Tag Archives: African National Congress

| DOCUMENT: #ANC calls #Israeli ambassador to leave South Africa!

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DOCUMENT: ANC calls Israeli ambassador to leave the country ~ Published on 22 July 2014, Written by The African National Congress in Parliament (ANC).

Following nationwide protests across South Africa against the ongoing Israeli attacks on Gaza (Israel has killed over 400 Palestinians including 100 children in the last 10 days) the ANC in Parliament has called for the Israeli ambassador in South Africa to leave with immediate effect. The ANC must implement this and the decision to recall the South African Ambassador from Tel Aviv with urgency.

The ANC has called for the Israeli ambassador in South Africa to leave the country immediately

The ANC has called for the Israeli ambassador in South Africa to leave the country immediately

The African National Congress in Parliament is extremely outraged by the wanton and unjustifiable bombardment and killings of innocent civilians, including children, in Palestinian territory of Gaza by Israel military forces. We echo the widespread condemnation of these senseless attacks on defenceless Palestinians and call on the government of Israel to immediately cease with this blatant act of criminality.

It is unacceptable that as the Israeli military is flagrantly violating the territorial integrity of Gaza, claiming hundreds of lives and injuring thousands, the United Nations Security Council fails to intervene decisively in line with its powers. The office of the UN Secretary General issues statements which have not effect. The UN Security Council must stand up and act to support vulnerable Palestinian people at the time when they need their protection. The situation involving Palestine and Israel is an undeclared war, in which the aggressor, Israel, has destroyed the Palestinian economy, robbed people of their land, unilaterally changed borders, and unilaterally built a wall of exclusion
to keep Palestinians out of their land. When it feels provoked, it unleashes the most sophisticated military hardware on a defenceless people. Palestinians have been reduced to cheap labour for the Israel economy. This relentless destruction of the Palestinian territory and its people by Israel must be stopped. The international community needs to act in unison on this matter.

As the ANC in Parliament, we stand unapologetically with the people of Palestine and pro-Palestinian campaigners in an endeavour to exert pressure on Israel’s government to comply with the UN Security Council resolutions and stop its killings and gross persecution of Palestinian people. We remain resolute in our view that the only long lasting peaceful solution to the situation in the Middle East is the attainment of a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine in which the two states exist side by side independently and peacefully.

Our strong condemnation of Israel’s violent aggression, however, does not in any way mean approval of the continuing firing of rockets by Hamas into Israel, which has put the lives of innocent civilians at risk.  We echo the call by the South African government for both parties to end all forms of aggression towards one another.

The ANC in Parliament will mobilise other political formations in this institution to take a principled stand against the criminal acts of Israel and further to ensure that Parliament as an institution formally condemns the deadly violence visited upon the people of Palestine. We will also invite other parties to the lunchtime picketing outside Parliament in support of the people of Palestine and in calling for peace in the Middle East region. As one of the measures to put pressure on Israel, we are of a firm view that our government must recall our ambassador to Israel and also ask the Israel ambassador to South African to leave with immediate effect.

During this International Nelson Mandela Day in which South Africans and the world are called upon to engage in noble acts in emulation of the world icon, we align ourselves with his profound statement that “our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians”.

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UN rights council launches probe into Israel’s Gaza offensive ~ Ma’an News Agency.

GENEVA (AFP) — The UN Human Rights Council on Wednesday launched a probe into Israel’s Gaza offensive, backing efforts by the Palestinians to hold Israel up to international scrutiny.

The 46-member council backed a Palestinian-drafted resolution by 29 votes, with Arab and fellow Muslim countries joined by China, Russia, and Latin American and African nations.

The United States was the sole member to vote against, while European countries abstained.

Israel’s latest offensive on Gaza, dubbed “Operation Protective Edge,” has left over 650 Palestinians dead, most of them civilians. Over 4,000 Palestinians have been injured.

Thirty-one Israelis, all but two of them soldiers, have also died in the fighting, in addition to a foreign civilian worker who died Wednesday after being hit by mortar fire in southern Israel.

| Palestine is still on its own long walk to freedom!

