[Diggers350] Mandela's legacy

[Tony Gosling]

Spot on Dave,
I think it's worth posting the full text for anyone reading offline
Click the link though and share folks if possible
T

Mandela’s Democracy
<mhtml:{88A603B7-B778-4458-A092-2C20C9B49390}mid://00000024/!x-usc:http://monthlyreview.org/1999/04/01/mandelas-democracy>http://monthlyreview.org/1999/04/01/mandelas-democracy

Andrew Nash teaches Political Studies at the 
University of the Western Cape, South Africa.

The Tribal Model of Democracy

In his speech from the dock, at his 1962 trial 
for inciting African workers to strike and 
leaving the country without a passport, Nelson 
Mandela described the initial formation of his political ideas:

"Many years ago, when I was a boy brought up in 
my village in the Transkei, I listened to the 
elders of the tribe telling stories about the 
good old days, before the arrival of the White 
man. Then our people lived peacefully under the 
democratic rule of their kings and their 
`amapakati’, and moved freely and confidently up 
and down the country without let or hindrance. 
Then the country was ours, in our own name and 
right. We occupied the land, the forests, the 
rivers; we extracted the mineral wealth beneath 
the soil and all the riches of this beautiful 
country. We set up and operated our own 
government, we controlled our own armies and we 
organized our own trade and commerce. The elders 
would tell tales of the wars fought by our 
ancestors in defence of the fatherland, as well 
as the acts of valour performed by generals and 
soldiers during those epic days. The names of 
Dingane and Bambata, among the Zulus, of Hintsa, 
Makana and Ndlambe of the Amaxhosa, of Sekhukhuni 
and others in the north, were mentioned as the 
pride and glory of the entire African nation
 The 
land, then the main means of production, belonged 
to the whole tribe, and there was no individual 
ownership whatsoever. There were no classes, no 
rich or poor, and no exploitation of man by man. 
All men were free and equal and this was the 
foundation of government. Recognition of this 
general principle found expression in the 
constitution of the Council, variously called 
Imbizo, or Pitso, or Kgotla, which governs the 
affairs of the tribe. The council was so 
completely democratic that all members of the 
tribe could participate in its deliberations. 
Chief and subject, warrior and medicine man, all 
took part and endeavoured to influence its 
decisions. It was so weighty and influential a 
body that no step of any importance could ever be 
taken by the tribe without reference to it
 In 
such a society are contained the seeds of 
revolutionary democracy in which none will be 
held in slavery or servitude, and in which 
poverty, want and insecurity shall be no more. is 
is the inspiration which, even today, inspires me 
and my colleagues in our political struggle."

Mandela returns to this theme more briefly in his 
speech from the dock at the Rivonia trial, and 
again in his autobiography, drafted on Robben 
Island in 1974. There he describes what he 
learned from the proceedings of the tribal 
meetings at the Thembu Great Place at 
Mquekezweni. He expands on the earlier account, 
personalizes it, and draws from it an account of the role of the
  democratic leader:

"It was democracy in its purest form. There may 
have been a hierarchy of importance among the 
speakers, but everyone was heard: chief and 
subject, warrior and medicine man, shopkeeper and 
farmer, landowner and labourer. People spoke 
without interruption, and the meetings lasted for 
many hours. The foundation of self-government was 
that all men were free to voice their opinions 
and were equal in their value as citizens. 
(Women, I am afraid, were deemed second-class 
citizens.)
 At first, I was astonished at the 
vehemence—and candour—with which people 
criticized the regent. He was not above 
criticism—in fact, he was often the principal 
target of it. But no matter how serious the 
charge, the regent simply listened, not defending 
himself, showing no emotion at all. The meetings 
would continue until some kind of consensus was 
reached. They ended in unanimity or not at all. 
Unanimity, however, might be an agreement to 
disagree, to wait for a more propitious time to 
propose a solution. Democracy meant all men were 
to be heard, and a decision was taken together as 
a people. Majority rule was a foreign notion. A 
minority was not to be crushed by a majority. 
Only at the end of the meeting, as the sun was 
setting, would the regent speak. His purpose was 
to sum up what had been said and form some 
consensus among the diverse opinions. But no 
conclusion was forced on people who disagreed. If 
no agreement could be reached, another meeting 
would be held
 As a leader, I have always 
followed the principles I first saw demonstrated 
by the regent at the Great Place. I have always 
endeavoured to listen to what each and every 
person in a discussion had to say before 
venturing my own opinion. Oftentimes, my own 
opinion will simply represent a consensus of what 
I heard in the discussion. I always remember the 
regent’s maxim: a leader, he said, is like a 
shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the 
most nimble go on ahead, whereupon the others 
follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind."

