The Review - The Full Nelson

October 2000

The Full Nelson
Even a great man has his blindspots

By Daniel Mandel

Nelson Mandela, probably the most revered and respected world statesman, recently made a second visit to Australia and was received with the acclaim to which he must be by now truly accustomed. Few leaders have paid the price he paid in so just a cause. After 27 years in captivity because he would not accept the disenfranchisement of his people without resistance, Mandela speaks his mind. Having been censored — and worse — for most of his adult life, he is disinclined to exercise self-censorship now.

Or is he? For Mandela is not only a hero, but also a politician. He will speak or be silent, as the case might be, if an interest is served. To that end, he has never shied from honouring a rogue’s gallery of world leaders — from Gaddafi to Castro — and, honourable man that he is, he has been refreshingly straightforward as to why he has done so.

Questionable Company: Mandela with Gaddafi in Tripoli

Mandela’s cause was defended early by individual Jews. He appreciates Israel’s struggle to survive and, what is little known, Menachem Begin’s Irgun historically inspired the ANC’s armed struggle. Mandela said as much at his 1964 trial, which saw him sentenced to life imprisonment. These were the times before Zionism had lost its attraction on the Left. These times were also distinguished, however, by a fascination with liberation and the means to attain it long before the ruinous consequences were fully manifest or widely understood.

Both factors need to be remembered in assessing Mandela today. The friends of the early revolutionary era are his friends and Mandela remains impervious to their deconstruction. One of the first people he met abroad after his release from prison in 1990 was Yasser Arafat. Although never having previously met, Mandela thought enough of him to greet him as "my comrade and friend", be it noted, years before the start of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and when the PLO was officially committed to Israel’s elimination.

Visiting Tripoli in 1997, in defiance of a large international consensus that Colonel Gaddafi had serious charges of state-sponsored terrorism to answer, Mandela was forthright in repudiating criticism. "This man helped us at a time when we were all alone, when those who say we should not come here were helping the enemy ... those who say that I should not be here are without morals.

The following year, Mandela defended this visit and another one as Fidel Castro’s guest in Cuba. "I did that because our moral authority dictates that we should not abandon those who supported us in the darkest hour of this country."

These formulations, however, are more problematic than they appear. For years, Nelson Mandela assumed for the ANC the right not to look too closely into the human rights policies of its benefactors; but he has chosen to take for granted the right to insist that others do so, and do so stringently.

As it happens, Israel was not wholly deficient in meeting the test Mandela would impose on it. In confluence with Western states, Israel imposed sanctions on Pretoria in 1987. Additionally, Mandela himself has publicly conceded, on his first visit to Israel, that it "co-operated with apartheid, but it did not get involved in the atrocities of the apartheid regime."

For all these considerations, Mandela’s entire attitude towards Israel and the PLO is hard to diagnose. "There are many similarities between our struggle and that of the PLO" he affirmed at Lusaka in 1990 after that first meeting with Arafat. Israel, he said, like South Africa, practised "a unique form of colonialism ... If the truth alienates the powerful South African Jewish community, that is too bad".

Quizzed on his attitude to the disputant parties, Mandela elaborated. "We identify with the PLO because, just like ourselves, they are fighting for the right of self-determination." Mandela added that he supported Israel’s right to exist, but "that doesn’t mean that Israel has the right to retain the territories they conquered from the Arab world … It will be a grave mistake for us to consider our attitude towards Arafat on the basis of the Jewish community. We sympathise with the struggles of the Jewish people and their persecution, down the years. In fact, we have been very much influenced by the lack of racialism among the Jewish communities … Arafat is a comrade in arms, and we treat him as such".

This represents a puzzling amalgam of propositions. Were the PLO’s struggle over the decades purely one of self-determination, Mandela’s point might have had application. But the PLO plan to exercise Palestinian self-determination at the expense of Jewish independence did not detain Mandela in his sympathies.

The resultant dismay of Jewish groups, conveyed through meetings and statements, put Mandela under obligation to express himself anew in somewhat milder terms. In a meeting with the American Jewish Congress in Geneva in June 1990, Mandela emphasised that he supported Israel’s right to exist within "secure borders" but also criticised the Israeli government’s treatment of the Palestinians and called on the government to hold direct talks with the PLO. The following month, Mandela spoke unequivocally of his "principled and unswerving opposition to antisemitism" in his first meeting with South African Jewish leaders. He added that he had not meant to give offence with his statement about "the powerful Jewish community in South Africa" and indeed, there has never been a repetition of such statements.