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Palestine is still on its own long walk to freedom ~ Dr Daud Abdullah, MEMO.

There are certain events in the life of nations that define their history for generations. In South Africa, the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre and the 1976 Soweto Uprising are prime examples. In Palestine, Israel’s wilful killing of four Palestinian workers in December 1987 ignited the First Intifada (Uprising) and changed the course of the Palestinian struggle forever.

The comparisons are apt. Sharpeville give birth to Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), the military wing of the African National Congress (ANC), in 1961, which kept up the pressure on the apartheid regime until June 1976 when the Soweto Uprising erupted and sent several other townships into a spiral of rebellion.

As in South Africa, there were deep seated social, economic and political factors inherent in the Palestinian experience which made the Intifada inevitable. It was from this charged political climate that the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) emerged to become a major political force on the Palestinian scene. Almost thirty years later, Hamas has gone on to develop a military capability that allows it to resist the Israeli occupation as well as pursue the goal of national liberation.

Ultimately, this is as far as the comparisons can go. There are significant differences too. For a start, the ANC never gave up the option of armed struggle before the goal of national liberation was achieved. In Palestine, however, the negotiations which started in Madrid in 1991 were used as a pretext to quash the Intifada then at its height; armed resistance was abandoned by the Western-backed Palestinian leadership. That is still the case today, despite their failure to deliver on any of the promises enshrined in the Oslo Accords and national liberation is still a dream.

MAN FREE

Former Hamas spokesman Ibrahim Ghusheh recalls in his newly-published memoirs how intense pressure was brought to bear on Hamas at a meeting convened by Sudan’s President Omar Al-Bashir between Hamas and Fatah just prior to the Madrid Conference. The aim of the meeting, wrote Ghusheh, was to force Hamas to join the Palestine National Council (PNC) and then attend its planned meeting in Algiers, where the PLO leadership intended to endorse the decision to go to Madrid. In the event of any agreement with the PLO, having Hamas within the PNC would have made the Oslo Accords look as if they were endorsed by the Islamic movement.

In its early stages, the Intifada was referred to as the “Mosques’ Intifada” because of the noticeable influence of the Islamic movement in the occupied Palestinian territories. It was later referred to as the “Stones Intifada” in recognition of the weapons used to confront Israel’s military might.

Everyone was taken by surprise by the uprising’s scale and intensity. The occupying Israeli power believed wrongly that after the humiliating defeat of 1967 their colonial project in Palestine would never again be challenged by either the Palestinians or the Arab states. They reckoned that the defeat of the official Arab armies in the Six-Day War had put an end to all forms of resistance.

They were wrong. Out of the rubble of 1967 a new generation emerged; they were not the defeated generation, psychologically or politically, as was often presumed. The regimes around them were, but they were not. They have come of age today.

As for Hamas, it has survived, despite the extra-judicial killings of its historic leadership; despite the siege of Gaza; and despite the attempts by the Israeli occupation to besmirch and isolate the movement with the ‘terrorist’ label. Since the Intifada catapulted it on to the political scene Hamas has remained an indispensable factor in the complex Palestinian equation.

Today it appears that the pre-Oslo scenario is about to repeat itself as Israeli officials point out openly that that they will not sign a deal with the Palestinians if Hamas is not on board.

The failure of the US-sponsored negotiations have left Palestinians bitterly disillusioned and aggrieved. On the other hand, the achievements of the Hamas-led resistance, notably from Gaza, have made them optimistic that they can realise their dream of being free in their own land; not because of US impartiality but in spite of Washington’s bias as a dishonest broker.

For the people of the Gaza Strip, this 26th anniversary of the First Intifada has a special meaning and significance. Just as Soweto formed the crucible from where the South African Uprising of 1976 erupted, so too Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza became the launch pad of the 1987 Intifada. It was from there, in Gaza, that Hamas announced its arrival with its first communique on 14 December 1987.