These two passages set out the basic elements of 
a model of democracy which is clearly distinct 
from those outlined in conventional treatments of 
the topic. It is not the only conception of 
democracy to be found in Mandela’s writings, but 
it is the one most extensively described and most 
explicitly claimed as his own. According to this 
model, democracy consists of giving everyone a 
chance to speak on the matters that concern their 
conditions of life, and allowing the discussion 
to continue until sufficient consensus has been 
reached, with due regard to the standing of the 
people concerned, for the community to proceed 
without division. The role of the leader is to 
interpret the arguments and viewpoints put 
forward in debate in such a way as to make that 
consensus possible, drawing from expressions of 
difference a "tribal wisdom" which reaffirms 
their essential unity. The model requires that 
the leader who takes this role should be 
accepted, but not necessarily elected. What is 
crucial is that the question of leadership be 
settled beforehand, and kept separate from the 
question of how the popular will is to be interpreted.

In calling this the tribal model of democracy, I 
am seeking mainly to describe a current in the 
ideological history of modern capitalism, and am 
not taking a position about the extent to which 
precolonial Africa conformed to this ideology or not.

The Pre-capitalist Character of the Tribal Model

There are at least four features of 
pre-capitalist society—all of which distinguish 
it from capitalism—which are integral to this 
tribal model of democracy. None of them imply a 
rigid dichotomy between capitalist and 
pre-capitalist societies, or a linear mode of 
progression from one to the other. On the 
contrary, the thrust of the argument that follows 
is to show how past and present interpenetrate 
precisely within the context of capitalism, and 
in resistance to its political forms.

First, in pre-capitalist society (including the 
context which Mandela describes), the place of 
each person in the system of production is fixed 
by custom and tradition. Acceptance of such 
custom and tradition is essential for the 
stability of such a society. These customs and 
traditions will evolve relatively gradually, as a 
rule. In some cases, their evolution will be 
circumscribed by what nature allows. For as long 
as all accept their place within the social 
order, within certain limits, it will always be 
possible to achieve some kind of consensus. But 
it will necessarily be a consensus based on that 
acceptance of the place of each within 
production. In the context of capitalist society, 
in contrast, the major decisions which must be 
made can have no such common premise of a social 
order in which all know their place, and there is a place for all.

Second, accepting the customs of the tribe 
provides a certain security for the individual. 
With no system of wage-labor, there is also no 
incentive to cut off anyone’s access to the means 
of production, as there is under capitalism. The 
chief cannot increase his wealth by removing 
people from the land; on the contrary, the more 
people who live on the land, the stronger the 
tribe in relation to its neighbors, the more 
tribute is paid to the chief, the more hands are 
available for collective projects. In capitalism, 
wage-labor is the principal means of access to 
the means of production, and profits depend on 
not paying more for it than the capitalist can help.

Third, the pre-capitalist context provides the 
basis for an ethic of communal solidarity, in 
which, for example, the chief makes sure that 
those in need are helped, and that no one goes 
hungry while the resources of the tribe are 
sufficient to prevent that. This ethic helps to 
make tribal consensus possible, as the well-being 
of the tribe is genuinely in the interest of its 
members. Within capitalism, such an ethic is an 
economic irrationality. Accordingly, huge numbers 
of people go hungry, although the resources of 
society are sufficient to prevent it. The 
consumerist ethic of capitalism works against the 
very idea that a common wisdom exists and can be formulated through discussion.

