Did Nelson Mandela Sell Out Black South Africans? How Black South Africa’s Plight Is A Corollary For Life In The U.S. Corporate State. And The Way Forward.
Unbeknownst to Americans in the early 1960s an unheard of man by the name of Nelson Mandela was imprisoned at that time because of his involvement in achieving social and economic justice for black Africans enslaved into a system of massive injustice, terrorism and brutality in his own homeland. There has been ample evidence reported over the years that it was the CIA who provided the South African apartheid government with the whereabouts of Mandela that led to his arrest and imprisonment. That the CIA is responsible for Mandela’s twenty seven years in prison.
At the exact same time a similar revolution for social and economic justice was starting in the United States. China too experienced Mao’s cultural revolution and the Soviet Union shut down the gulags and embraced a more humane society during substantial reforms of the 1960s. In fact, during that time the Soviet economy roared and the general belief in the west was that it was just a matter of time until the Soviet economy overtook the U.S. economy to become the world’s largest. (Sound familiar? Similarly held beliefs re China today.)
During the 1960s the world saw social revolution on every continent and in between including Cuba, Southeast Asia, Africa and South America where the U.S. was intervening militarily and through covert CIA operations. That global movement was no coincidence. The class-based corporate capitalists had created a world of exploited enemies. The world was on fire in an effort to throw off their class-based economic and social oppressors.
Just like today, there was a global revolution written in the stars. And just like today the corporate state resorted to war, force, murder. mayhem, manipulation, deceit, spying and violence to stomp down the face of humanity in order to maintain its system of power, authority and class. Unfortunately for most, the global revolution of the 1960s was a band-aid or worse. There were hard fought gains in some places but in others the class-based corporate state was often replaced with another oppressive and dumbed-down form of state violence, communism, that was held out as a solution for what ailed the world.
The 1960s were a warm-up for what was to come today. Both were foretold by the same astrological factors. But, what we are experiencing today is a magnitude more powerful. Corporate capitalism and the class-based corporate state is almost certainly now in its latter stages of permanent failure. It’s current attempts at austerity, war, spying, threats, deceit, mayhem, control, terror, outright murder and all of its other manifestations of violence will fail. There is nothing the U.S., Europe, South Africa, China, Japan, Canada or other corporate states can do to stop it. It’s no great irony that I have noted on here that the central planners in communist China have embraced the corporate state just as it is in its final stages of collapse. Central planners in all states are the consummate stooges in the dumbed-down corporate state idiocracy. They make bureaucrats as willfully ignorant and just plain ole stupid in China just as they do in Amerika.
It has been years since I have written of Nelson Mandela on here. But, I certainly consider him to be one of the most significant figures in the world over the last 100 years. In a post some years ago I wrote -
It is my belief Nelson Mandela is the most selfless advocate of human rights and the greatest leader of my lifetime. How many have sacrificed over seventy years for freedom and dignity of their fellow man? Especially under the constant threat of death. And were willing to sacrifice their own freedom by spending thirty years in prison for the most noble of causes? In a world that often shows little concern for those in true crisis, Nelson Mandela truly is a man of altruistic greatness.
Today Nelson Mandela is revered by the predatory pathocracy - the corporate state, corporate capitalism and corporate military-industrial complex – as the status quo sanitizes its past hatred of him. But, we must remember that there was a time not too long ago that our nation’s predatory elite (and those of all class-based corporate capitalist countries) considered him a grave threat and sought his imprisonment or death. He was labeled a Marxist, a radical, a terrorist and a member of a pro-Soviet organization, the African National Congress, by people of power and authority in class-based societies. And the dumbed-down mainstream media was more than happy to oblige such reporting. The U.S. had Mandela on its list of top terrorists. The same list that included Osama Bin Laden. And, now likely includes Edward Snowden. Those labels were nothing but bullshit propaganda talking points meant to protect the pathocracy’s self-interests, class privilege, control, power and rank. (George Mason University has assembled a compendium of Mandela posts that are quite varied and interesting.)