As Jewish communal leaders have learnt in discussions with Mandela, including one in Sydney in September, Mandela is rather over-generous with concessions he would see made by Israel. He holds dogmatically to a belief that Israel can ultimately best secure peace through a return to the 1967 borders but he is less forthcoming on reassurances that Palestinians and Arabs more generally are genuinely willing to put the conflict behind them even on these terms. Mandela understands that any such peace should be "hot", not merely formal, although this stricture rarely finds its way into reports of his views on the subject. Mindful of the intricacies involved, Mandela has avoided speaking on the vexed issue of Jerusalem, which sank the Camp David Summit.

Mandela has also made a point of praising the efforts of Jewish South Africans to end apartheid and called for a "a warm relationship" with Israel. A visit was postponed in 1996 but took place last year where he gave voice to a more measured judgement of the relationship and repudiated those who had argued against the new ties. "My visit to Israel is the fulfilment of a long-cherished dream," Mandela affirmed in Jerusalem.

For all this, there remains much that is discomforting about the international path Mandela has blazed. Throughout his years as president, he remained resistant to any review of the flawed standard of uncritical support for former allies, taking umbrage at any criticism of his support for Third World dictators. This support has seen military contracts concluded with rogue regimes, like Syria and North Korea, and legitimacy conferred, not only on dictators, but on notorious racist agitators like Louis Farrakhan, as well as Islamist organisations for whom he played host in 1996, including the Palestinian terrorist group, Hamas. The same year, on a visit to Iran, he also gave a boost to Saddam Hussein by criticising US measures to contain his regime as an unacceptable pretension to the role of an international policeman. In 1998, while hosting a bevy of Third World leaders, he condemned American strikes on Sudan and Afghanistan that followed the bombing of American embassies in Africa.

This is vintage Bandung generation rhetoric. It is also nonsense. International peace and security can only be achieved through the willingness of major powers to uphold settlements and fight international terrorism that threatens the world now with potential use of unconventional weapons. There has been a time-honoured tendency to excoriate American interventions when we don’t want them and to bemoan American isolation when we do. American interests rarely get a look-in. The fact that the Security Council, too, for reasons too long and disgraceful for discussion here, is unable to adopt a unified policy towards the fulfilment of its own Gulf War cease-fire settlement has never invalidated the efforts to enforce it of those powers willing to carry the burden.

As a world leader of the highest stature, Mandela’s words and deeds enjoy the widest possible resonance. He can scarcely be surprised that Western leaders have found some of South Africa’s dealings questionable. His response to criticism, however, has been one of pique and defiance. When evidence of South Africa’s co-operation in the nuclear field with Iran was revealed in 1996, Mandela condemned American "arrogance" for "dictating where we should go or who our friends should be".

By that standard, Mandela was himself guilty of much the same vice when he took the opportunity of President Clinton’s South African visit in 1998 to lecture Clinton publicly on US foreign policy, the sort of breach of diplomatic protocol that only Mandela can arrogate to himself without risk.

Only of his meeting with Farrakhan does one detect an apologetic note, Mandela indicating that the meeting had been short and that he frequently conferred with people whose views he rejected. (It was also reported that Mandela had taken Farrakhan to task on racial issues).

"We will conclude agreements with any country whether they are popular in the West or not" was Mandela’s response to criticism of a proposed arms sale of $641 million to Syria in 1996. In 1998, details were revealed of South Africa supplying arms to Libya in return for cut-price oil. Both trading partners are known sponsors of terrorist groups. Mandela’s point on talking to rogue states and making peace with killers is well taken, but arming them for profit is another matter and the questions this raises cannot be dismissed simply with self-righteous assertions of gratitude for services rendered and sovereign discretion.

Mandela’s recent indulgence towards an old ally, Iran — implicitly accepting Iranian assurances of a fair trial for the Iranian Jews convicted last year of espionage, and criticising the public campaign on behalf of their human rights — will stand as one of the less inspired of his international interventions. Mandela admits now that the assurances of a fair trial he was given by the Iranians, which conditioned his own stance and the advice he gave others, were baseless.

None of this should make us lose sight at the troubled but signal achievement of democracy in South Africa. It is difficult to imagine the same outcome without Mandela and for that we have his astonishing forbearance and resistance to hatred to thank. Undoubtedly, he is right that even bitter antagonists ultimately have no sensible option other than peace making. But a foreign policy that rewards dubious friends, chastises besieged acquaintances and endorses Third World pieties about the duties of the good international citizen is one that remains uninstructed by recent history.