Fourth, there is no separation of politics and 
economics in pre-capitalist society. Those who 
have any say in the life of the tribe can also 
discuss what is to be done with its resources. 
This makes it possible to have a council which, 
in Mandela’s formulation, is "so weighty and 
influential a body that no step of any importance 
could ever be taken by the tribe without 
reference to it." In contrast, capitalism depends 
on a separation of politics and economics, which 
ensures that basic decisions about the use that 
society will make of its productive resources are 
removed from the public sphere.

Although Mandela’s tribal model of democracy is 
essentially pre-capitalist in character, it is 
articulated as an alternative to liberal or 
capitalist democracy. It is a reconstruction for 
purposes of political advocacy. In some respects, 
it might be considered as lagging behind 
bourgeois democracy: leadership is decided by 
birth not election; part of the adult population 
is excluded from public debate and 
decision-making; those who participate do so on 
the basis of a hierarchy of property and 
prestige, rather than that of formal equality; 
there is little prospect of the poorer members of 
society organizing themselves on the basis of 
their own aspirations. But it also differs from 
bourgeois democracy in ways which may be 
considered as advances on it: it sustains a way 
of life in which all are concretely involved in 
deciding the direction of society; it brings all 
issues concerning society within the sphere of 
public discussion; its structures of leadership 
and governance are not distorted and alienated by 
the creation of a professional layer of politicians.

The Tribal Model as Critique of Capitalism

There might be a sense in which the tribal model 
"contains the seeds of revolutionary democracy," 
as Mandela suggests. But this does not answer the 
question of whether those seeds could sprout in 
the soil of capitalist society. Although the 
tribal model of democracy depicts pre-capitalist 
society, it could not easily have emerged in that 
context. Indeed, this conception of the 
pre-colonial past emerged in South Africa only in 
the 1940s, after the integrity of tribal society 
itself had been destroyed, making any real return 
to its conditions impossible. The tribal model 
began life as a protest against the exclusion of 
urban, educated Africans from what they saw as 
their rightful place in the class hierarchy of 
capitalist society. At the same time, it served 
to mobilize a dispossessed proletariat around democratic demands.

The idea of an African past whose heroes 
transcended ethnic division was first developed 
by liberal educators and missionaries in the 
1920s and 1930s. It was aimed at showing African 
students the sphere of their own potential 
contribution to the linear, world-historical 
march of progress—championed and exemplified by 
the British Empire. But this idea was put to a 
very different use by the next generation of 
African intellectuals. The crucial figure in the 
initial development of the tribal model of 
democracy was Anton Lembede, philosopher of 
Africanism and first elected president of the 
African National Congress (ANC) Youth League. 
Until his early death in 1947, Lembede’s defense 
of the "glorious achievements of the heroes of 
our past" was uncontested among that generation, 
and hugely influential. It was coupled with an 
argument that "ancient Bantu society" was 
radically democratic, in that it enabled "any 
citizen" to participate equally in the affairs of 
government, and "naturally socialistic," in that 
"land belonged to the whole tribe." Mandela’s 
later recollections of his childhood experience 
often follows Lembede’s formulations verbatim. 
Lembede called on Africans to recover this legacy 
in their own time. This exhortation depended on a 
cyclical view of history according to which the 
"ancient glory" of Africa was to be revived.

But in this version, the tribal model of 
democracy remained in a fundamentally ambiguous 
relationship to capitalism. While it rejected 
capitalism, it could never provide a real 
analysis of it. Instead, it saw capitalism as the 
product of the philosophical outlook of European 
civilization, against which an African philosophy 
of harmony and unity might prevail. Invoking a 
pre-capitalist past as the basis for a call for 
racial equality within the capitalist present, it 
was unable to generate a real critique of 
capitalism, on the one hand, or to reach an 
effective accommodation with it, on the other.