The Soweto Uprising of 1976 laid the foundation for the long but ultimately successful international boycott and sanctions campaign against the South African apartheid regime. Although the Palestinian Intifada pricked the conscience of the world community in 1987, this never developed into a similar international boycott, possibly because the priority for campaigners at the time was to defeat South Africa’s heinous political system. Now that it has been dismantled the world must turn its attention to the last remaining bastion of racial domination, Israel’s occupation of Palestine. Justice and liberation for the Palestinians is long overdue but notice is given to the world that whether they get on board to defeat Israeli apartheid or not, the Palestinians have the courage, patience and determination to continue with their resistance, in their own unique style, on their own long walk to freedom.

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| The Hijacking of Mandela’s Legacy!

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The hijacking of Mandela’s legacy ~ Pepe Escobar, RT.

Beware of strangers bearing gifts. The “gift” is the ongoing, frantic canonization of Nelson Mandela. The “strangers” are the 0.0001 percent, that fraction of the global elite that’s really in control (media naturally included).

It’s a Tower of Babel of tributes piled up in layer upon layer of hypocrisy – from the US to Israel and from France to Britain.

What must absolutely be buried under the tower is that the apartheid regime in South Africa was sponsored and avidly defended by the West until, literally, it was about to crumble under the weight of its own contradictions. The only thing that had really mattered was South Africa’s capitalist economy and immense resources, and the role of Pretoria in fighting “communism.”Apartheid was, at best, a nuisance.

Mandela is being allowed sainthood by the 0.0001% because he extended a hand to the white oppressor who kept him in jail for 27 years. And because he accepted – in the name of “national reconciliation” – that no apartheid killers would be tried, unlike the Nazis.

Among the cataracts of emotional tributes and the crass marketization of the icon, there’s barely a peep in Western corporate media about Mandela’s firm refusal to ditch armed struggle against apartheid (if he had done so, he would not have been jailed for 27 years); his gratitude towards Fidel Castro’s Cuba – which always supported the people of Angola, Namibia and South Africa fighting apartheid; and his perennial support for the liberation struggle in Palestine.

Young generations, especially, must be made aware that during the Cold War, any organization fighting for the freedom of the oppressed in the developing world was dubbed “terrorist”; that was the Cold War version of the “war on terror”. Only at the end of the 20th century was the fight against apartheid accepted as a supreme moral cause; and Mandela, of course, rightfully became the universal face of the cause.

It’s easy to forget that conservative messiah Ronald Reagan – who enthusiastically hailed the precursors of al-Qaeda as “freedom fighters” – fiercely opposed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act because, what else, the African National Congress (ANC) was considered a “terrorist organization” (on top of Washington branding the ANC as “communists”).

 

The same applied to a then-Republican Congressman from Wyoming who later would turn into a Darth Vader replicant, Dick Cheney. As for Israel, it even offered one of its nuclear weapons to the Afrikaners in Pretoria – presumably to wipe assorted African commies off the map.

In his notorious 1990 visit to the US, now as a free man, Mandela duly praised Fidel, PLO chairman Yasser Arafat and Col. Gaddafi as his “comrades in arms”: “There is no reason whatsoever why we should have any hesitation about hailing their commitment to human rights.” Washington/Wall Street was livid.

And this was Mandela’s take, in early 2003, on the by then inevitable invasion of Iraq and the wider war on terror; “If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America.” No wonder he was kept on the US government terrorist list until as late as 2008.

From terrorism to sainthood

In the early 1960s – when, by the way, the US itself was practicing apartheid in the South – it would be hard to predict to what extent “Madiba” (his clan name), the dandy lawyer and lover of boxing with an authoritarian character streak, would adopt Gandhi’s non-violence strategy to end up forging an exceptional destiny graphically embodying the political will to transform society. Yet the seeds of “Invictus” were already there.

The fascinating complexity of Mandela is that he was essentially a democratic socialist. Certainly not a capitalist. And not a pacifist either; on the contrary, he would accept violence as a means to an end. In his books and countless speeches, he always admitted his flaws. His soul must be smirking now at all the adulation.

Arguably, without Mandela, Barack Obama would never have reached the White House; he admitted on the record that his first political act was at an anti-apartheid demonstration. But let’s make it clear: Mr. Obama, you’re no Nelson Mandela.