In the karmic balance of our world, corporate capitalism and the class-based corporate state created Nelson Mandela. For every action, there is an equal but opposite reaction. But rather than take responsibility for that which it had created, the dumbed-down, ego-primitive idiocracy who control the global cabal of corporate capitalism simply attempted to dispose of him. Just as they dispose of anyone that no longer serves its Godless rent extraction (profit) and exploitation in the corporate capitalist society. Our elderly, the impoverished, the exploited, those who are down on their luck, those who serve in our military and anyone else who no longer serves any economic use.
In actually it was the class-based corporate capitalists of South Africa that deserved the label of terrorist and criminal. Not Mandela. Mandela was fighting for the dignity of humanity to a violent system of massive human injustice and misery. I have noted on here before that if class-based corporate capitalism was truly democratic and so virtuous, why have so many hundreds of millions of people, if not billions, around the world rebelled against its injustices? And, for a time, by default, they fell into the hands of the Soviet Union and communists. It is quite telling of how comparatively the horrendous injustices of communism were often viewed as offering relief to those suffering under the corporate state. Both corporate capitalism and communism rely on incredible state force, both covert and overt, both psychological and physical, for their existence. Both rely on forced ignorance and conformity that subvert the Rights of Man.
Was Mandela a communist? Well, he was probably more a communist than a corporate capitalist. But in actuality he was a human being looking to stop the madness of his corporate state masters that were destroying the lives of millions of his brothers and sisters. Was he a “radical”? Well, I guess that all depends on perspective. To the class-based queen of England or the class-based Dutch monarchy or predatory private corporate bankers in the U.S., all of whom were plundering black South Africa, all of whom had much to lose if Mandela succeeded, sure he was. But then Jesus of Nazareth was the consummate radical. He’d be in prison or dead today just as Mandela was for the very same reasons.
When people live under class-based tyranny and endless injustices and their class-based masters refuse to acknowledge their grievances or grant them their God-given dignity and rights, well, then, I suppose it is quite easy to become what class rank and title considers to be a radical or a terrorist. Anyone espousing natural rights and freedoms certainly is a threat in any system of severe injustice, tyranny and corruption.
Who was Mandela really? Beyond the asinine labels used to control him and control us by creating a negative manufactured image of him for benefit of our class-based masters, he was a human being. A human being that lived under the repressive, brutal and inhumane system created by his European-heritage corporate capitalist masters. What he was was a man of exceptional fortitude who would not bow to those who wished to control, victimize and exploit him. But, rather he sought dignity, virtue and equality for all people under the brutal tyranny of corporate state violence. Sound familiar? Sounds a little like Martin Luther King, Jesus of Nazareth, Cesar Chavez, Mother Jones, Mohammed, Frederick Douglass, Thomas Paine, Gandhi….. and the countless others around the world who were hated by privileged class. People who are always labeled as terrorists and hated by the status quo and aristocratic, class-based purveyors of human misery, suffering and injustice.
Nelson Mandela was one of those people whose actions often raise the bar for everyone around them. Was he perfect? Meh. No one is above their own hypocritical finger wagging. We all suffer from the human condition. But what greater virtue is there than someone willing to sacrifice their life for those of our human family as Mandela did? As I have noted on here before, we should not exalt people and all of their foibles, imperfections and behaviors but rather we should hold high the human and humane ideals they authentically seek to spread. All people fall short of an idealistic image we may wish to use to portray them. That is why we must exalt compassionate, humane, just laws and natural rights as opposed to the dysfunctional foibles and violence of the rule of man.
The reality is the corporate state and capitalist class embraced Mandela when they learned he was no threat to their power and control. When he essentially became part of “the club” in many ways. This isn’t an indictment of Mandela. Simply an observation that he believed the best way forward was the path he chose as a compromise with the class-based system he fought so hard to topple. But, then there are many dynamics we are not privy to. Does his compromise with the status quo mean his life’s accomplishments were of no value? No. But, it does mean that his life’s work remains unfinished. Mandela won a battle but the war for human dignity and freedom still rages on. Humanity has much work to still accomplish in his name. And, more importantly in our name or humanity’s name.