Mandela’s Transformation of the Tribal Model

Soon after Mandela arrived in Johannesburg from 
the Transkei in 1943, he met Lembede and fell 
under his influence. But by the 1950s, Mandela 
had abandoned his Africanism, and become one of 
the ANC’s main proponents of non-racialism. His 
writings of the 1950s look to the African 
townships, not the pre-colonial past, for 
inspiration. It is likely that Mandela shared the 
view articulated by Chief Luthuli in 1952 that 
"tribal organisation is outmoded and traditional 
rule by chiefs retards my people." There is, 
then, nothing self-evident in Mandela’s 
exposition of the tribal model in his speech from 
the dock in 1962. And yet we can see how that 
exposition transformed the tribal model in such a 
way as to make it an ideological instrument for a 
democratic accommodation with capitalism in the 1980s and 1990s.

First, Mandela emphasized the moral basis of 
tribal political institutions, rather than the 
institutions themselves, and did so in a way 
which mostly drew them closer to the formal 
ideals of Western liberalism. Thus, "all men were 
free and equal and this was the foundation of 
government" "all men were free to voice their 
opinions and equal in their value as citizens." 
The hereditary position of the chief is lost from 
view in this version of tribal democracy, and his 
tolerance of criticism and commitment to open debate comes to the fore.

Second, Mandela’s evocation of the tribal past is 
made to serve as the basis of the moral stance 
taken by himself as an individual. It formed part 
of a moral dramatization of the South African 
conflict of in which Mandela was both a central 
protagonist and an active interpreter. For 
Lembede, by contrast, the tribal model of 
democracy had served as a source of values for 
the ideal society. Mandela repeatedly traces his 
own political vocation to his hopes, as a boy 
listening to the tales of the elders, that he 
could continue the legacy of the African heroes. 
In his trial speeches, in particular, he sets out 
the moral requirements of that vocation: he and 
his comrades must "choose between compliance with 
the law and compliance with our consciences" they 
must act as "men of honesty, men of purpose, and 
men of public morality and conscience" "if I had 
my time over," he declares, "I would do the same 
again, and so would any man who dares call 
himself a man" above all, as he states in the 
final words of his speech from the dock at 
Rivonia, he is "prepared to die" for the ideal of 
a free and democratic society which animates "the 
struggle of the African people." Through all of 
this, the tribal model is extended significantly, 
in such a way as to make it a model of the 
democratic virtues, and in some moments a model 
of democracy constituted by such virtues.

Third, at the same time as stressing the need for 
these democratic virtues, Mandela constantly 
returns in his speeches and writings to the 
collective context in which his major decisions 
are made, and in which these virtues are 
generated. His position as volunteer-in-chief in 
the Defiance Campaign, as convener of the 
organizing committee of the national strike to 
protest against the white referendum on the 
Republic; his decision not to surrender himself 
after a warrant for his arrest had been issued; 
his decision to leave South Africa illegally and 
return; the decision to form the armed wing of 
the liberation movement, Umkhonto we Sizwe—on 
each occasion, the display of virtue is made to 
depend on the collective decision. The democratic 
virtues, in effect, are embodied in the 
courageous and self-sacrificing leader, who 
embodies them only on behalf of the larger 
collectivity. The moral integrity of the leader 
(whether it be an individual or an organization), 
rather than the principle of heredity, becomes 
crucial in legitimizing the interpretation of the 
larger consensus, allocated to such a leader by the tribal model.

Fourth, to a greater degree than any other 
African leader appealing to the tribal past, 
Mandela’s model of that past is differentiated. 
Its essential harmony is achieved not through the 
negation of differences, but through the 
development of moral codes for overcoming them. 
In his accounts of the tribal past, he switches 
at crucial moments from the singular on which 
Lembede’s Africanism depended ("the African 
people," "the fatherland") to the plural ("under 
the democratic rule of our kings" "our own 
armies"). This recognition of different African 
communities raises the question of their 
relations with each other. Within the Africanist 
framework, this is not insignificant; for as long 
as the organic solidarity of "the African people" 
was presupposed, no such question could occur. 
Once it does occur, it leaves space for an 
account of the role of the democratic leader in 
enabling different communities to reconcile their differences harmoniously.

