The West wrongly branded Mandela a terrorist

Nelson Mandela has been sanitised by hypocrites and apologists, who stood behind his jailers under apartheid.

So, history has to be rewritten on their behalf. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Regan branded Mandela and the ANC a terrorist organisation.

David Cameron went on pro-apartheid lobby junkets. The CIA gave South African security the tip-off that led to Mandela’s arrest and imprisonment for 27 years. Regan described the apartheid regime as “essential to the free world”. Even Labour leader Harold Wilson’s government was selling arms in the 1960s to the apartheid regime.

In fact, Mandela’s main international supporters were Cuba and the Soviet Union, for 30 years.

The West backed dictatorships from Argentina, Chile, Iran, etc, while Soviet support allowed people from Vietnam, Algeria, etc, to win national independence. Cuban action against South Africa and US-backed forces in Angola in 1988 was a vital impetus in the fall of that racist regime, which was on the US terrorism watch-list until 2008.

Mandela was outspoken in his opposition to US and British wars of intervention and occupation, from Kosovo to Iraq, once damning the US as a threat to world peace, guilty of unspeakable atrocities. When Mandela was released from prison, it was concerning to see all the politicians and celebrities anxious to visit him and have their photographs taken alongside this great man, and shedding worldwide tears.

John Keogh

Cabra West

Dublin 7