To summarize an extremely complex process, in the “death throes” of apartheid, the regime was mired in massive corruption, hardcore military spending and with the townships about to explode. Mix Fidel’s Cuban fighters kicking the butt of South Africans (supported by the US) in Angola and Namibia with the inability to even repay Western loans, and you have a recipe for bankruptcy.

The best and the brightest in the revolutionary struggle – like Mandela – were either in jail, in exile, assassinated (like Steve Biko) or “disappeared”, Latin American death squad-style. The actual freedom struggle was mostly outside South Africa – in Angola, Namibia and the newly liberated Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

Once again, make no mistake; without Cuba – as Mandela amply stressed writing from jail in March 1988 – there would be “no liberation of our continent, and my people, from the scourge of apartheid”. Now get one of those 0.0001% to admit it.

In spite of the debacle the regime – supported by the West – sensed an opening. Why not negotiate with a man who had been isolated from the outside world since 1962? No more waves and waves of Third World liberation struggles; Africa was now mired in war, and all sorts of socialist revolutions had been smashed, from Che Guevara killed in Bolivia in 1967 to Allende killed in the 1973 coup in Chile.

Mandela had to catch up with all this and also come to grips with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of what European intellectuals called “real socialism.” And then he would need to try to prevent a civil war and the total economic collapse of South Africa.

The apartheid regime was wily enough to secure control of the Central Bank – with crucial IMF help – and South Africa’s trade policy. Mandela secured only a (very significant) political victory. The ANC only found out it had been conned when it took power. Forget about its socialist idea of nationalizing the mining and banking industries – owned by Western capital, and distribute the benefits to the indigenous population. The West would never allow it. And to make matters worse, the ANC was literally hijacked by a sorry, greedy bunch.

Follow the roadmap

John Pilger is spot on pointing to economic apartheid in South Africa now with a new face.

Patrick Bond has written arguably the best expose anywhere of the Mandela years – and their legacy.

And Ronnie Kasrils does a courageous mea culpa dissecting how Mandela and the ANC accepted a devil’s pact with the usual suspects.

The bottom line: Mandela defeated apartheid but was defeated by neoliberalism. And that’s the dirty secret of him being allowed sainthood.

Now for the future. Cameroonian Achille Mbembe, historian and political science professor, is one of Africa’s foremost intellectuals. In his book Critique of Black Reason, recently published in France (not yet in English), Mbembe praises Mandela and stresses that Africans must imperatively invent new forms of leadership, the essential precondition to lift themselves in the world. All-too-human“Madiba” has provided the roadmap. May Africa unleash one, two, a thousand Mandelas.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

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| Dissent: Mandela’s Disturbing Legacy!

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Mandela’s Disturbing Legacy ~ Stephen Lendman.

On December 5, Mandela died peacefully at home in Johannesburg. Cause of death was respiratory failure. He was 95.

Supporters called him a dreamer of big dreams. His legacy fell woefully short. More on that below.

The Nelson Mandela Foundation, Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, and Mandela Rhodes Foundation issued the following statement:

“It is with the deepest regret that we have learned of the passing of our founder, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela – Madiba.”

“The Presidency of the Republic of South Africa will shortly make further official announcements.”

“We want to express our sadness at this time. No words can adequately describe this enormous loss to our nation and to the world.”

“We give thanks for his life, his leadership, his devotion to humanity and humanitarian causes.”

“We salute our friend, colleague and comrade and thank him for his sacrifices for our freedom.”

“The three charitable organisations that he created dedicate ourselves to continue promoting his extraordinary legacy.”

He’ll be buried according to his wishes in Qunu village. It’s where he grew up. In 1943, he joined the African National Congress (ANC). He co-founded its Youth League.

He defended what he later called Thatcherism. On trial for alleged Sabotage Act violations, he said in court:

“The ANC has never at any period of its history advocated a revolutionary change in the economic structure of the country, nor has it, to the best of my recollection, ever condemned capitalist society.”