Shifts in the political strategies and thought of 
the ANC during the 1950s helped to fill this 
newly-created space. Cooperation between the ANC 
and the South African Indian Congress, then the 
establishment of allied organizations for 
coloreds and whites, required a move away from 
the Africanist idea of national identity being 
rooted in a distinctive philosophical outlook. 
The fundamental premise of the "four nations" 
thesis of the Congress Movement was the 
possibility that identities could change and 
develop along lines that were "national" in a 
larger sense. While the tribal model never 
explicitly informed the ANC’s ever more inclusive 
nationalism, it increasingly formed Mandela’s own 
role within it—and, through his example, the 
model of democratic leadership within the ANC.

Fifth, as the result of the conceptual shifts and 
developments outlined above, the tribal model of 
democracy comes to be removed from the cyclical 
conception of history in which Africanists had 
most often—though never quite 
consistently—located it. The tribal past served 
as personal inspiration for the heroic 
individual, not as a summons to the African 
people to relive their former glory. Mandela 
appears never to have doubted that the larger 
historical process was linear and progressive. 
His admiration for the African past presented no 
barrier to his admiration for the Magna Carta, 
the Bill of Rights, British Parliament and the 
American Congress. These did not belong, as for 
Lembede, within a fundamentally different 
philosophical outlook. In this sense, Mandela can 
be said to have returned the conception of the 
unified African past to its liberal and missionary origins.

The result of this fivefold transformation was to 
create a moral framework for South African 
politics in which Africanist and Western liberal 
elements were integrated in so instinctive and 
original a way that Mandela himself could 
probably not have said where the one ended and 
the other began. This framework had disabling 
effects in some respects, and enabling effects in 
others. Although it was a powerful mobilizing 
tool, it set limits to political clarity.

Mandela on Capitalism and Socialism

Above all, this moral framework required a fatal 
ambiguity on the question of capitalism and 
socialism. For to the extent that this question 
divides society, the leader who is to take on the 
consensus-interpreting role required by the 
tribal model of democracy can give his allegiance 
to neither, without endangering the tribal model 
itself. The need to avoid such allegiance is, I 
believe, the only way to explain the 
extraordinary and persistent confusion of 
Mandela’s views on capitalism and socialism. A 
brief account of his economic views will show how 
the tribal model made room for the capitulation of the ANC to capital.

This capitulation is often located in the 1990s, 
in the aftermath of the collapse of Stalinist 
regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. 
In Mandela’s case, the ground for it was laid in 
his earliest economic writing, a defense of the 
nationalization clauses of the Freedom Charter, 
published in 1956. The Freedom Charter, Mandela 
argued, was "by no means a blueprint for a 
socialist state but a program for the unification 
of various classes and groupings amongst the 
people on a democratic basis
 [It] visualizes the 
transfer of power not to any single social class 
but to all the people of this country, be they 
workers, peasants, professional men or petty 
bourgeoisie." The curiosity of the argument is 
that it neither avoids the existence of classes 
(as would a liberal democrat, emphasizing 
individual rights instead) nor draws any 
conclusion about their relationship (as would a 
Marxist). It acknowledges the existence of 
classes, but assumes that each can pursue its 
aims in harmony with the rest. The model of 
democracy which enables class relationships to be 
harmonized is surely the tribal one; just as the 
chief extracts a consensus from the differing 
opinions of the tribe, so the democratic state 
extracts a consensus from bosses and workers, 
enabling each side to pursue its interests 
without impeding the interests of the other.

