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Mandela requiem The eulogies which have been sung for Nelson Mandela(1918-2013) particularly by those who previously opposed him are a reminder that dead heros and martyrs, however highly their qualities are esteemed, are always destined to become the playthings of the powerful of posterity. Jeremy Seabrook ONE of the swiftest media clich‚s to have crystallised around Nelson Mandela is that he was a 'secular saint'. His capacity for forgiveness of his former enemies, his absence of rancour and his instinctive egalitarianism have left an afterglow, in which the grief of his millions of admirers was mingled with thanksgiving for his long life, while even those who had been most loud in their condemnation of him declared he was the inspirational hero of their lives. The praises sung by the heirs and successors of people for whom he was terrorist and subversive until his release from prison in 1990, show the extent to which his former detractors now claim him as their own (with a few exceptions, like former Conservative MPs Norman Tebbit and Terry Dicks, too old now to change their discordant tune). Perhaps this is because his spectacular magnanimity suggests that if the horrors of apartheid could be pardoned through the exaltations of Truth and Reconciliation, so, perhaps, could all other colonial wrongs, both past and present. The mild forgivingness of Mandela's person exercised a wonderful cleansing power; which is why prime ministers, presidents and heads of state, those still occupying those high offices and those long out of them, flocked to his memorial. What were they looking for? Were Britain's four prime ministers seeking absolution for Britain, not merely for having supported the former apartheid regime, but also for the many other distasteful memories of a long imperial history? This was not hypocrisy on the part of the penitents of racial supremacy who, in death, have clasped Mandela to their bosom; the psychological phenomenon it reveals goes deeper than this. If such generosity of spirit could make good, as it were, the ravages of the first age of colonialism, then surely its second coming - in the guise of globalisation - which has, after all, been voluntarily embraced by the representatives of nations, supposedly long free of imperial coercion, can more readily be made acceptable and even welcome. Rewriting contemporary experience It is upon this newer form of dominance that the eulogies over Mandela are calculated to call down a blessing. Rewriting history is one thing, but rewriting contemporary experience is far more important, and the revered dead are not exempt from being pressed into this noble enterprise. Those who have lamented the woes of post-Mandela South Africa - a period which has already been long under way, since his withdrawal from the presidency in 1995 - have complained of growing inequality, violence and corruption; and the heirs of Mandela have shown themselves unable to match his human qualities, even when they have invoked him as inspiration and guiding spirit. One of the most telling incidents of the 'new' South Africa, which indicates disturbing continuities with a past which was to have been left behind forever, was the shooting dead by police of 44 workers at the Lonmin platinum mine in August 2012. The images from that incident were reminiscent of the Sharpeville shootings of 91 children, women and men of the African National Congree (ANC) in 1960 under the apartheid regime. A new generation has grown up since the end of apartheid which has also been born to a legacy of unemployment, exploitation and loss. For them the struggle is against an economic oppression which was certainly not lifted by the end of apartheid; and although opportunities have facilitated the emergence of a substantial black middle class in South Africa, the gross injustices perpetrated in the name of racial superiority have their analogue in those that result from the 'integration' of the sometime pariah state into the comity of nations which form 'the global economy', that euphemism for universal and uncontested capitalism. It is always clear what liberation movements aspire to be freed from, but into what they are entering becomes plain only long after the event. Mrs Thatcher's detestation of the ANC was because she perceived it as an organisation that professed a version of Communist ideology, which, true to her heritage, she found more abhorrent than a racism that was familiar since it had run through centuries of British dominion. When Mandela was released from prison, Thatcher could afford to be magnanimous, since the Cold War had been won, and Mandela had no option but to forswear the values he had once espoused of a socialism which had withered even as he languished in jail. The admiration he inspired in the West was a consequence, less of his victory over his captors and tormentors, than of his tacit acknowledgement of the triumph of a 'free' economy, which also takes its prisoners and hostages and locks them away, not in island fortresses but in the carceral suburbs and townships of poverty. Relief at the transition of South Africa to its role as major regional hub in the elegant structure of globalisation was, possibly, the most significant feature which earned for Mandela his secular beatification, which had begun long before his death, when world leaders beat a path to his door, to celebrate his forbearance and generosity of spirit, and perhaps to reassure themselves that he was free of vengeful intentions, as they would have been, and to bask in his effulgence which might add some lustre to their own, not always honourable, doings. 'Acceptable' economic apartheid of globalisation The figure of Nelson Mandela, humble yet charismatic, astonishingly intimate as well as elevated, radiated a benign humility onto a world which had treated him so unjustly. His presence suggested new beginnings, tabula rasa, on which the hopes of humanity would cancel out old ideologies and ruinous beliefs in racial superiority. But as many commentators observed, the rainbow nation which came to pay homage to him in the vigil outside his home and at his lying in state consisted not only of black and white, but also of rich and poor. The ideology that creates this latter divide is not, as is sometimes averred, 'a legacy of apartheid', but is a reflection of the 'acceptable' economic apartheid of globalisation, which separates the wealthy from the poor by gates, bolts, guards, savage dogs, razor wire and guns - the same paraphernalia that enforced racial segregation. The struggle against this form of inequality has to be waged all over again in the world; not least in a country where the top 10% earn almost 60% of national income, where between a quarter and one-third of people have no work and 42 people are murdered each day, one of the murder capitals of the country being the sadly named Nelson Mandela Bay. Mandela has been referred to in the same breath as Gandhi, whose non-violence has been, after his death, universally venerated and almost as widely disregarded; but a more apt comparison might be with Ambedkar, who died almost to the day 57 years ago, on 6 December 1956 - that fateful day when the leaders of Congress were arrested in South Africa and charged with treason. Ambedkar's memorial in Mumbai was visited by over a million people in the first week of December 2013. He, too, worked for the uplift of the downtrodden and humiliated; and the country whose exemplary and progressive constitution he helped to frame exhibits the same regressive inequalities as the 'new' South Africa; a fate which suggests that, however highly their qualities are esteemed, dead heroes and martyrs are always destined to become the playthings of the powerful of posterity. Jeremy Seabrook is a freelance journalist based in the UK. His latest book is Pauperland: Poverty and the Poor in Britain (Hurst, 2013).
*Third World Resurgence No. 279/280, November/December 2013, pp 61-63 |
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