On that note, there was an op-ed at Bloomberg a few days ago that addresses Mandela’s agreement with the existing power elites in South Africa. It is titled “Was Mandela Right to Sellout Black South Africans?”. I’m not sure anyone should characterize Mandela’s life as a sellout. But, rather his efforts were a work in progress that ended with a whimper in many regards. Mandela did more for black Africans than any man in modern times. Maybe ever. But, I certainly do appreciate the sentiments of the Bloomberg author. Maybe Mandela thought his actions were the only pragmatic way forward without collapsing South African society or creating a bloody civil war or creating neoliberal capital flight that may have plunged society into a morass of incredible starvation. But, the reality is the vast majority of black South Africans continue to live in inhumane, unjust, abject poverty and squalor while the corporate state and a global corporate capitalist class rake in record profits from its natural riches and the exploitation of black Africans who labor in inhumane working conditions for their corporate masters. You know, just like in the U.S.
So, let’s weave this discussion into current events in the U.S. Or, should I say historical and current events in the U.S. Black South Africans have essentially achieved the same status as minorities and the working class in the U.S. And, by minorities, I don’t mean simply by race. I mean impoverished whites, women and other minorities in a system of class-based, aristocratic, European-heritage patriarchy that dominates the class-based, global corporate capitalist cabal and the corporate state.
Private, for-profit capital allows minorities and the working class in the U.S. to marginally access capital for generally merchant-type or consumptive-type businesses. But, they keep a tight reign on the capitalist means of production that generates all of society’s wealth. In other words, the aristocracy in Europe and the U.S. still dominates and controls our democracy and the world. And, in the process subverts and controls human rights and freedom and forces people into class-based wage slavery, labor arbitrage and living off the dole of the corporate capitalism-created welfare state. The aristocratic corporate capitalists, the investor class and society’s elites choke off and drown out merit, ability, innovation, freedom and social justice. They dumbs down humanity as the largest purveyor of ignorance.
Detroit, as a city with a large black population, in many ways is a poster child of the class-based capitalist repression and tyranny of black South Africa. There are pockets of generally merchant class businesses in Detroit owned by black Americans. But, the true power lies in the white, patriarchal, class-based control of democracy’s capital in Detroit, throughout this nation and around the world.
To highlight this point, let’s take an anonymous remark from a brother of ours who pens what really happened in Detroit’s demise. (anonymous so there is no attribution) That is, as opposed to the pablum puke sanitized by the class-based capitalist class and their political toadies. A sanitized and propagandized reality that is ignorantly accepted by so many in our society because it feeds into their fear-based ego’s subconscious shadow created by our masters. A sanitized and propagandized reality that generally has racial undertones of black inferiority and incompetence that they wish to have us believe defines Detroit and our society in general:
The auto companies pulled out of the city (Detroit) in the 60's and 70's. There was nothing sinister about it. The suburbs offered huge tracts of cheap land for development, and free infrastructure; farmlands became the Ford Livonia Transmission Plant, Warren Assembly, Novi, Sterling Heights, etc. Detroit was crowded with nearly two million people all living (except blacks) in single family homes.
White flight followed the flight of white capital. This was not unions, not African Americans, not Democrats making these decisions. It was white Republican auto execs.
Racism reared its ugly head in response to the Fair Housing Act, which said the "Negroes" could no longer be confined to ghettos, like the one in Detroit, and African-Americans could buy houses in white neighborhoods -- which was most of Detroit. Next came a white Republican judge who refused to order cross-district busing, and ordered busing restricted to Detroit's schools, driving more white residents with children out.