The same premise is needed in order to understand 
the views on capitalism and socialism set out in 
Mandela’s autobiography. On the one hand, he 
praises Marxism as a "searchlight illuminating 
the dark night of racial oppression," and 
socialism as "the most advanced stage of economic 
life then evolved by man." He is fiercely 
critical of the "contemptible" character of 
American imperialism. But at no stage does he 
draws the conclusion that it is necessary to 
fight against capitalism or imperialism. And on 
his release from prison, when George Bush 
telephones to tell him he has included him "on 
his short list of world leaders whom he briefed 
on important issues," Mandela immediately accepts 
his bona fides; the entire problem of imperialism 
is undone at a stroke. For the tribal model can 
be extended across the globe, as long as leaders 
can find a way of recognizing each other’s proper 
status, and allowing them to speak for their followers.

Mandela’s shifting positions on economic policy 
since his release from prison are well-known. His 
memorandum to P.W. Botha of March 1989 reaffirmed 
the words of his Rivonia speech on "the need for 
some form of socialism to enable our people to 
catch up with the advanced countries of the world 
and to overcome their legacy of poverty." Until 
the meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, 
Switzerland in 1992, he continued to defend 
nationalization as an instrument of economic 
policy. But on his return from that event, he 
noted: "We have observed the hostility and 
concern of businessmen towards nationalization, 
and we can’t ignore their perceptions
 We are 
well aware that if you cannot co-operate with 
business, you cannot succeed in generating 
growth." The policies of the ANC moved rapidly 
towards privatization, fiscal austerity, and 
budgetary discipline. By the time he addressed 
the Joint Houses of Congress of the United States 
on October 6, 1994, Mandela was ready to proclaim 
the free market as the "magical elixir" which 
would bring freedom and equality to all.

It appears both to those who praise Mandela as a 
realist, and those who denounce him as a traitor, 
that he had abandoned all he had stood for 
before. But there is no betrayal in his record. 
He has simply remained true to the underlying 
premise which had animated his economic thought 
all along: the need for the leader to make use of 
his prestige to put forward as the tribal 
consensus the position which was most capable of 
avoiding overt division. Once it became apparent 
that "the hostility and concern of businessmen 
towards nationalization" was more than even the 
prestige of Mandela could alter, his prestige had 
to be used for the cause of privatization. The 
capitalist market had become the meeting place of 
the global tribe! Even then, Mandela would 
continue to claim impartiality in the conflict of 
ideologies, holding in a lecture delivered in 
Singapore in March 1997 that South Africa was 
"neither socialist nor capitalist, but was driven 
rather by the desire to uplift its people." For 
him, the character of the economy, and through it 
the movement of history, is defined on the basis 
of the consensus which the leader can interpret 
at a given moment. A hidden consistency in his 
political thought holds together a dual 
commitment to democracy and capitalism, and 
legitimates a capitalist onslaught on the mass of 
South Africans, who sustained the struggle for democracy for decades.

Mandela’s Democracy

The new South Africa—inaugurated by the election 
victory of Mandela’s ANC in April 1994—is, to a 
greater extent than is often realized, what 
Nelson Mandela has made it. To some extent, the 
limits of social change in South Africa were 
established by the global context. But the tribal 
model of democracy which I have outlined here was 
crucial at an ideological level in legitimating 
the negotiations process which led to democratic 
elections, the negotiation strategy of the ANC 
and the settlement which emerged from it.

Mandela’s transformation of the tribal model had 
legitimated the ANC’s role as interpreter of the 
African consensus on the basis of the sacrifices 
of its leaders, in a context where the original 
principle of heredity no longer applied. By the 
time the apartheid regime was ready to negotiate, 
it was Mandela himself, the world’s most famous 
political prisoner and the living symbol of 
sacrifice, who had adopted that role. This is 
already evident in his letter to P.W. Botha in 
July 1989, proposing negotiations between the ANC 
and the National Party as the country’s "two 
major political bodies." Mandela emphasizes that 
he acts on his own authority, not that of the 
ANC, and implicitly confers the same authority on Botha.