In 1964, he was sentenced to life in prison. He was mostly incarcerated on Robben Island. It’s in Table Bay. It’s around 7km offshore from Cape Town.

In February 1990, he was released. In 1993, he received the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with South African President FW de Klerk.

Nobel Committee members said it was “for their work for the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime, and for laying the foundations for a new democratic South Africa.”

De Klerk enforced the worst of apartheid ruthlessness. In 1994, Mandela was elected president. He served from May 1994 – June 1999.

He exacerbated longstanding economic unfairness. He deserves condemnation, not praise.

John Pilger’s work exposed South African apartheid harshness. Doing so got him banned. Thirty years later he returned.

He wanted to see firsthand what changed. He interviewed Mandela in retirement. His “Apartheid Did Not Die” documentary followed.

“Behind the modern face of democracy, the scourges of inequality, unemployment and homelessness persist,” he said.

White supremacy remained unchanged. It’s no different today. A few blacks share wealth, power and privilege. The vast majority of black society is worse off than under apartheid.

Mandela embraced the worst of neoliberal harshness. His successors follow the same model.

Pilger posed tough questions. He asked Mandela how ANC freedom fighting ended up embracing Thatcherism.

Mandela responded saying:

“You can put any label on it you like. You can call it Thatcherite but, for this country, privatization is the fundamental policy.”

Pilger discovered that 80% of South African children suffered poor health. One-fourth under age six were ill nourished.

During Mandela’s tenure, more South Africans died from malnutrition and preventable diseases than under apartheid.

Concentrated wealth is more extreme than ever. White farmers control over 80% of agricultural land. They dominate choicest areas.

Pilger said about one-fourth of South Africa’s budget goes for interest on odious debt.

He explained how five major corporations control over three-fourths of business interests. They dominate South African life.

Concentrated wealth and power are extreme. Whites control about 90% of national wealth. A select few black businessmen, politicians and trade union leaders benefit with them.

The dominant Anglo-American Corporation is hugely exploitive. Gold mining exacts an enormous human cost.

Pilger said one death and 12 serious injuries accompany each ton of gold mined. One-third of workers contract deadly lung disease. They’re left on their own to suffer and die.

Post-apartheid democracy reflects the worst of free market capitalism. It’s bereft of freedom. Reform denies it.

Mandela’s “unbreakable promise” was forgotten. In 1990, two weeks before freed from prison, he said:

“The nationalization of the mines, banks and monopoly industries is the policy of the ANC (and changing) our views…is inconceivable.”

“Black economic empowerment is a goal we fully support and encourage, but in our situation state control of certain sectors of the economy is unavoidable.”

In 1955, ANC’s Freedom Charter declared “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people.”

“The people shall govern! All national groups shall have equal rights!”

“The people shall share in the country’s wealth!”

“The land shall be shared among those who work it!”

“All shall be equal before the law!”

“All shall enjoy equal human rights!”

“There shall be work and security!”

“The doors of learning and culture shall be opened!”

“There shall be houses, security and comfort!”

“There shall be peace and friendship!”

“Let all people who love their people and their country now say, as we say here:

THESE FREEDOMS WE WILL FIGHT FOR, SIDE BY SIDE, THROUGHOUT OUR LIVES, UNTIL WE HAVE WON OUR LIBERTY”

Liberation was supposed to be economic, social and political. White worker wages were manyfold more than black ones. White mine workers earned 10 times more than blacks.

Post-apartheid promised change never materialized. Mandela embraced the worst of free market orthodoxy.

Before his election, journalist Anthony Sampson said he agreed “to reduce the deficit, to high interest rates and to an open economy, in return for access to an IMF loan of $850 million, if required.”

It comes with strings. Structural adjustments mandate harshness. They require privatization of state enterprises, mass layoffs, deregulation, deep social spending cuts, unrestricted market access for Western corporations, corporate tax cuts, marginalizing trade unionism, and harsh crackdowns on nonbelievers.

Mandela told South African workers to “tighten (their) belts.”

“(A)ccept low wages so that investment would flow.”

