged Puerto Ricans who shot up in the House of Representatives in 1954 (the gunman who had tried to murder Harry Truman four years earlier was invited, but made his excuses). Jewish organizations made a fuss, soon squelched, about his fondness for Yasir Arafat. Earlier this year, he visited Qaddafi in Tripoli, and praised his "fight for peace and human rights," while, in Luanda, he praised Castro for the same thing.

Such cordiality toward the Caliban Left might be seen as rhetorical camouflage for hard-headed accommodation with de Klerk and the South African whites. More serious for the future of South Africa, however, is Mandela's continuing confidence in Communism and Communists at home. Mandela paid tribute to the South African Communist party and its leader, Joe Slovo, in the first speech upon his release. Statements Mandela has made since then concerning his economic plans have been nuclear, which, in the circumstances, is an improvement. But the fact remains that, at a time when the radical socialist ideal is so discredited that even bulgarian and Romanian Communists find it prudent to go by other names, Mandela is proud to associate himself with it. The economic prospects of a country under his stewardship look grim indeed.

They are ringing the bells now, Horace Walpole remarked on similar occassion. "They will be wringing their hands soon enough.

He saw that governments are not supposed to forget their country's interests because of popular hysteria. While Mandela is bineg feted in Washington, the ANC is murdering its black rivals in Natal and driving the armed whites into a supremacist laarger by inisting on the amaintenance of sanctions. If the Bush Administration joins in the hoopla for mandela and glosses over the realty of the ANC it will share responsiblity for the fire next time.