Then "globalization" sucked auto jobs out of Michigan, leaving the state with the highest unemployment in the nation. I don't think unions and Democrats asked for their jobs to be shipped overseas. Over decades, housing values declined, the city's industrial base disappeared as did the city's tax revenues. Kwame Kilpatrick can rot in hell, but his negative effect on Detroit is paltry compared to the racism and larger economic forces that brought the city to bankruptcy.
Not exactly in line with the bullshit fed to Americans by class-based political, corporate and financial predators who dare not take responsibility for the truth. Or worse, are too ignorant to understand the truth. (more likely given we live in an inverted society where ignorance under the guise of conformity and support for this corrupt system is rewarded with advancement and privilege.)
Now, I would like to clarify one point that needs clarifying in the italicized remarks above. Small “L” liberals may not have wished to send their jobs overseas but it was big “L” Democratic Party elites, the corporate state aristocracy and class-based private, for-profit capital who are the founders of corporate capitalist globalization. And, they still are the major purveyors of massive job loss and loss of democratic economic determinism in this nation. It was Clinton and now Obama that did, or are attempting to do, the most damage to our nation’s economy with their corporate capitalist trade agreements that have directly or indirectly led to the destruction of upwards of 85 million jobs in this nation over the last 35 or so years. And, the predatory, exploitative, victimizing class-bases system will do the same thing to China, India and Vietnam they did to us if they are allowed to get away with it. Just sit back and watch as I have written ad nauseam.
If the people of Detroit, South Africa, Camden and more broadly, our entire nation and the entire world had access to democracy’s and community’s capital, there would be no class-based, private, for-profit capital controlling, exploiting and preying upon and dumbing-down democracy, workers, our planet or humanity. And we would no longer need to beg for corporations to set up shop in our communities and offer them massive subsidies placed on the backs of our citizens to do so. Instead we would have the economic determinism to extend and create our own capital and our own wealth rather than a relative few controlling what the rest of us create, produce and invent. Then there would be no class-based capital flight from cities to suburbs and then back to cities again as is ludicrously happening once again today. Flight that creates massive hollowed out communities and ghettos, and the associated socioeconomic outcomes, poverty and crime, that democracy and citizens are left to deal with. And, there would be no treasonous class-based capital flight of democracy’s capital to communist slave labor sweatshops because the goose-stepping thugs in China know how to control their workers so that class-based corporate capitalism can exploit and victimize society, humanity and the planet with impunity. That is, versus America or any democracy, where citizens seek their democratic rights, economic determinism, a share of profits and ownership that cuts into class-based, private investor returns, power and wealth of the capitalist and renter capitalist classes.
Classless, democratic capital and associated democratic economic determinism of individuals and communities is the answer to all of the social and economic injustices in the world today. We could eradicate poverty around the world in a blink of an eye with supporting policies.
That is, we need a public banking system and democratic money to replace the class-based, predatory system of private, for-profit capital that dominants and suppresses individual freedom, merit, invention, creativity and democracy. If the people of Detroit, South Africa and every other community, city and nation in the world were empowered to create, produce and invent to serve the needs of democracy and their local communities first and foremost, then all people would be empowered and personally-responsible for their own economic destiny. And they would not be slaves and wage slaves to class-based corporate capitalist masters and their god of mammon (money, greed, profits).
People and democracy could produce what they need rather than produce what is most profitable for corporations. And, they could choose how that investment and production was allocated and accomplished. Be that via communities, corporations, nonprofits, cooperatives, temporary public partnerships, private citizens with our many diverse abilities or any other method democracy and its citizens chose.
In fact, as I noted on here before, public capital would create an unprecedented boom in private investment that private, for-profit capital currently subverts. Whether that is investment in our suppressed citizens, their suppressed education, their suppressed craft, their suppressed abilities, their suppressed entrepreneurship, their suppressed individualism that conformity to corporate capitalism (and all other violence-based state isms) demands, their suppressed communities or whatnot. But, unlike a system of private, for-profit capital, investment could be made with a primary intent of serving our citizens and communities rather than corporate power and profit. And because democracy and its citizens would own all of its own capital used to produce what it needed, there would be no need to organize citizens against class and private interests of capitalism. The concept of unions would be unnecessary. Access to public capital would require abiding by the rules of public capital determined by society rather than class, private interests or corporations. ie, One cannot organize against yourself. To organize against democratic capital is a contradiction in terms. And there would never be a need to borrow from predatory private interests for our democratic livelihood, our own general welfare or for that of our democratic government programs.
