For all those leeching off Mandela’s legacy, politicians, activists, pacifists and everyone else, it is only right that his legacy is seen for what it is, every single aspect of it, not just selective veneration.
David Cameron who in the 80′s was intrinsically a lead part of organisations that sided with Apartheid and produced ‘hang Mandela‘ posters, will of course now be shedding crocodile tears at his death, so will a lot of others who would selectively eulogise him to help achieve their perfidious ends.
In terms of ideas at least, in the modern sense of the terms, Mandela was hardly the ‘moderate’ and was always the ‘radical’, terms which Western governments and their media partners so callously employ to distinguish those who submit to their whims and those who do not.
Mandela needs to be venerated, that is beyond doubt, but that veneration should be for what he was, the causes he espoused and the people he sided with, not for what anyone would like him to have been.
Image from here.
