Sanitizing Mandela

On January 26, 2012, while appearing on MSNBC’s Politics Nation hosted by the Reverend Al Sharpton, author and historian Rick Perlstein, author of Nixon Land: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, recounted how a certain white senator had received numerous letters calling Dr. Martin Luther King a “dark-skinned Hitler.”

Both King and Mandela have been labeled communists by their White critics. After meeting with former President Fidel Castro in Cuba in 1991, Mr. Mandela, with the Cuban President by his side, gave a speech titled “How Far We Slaves Have Come,” in which he hailed Cuba’s “special place” in the hearts of the African people. For that speech his critics deemed Mr. Mandela a communist, a designation also affixed to Dr. King and the current Catholic pope.

In a surprising turn of events, the leader of the Catholic Church, the newly elected Pope of Rome, has aligned himself with the exact same positions held by Dr. King and Mr. Mandela. Pope Francis I has issued a 50,000-word “apostolic exhortation” excoriating capitalism and voicing his support for liberation theology. King, Mandela, and now the Pope have called for the redistribution of land and the redistribution of wealth, and all were explicit in their condemnation of unfettered predatory capitalism.

King’s persona has been reduced to that of a “dreamer” for his 1963 speech at the March on Washington, a corporatized image unrepresentative of the visionary he had become after his meeting with the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad at his home in Chicago in 1966.

Mandela was a revolutionary, a practical and pragmatic revolutionary, yes, but a revolutionary, nevertheless. For the image-makers to reduce him to a one-dimensional forgiver of his oppressors is to defy the true essence of Mandela and the value he brought to South Africa and the world.

(Jackie Muhammad is a former presidential appointee, member of the Oxford round table, educator, businessman and member of the Nation of Islam Research Group. Visit the Research Group online at http://www.noirg.org and join the conversation on FaceBook.com/NOIResearch and Twitter @ NOIResearch. Jackie Muhammad can be reached at jacrb519@ aol.com.)

Article Appeared @http://noirg.org/sanitizing-mandela/

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