The concept of state violence, corporate violence, war and overconsumption would literally collapse with the failure of the class-based corporate state. Maybe not disappear but it would comparatively collapse. Democracy would produce and utilize its own capital rather than it being controlled by class and private interests as is the case under free market corporate capitalism. So, society could end the violence it suffers under from the continuous war for social justice, to ending poverty, to state secrecy, to the military-industrial complex and on and on. The violence of private, for-profit interests. Society could then spend time more productively building a better world and a substantially more harmonious and balanced personal experience in that world. Then trade could be based on what people, communities and nations could not produce themselves rather than based on the neoliberal, class-based arbitrage and exploitation by corporations that preys upon humanity and our planet. Society could end corporate capitalism’s need for us to over-consume and overproduce not what we need or our communities or citizens need but what rent-seeking corporations force down our gullet with an intent of profit and exploitation. (Think Obamacare/sick care, industrial food, useless media, industrial agriculture, corporate restaurants, the overproduction of transportation, the overproduction of commercial real estate, the overproduction of factories, the overproduction and overconsumption of energy and natural resources, the raping of our planet, endless legalized gambling ventures, the manufactured need to buy a new portable phone every six months, useless financialization and trading and on and on and on)
It’s not society, be that in the U.S, South Africa or elsewhere that is racist. It’s the socioeconomic system that is used to control us that is unjust and the source of almost all racial and gender tensions as it pertains to equality, living wages, economic determinism, freedom, personal responsibility, empowerment and human dignity. That injustice which seeks separateness or disconnection through title, rank and class in the corporate state is color blind. Poverty is driven by class and not color. Class exploits, victimizes and preys upon people of all color and genders as well as the natural world and our ecosystems. And, it divides humanity into its own classes so that we end up blaming each other than recognizing the true blame lies in a system of class that separates and disconnects all of us. Whatever his reasons, Mandela did yield to these unjust interests in the latter stages of his life. And millions of impoverished South Africans are mindfully aware of this because they are living it.
It is when private, for-profit, class-based capital controls the economic system under which people live, and its near total control over and suppression of society’s capital, means of production, property, resources, invention and creativity that poverty, injustice, ecosystem exploitation and plunder exists. It is the dumbed-down, class-based corporate state that is the pariah around our necks and that which enslaves the whole of humanity and rapes the natural world.
If Detroit or South Africa or any nation or community had access to public, democratic capital, its own capital, there would be no worries over class-based capital flight. Because citizens and democracy, not corporations and class-based interests, would own its own capital, and its economy and thus control its own fate. It is citizens, communities and democracy, not corporations, that would be able to create, invent and produce what they needed and wanted.
As noted on here ad nauseum over the last eight years, we are headed back to localization and local economics. There was a time not too long ago that commerce and economics was almost all locally-owned. That day will return. Detroit is just one example of a city that class-based, private, for-profit capital destroyed that will rise again. South Africans can and must create that same reality in their fight for democracy and social and economic justice. Community and the connection it creates is the essence of our humanity.
The future will involve rebuilding the communities and connections that class and private interests destroyed. And, while that movement is being suppressed to a great extent due to private, for-profit capital’s war on public capital, democracy and its citizens, it is already starting to happen to varying degree as people start to take back their communities and their economic and social determinism from the Godless corporate state. Our communities could literally explode with incredible economic vibrancy were we to break the grip of class, corporations and private capital on our democracy.
There is more work to do on behalf of those violently exploited and victimized by class-based corporate capitalism and the corporate state. Mandela’s work is not finished. Humanity’s work is not finished.
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