“We must rid ourselves of the culture of entitlement that leads to the expectation that the government must promptly deliver whatever it is that we demand.”

“Apartheid never died in South Africa,” said Pilger. “It inspired a world order upheld by force and illusion.”

Mandela stood at the crossroads. He seemed poised to lead a new direction. His popularity and bigger than life persona empowered him.

He had a unique chance to reject neoliberal orthodoxy. ANC candidates swept 1994 elections.

Mandela became president. A peaceful transition was achieved. Privileged white interests maintained real power.

Mandela’s agenda could have been different. He could followed what Chavez successfully instituted in Venezuela.

He chose not to. Black South Africans paid dearly. Mandela’s legacy remains tainted. He relegated his people to horrific post-apartheid conditions.

“Just call me a Thatcherite,” he said. He adopted free market fundamentalist harshness. Neoliberal shock therapy followed. It works the same way wherever it’s introduced.

The toll on black South Africans was devastating. He and other ANC leaders bear full responsibility. People living on less than $1 a day doubled.

From 1991 – 2002, unemployment soared to 48%. It remains disturbingly high. Officially it’s around 26%. It’s much higher.

Youth unemployment exceeds 50%. About 80% of unemployed young people never worked or had jobs longer than a year.

During the first decade of ANC rule, around two million South Africans lost homes. Another one million lost farms. Shack dwelling increased 50%.

One-fourth or more of South Africans have no running water or electricity. Around 40% of schools have no electricity.

About 50% of South Africans have inadequate sanitation. Around 40% have no telephones.

HIV/AIDS remains a major problem. South Africa has the world’s largest number of affected people. Officially it’s over five million. Unofficially it’s higher.

It’s more than in North America, Latin America, Eastern Europe and Central Asia combined.

Post-apartheid, life expectancy declined by 13 years. In 2011, it was 58, according to the World Health Organization. It ranks below Afghanistan at 60 years.

Overall South African conditions remain deplorable. They exceed the worst of apartheid harshness. Neoliberal exploitation exacted a horrific toll.

Mandela could have made a difference. He chose Thatcherism over economic fairness. Betrayal defines his legacy.

He relegated millions of black South Africans to permanent destitution, unemployment, hunger, malnutrition, homelessness, lost futures and early deaths.

His bigger than life persona is undeserved. So are eulogies praising his accomplishments. They reflect figments of historical revisionism.

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| Perspective: Why imperialism mourns Mandela!

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Why imperialism mourns Mandela ~ Bill Van Auken, World Socialist Web Site.

The death of Nelson Mandela at the age of 95 has touched off a worldwide exercise in official mourning that is virtually without precedent.

No doubt working people in South Africa and internationally pay tribute to the courage and sacrifice demonstrated by the African National Congress leader—as well as thousands of others who lost their lives and freedom—during his long years of illegality, persecution and imprisonment under the hated Apartheid regime.

Capitalist governments and the corporate-controlled media the world over, however, have rushed to offer condolences for their own reasons. These include heads of states that supported South Africa’s apartheid rule and aided in the capture and imprisonment of Mandela as a “terrorist” half a century ago.

Barack Obama, who presides over the horrors of Guantanamo and a US prison system that holds over 1.5 million behind bars, issued a statement in which he declared himself “one of the countless millions who drew inspiration” from the man who spent 27 years on Robben Island.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, the standard-bearer of the right-wing Tory Party, ordered the flag flown at half-mast outside 10 Downing Street and proclaimed Mandela “a towering figure in our time, a legend in life and now in death—a true global hero.”

Billionaires like Michael Bloomberg, who ordered flags in New York City lowered, and Bill Gates felt compelled to issue their own statements.

What is noteworthy in the sanctimonious blather served up by the media on the occasion of Mandela’s death is the way in which a man whose life is inextricably bound up with the history and politics of South Africa is turned into an entirely apolitical icon, a plaster saint embodying, in the words of Obama, “being guided not by hate, but by love.”

What is it that the capitalist oligarchs in country after country really mourn in the death of Mandela? It is clearly not his will to resist an oppressive system—that is something they are all prepared to punish with imprisonment or drone missile assassination.