Once Mandela had been released from prison and 
negotiations had begun, the crucial idea which 
made it possible for the ANC to organize the 
oppressed majority around the tribal model was 
that of society being made up of "sectors"—youth, 
women, business, labor, political parties, 
religious and sporting bodies, and the like—each 
with a distinctive role to play. This idea has 
emerged from the organizational needs of the 
struggle against apartheid when repressive 
conditions prevented them from mobilizing around 
directly political demands. It was now used to 
insulate the leadership of the liberation 
movement from critical questioning. In this vein, 
Mandela explained to the Consultative Business 
Movement in May 1990: "Both of us—you 
representing the business world and we a 
political movement—must deliver. The critical 
questions are whether we can in fact act together 
and whether it is possible for either of us to 
deliver if we cannot or will not co-operate." In 
calling upon business—and, in their turn, labor, 
youth, students—to act within the limits of a 
"national consensus," the question of the basis 
of that consensus could be removed from sight. In 
effect, the "tribal elders" of South African 
capitalism were gathered together in a consensus 
which could only be "democratic" on the basis of capitalism.

The tribal model of democracy has come to form 
the ideological contradictions of the new South 
Africa. It is nowhere to be found in the 
constitution of the new South Africa, nor in the 
programs and policies of the ruling ANC. But it 
informs many of the institutions of the new South 
Africa, and above all the real relationships of 
power behind the facade of formal democratic 
procedures. In its many institutional 
embodiments, and above all in the hugely symbolic 
presence of Mandela, it calls upon the oppressed 
majority, in particular, to sacrifice in the 
cause of building a new society. They respond 
with a recognition of the ties of solidarity and 
common struggle which that call presupposes, and 
which they so immediately recognize in the record 
of Nelson Mandela himself. But the society they 
are called upon to build—the basis of the only 
consensus which can preserve the role of the 
chief intact—is one which will respect the cash 
nexus, rather than any other ties.

Mandela has played a crucial role in forming 
these contradictions and sustaining them. They 
will live on long after he has left active 
politics, and outside the South African context 
in which he has been most active in forming them. 
His ideological legacy—in South Africa and 
globally—is startlingly complex. He has provided 
inspiration for the struggles of oppressed people 
throughout the world, and he has made himself a 
symbol of reconciliation in a world in which 
their oppression continues. To understand his 
historical role, and come to terms with his 
legacy, we need to see how his greatness and his 
limitations stem from the same source.At 07:56 09/12/2013, david bangs wrote:
>
>
>
>The linked article shines a light that makes 
>lots of things much clearer for me...
>
><mhtml:{88A603B7-B778-4458-A092-2C20C9B49390}mid://00000024/!x-usc:http://monthlyreview.org/1999/04/01/mandelas-democracy>http://monthlyreview.org/1999/04/01/mandelas-democracy
>
>Dave Bangs
>
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"Capitalism is institutionalised bribery."
_________________
www.actorsandartistsfor911truth.org
www.mediafor911truth.org
www.pilotsfor911truth.org
www.mp911truth.org
www.ae911truth.org
www.rl911truth.org
www.stj911.org
www.l911t.com
www.v911t.org

www.abolishwar.org.uk
www.globalresearch.ca
www.public-interest.co.uk
www.radio4all.net/index.php/series/Bristol+Broadband+Co-operative
www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1407615751783.2051663.1274106225&l=90330c0ba5&type=1
<http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf>http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf 

"The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which 
alienates the possessor from the community" Carl Jung
<https://217.72.179.7/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/>https://217.72.179.7/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/

Fear not therefore: for there is nothing covered that shall not be 
revealed; and nothing hid that shall not be made known. What I tell 
you in darkness, that speak ye in the light and what ye hear in the 
ear, that preach ye upon the housetops. Matthew 10:26-27

Die Pride and Envie; Flesh, take the poor's advice.
Covetousnesse be gon: Come, Truth and Love arise.
Patience take the Crown; throw Anger out of dores:
Cast out Hypocrisie and Lust, which follows whores:
Then England sit in rest; Thy sorrows will have end;
Thy Sons will live in peace, and each will be a friend.
http://tinyurl.com/6ct7zh6  
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