So spoke Ophelia about Hamlet and so might speak any admirer of the once-great Nelson Mandela. It is impossible to read his recent intemperate and racist remarks about American policy toward Iraq and not wish they had been uttered by someone else -- an Idi Amin, for example, a Robert Mugabe or a Joseph Mobutu or any other of a host of demagogues that Africa has spawned in its post-colonial period.
To my dying day I will honour Mandela for being who he was in the 1990s when he led South Africa into democracy: wise, restrained, forgiving and statesmanlike, trusted by all races as a model of what black leadership might bring to a wounded country. To be sure, he was married to the odious hate-monger Winnie but he did manage to distance himself from her policies and get a divorce. He was a bit too cozy with the African and Communist dictators who had supported the ANC in its rebellion but that might have been attributable to a sense of gratitude. When he stepped down from the presidency (as few of his fellow black rulers ever did voluntarily) he had a world-wide reputation for good judgement which endured until the last couple of years.
Since then he has twice called the President of the United States a racist, accused him of mental incompetence and claimed that Mr Bush was desirous of plunging the world into a holocaust because of a greed for oil. Such remarks are not worthy of someone of Mandela's lofty stature; they serve only to reduce him to the level of leftist pygmies such as Alexa Macdonough or Noam Chomsky. The usual remedy for senility is to have a loved one ensure the dotard never speaks in public again. Someone close to Mandela should undertake that role very soon.
Posted by at February 2, 2003 05:02 PM