Rather, the answer is to be found in the present social and political crisis gripping South Africa, as well as the historic role played by Mandela in preserving capitalist interests in the country under the most explosive conditions.

It is significant that on the day before Mandela’s death, South Africa’s Institute for Justice and Reconciliation issued an annual report showing that those surveyed felt overwhelmingly that class inequality represented the paramount issue in South African society, with twice as many (27.9 percent) citing class as opposed to race (14.6 percent) as the “greatest impediment to national reconciliation.”

Two decades after the ending of the legal racial oppression of Apartheid, the class question has come to the fore in South Africa, embodied in the heroic mass struggles of the miners and other sections of the working class that have come into direct conflict with the African National Congress.

These eruptions found their sharpest expression in the August 16, 2012 massacre of 34 striking miners at the Lonmin platinum mine in Marikana, a mass killing whose bloody images recalled the worst episodes of Apartheid repression at Sharpeville and Soweto. This time, however, the bloodletting was orchestrated by the ANC government and its allies in the official trade union federation, COSATU.

South Africa today ranks as the most socially unequal country on the face of the planet. The gap between wealth and poverty and the number of poor South Africans are both greater than they were when Mandela walked out of prison in 1990. Fully 60 percent of the country’s income goes to the top 10 percent, while the bottom 50 percent lives below the poverty line, collectively receiving less than 8 percent of total earnings. At least 20 million are jobless, including over half of the younger workers.

Meanwhile, under the mantle of programs like “Black Economic Empowerment,” a thin layer of black ex-ANC leaders, trade union officials and small businessmen has become very rich from incorporation onto boards of directors, acquisitions of stock, and contracts with the government. It is under these conditions that ANC governments that have followed Mandela’s, first under Thabo Mbeki and now Jacob Zuma, have come to be seen as the corrupt representatives of a wealthy ruling establishment.

Mandela, who played a less and less active role in the country’s political life, nevertheless served as a facade for the ANC, which traded on his history of sacrifice and his image of humble dignity to hide its own corrupt self-dealing. Behind the facade, of course, Mandela and his family raked in millions, with his children and grandchildren active in some 200 private companies.

The New York Times published an article Friday under the worried headline, “Mandela’s Death Leaves South Africa Without Its Moral Center.” Clearly, there are fears that the passing of Mandela will serve to strip the ANC of what little credibility it has left, opening the way to intensified class struggle.

Concern among capitalist governments and corporate oligarchs over the implications of Mandela’s passing for the current crisis in South Africa is bound up with gratitude for services rendered by the ex-president and ANC leader. In the mid-1980s, when the South African ruling class began its negotiations with Mandela and the ANC on ending Apartheid, the country was in deep economic crisis and teetering on the brink of civil war. The government felt compelled to impose a state of emergency, having lost control of the black working class townships.

The international and South African mining corporations, banks and other firms, together with the most conscious elements within the Apartheid regime, recognized that the ANC—and Mandela in particular—were the only ones capable of quelling a revolutionary upheaval. It was for that purpose he was released from prison 23 years ago.

Utilizing the prestige it had acquired through its association with armed struggle and its socialistic rhetoric, the ANC worked to contain the mass uprising that it neither controlled nor desired and subordinate it to a negotiated settlement that preserved the wealth and property of the international corporations and the country’s white capitalist rulers.

Before taking office, Mandela and the ANC ditched large parts of the movement’s program, particularly those planks relating to public ownership of the banks, mines and major industries. They signed a secret letter of intent with the International Monetary Fund pledging to implement free market policies, including drastic budget cuts, high interest rates and the scrapping of all barriers to the penetration of international capital.

In doing so, Mandela realized a vision he had enunciated nearly four decades earlier, when he wrote that enacting the ANC’s program would mean: “For the first time in the history of this country, the non-European bourgeoisie will have the opportunity to own in their own name and right mills and factories, and trade and private enterprise will boom and flourish as never before.”

However, this “flourishing,” which boosted the profits of the transnational mining firms and banks while creating a layer of black multi-millionaires, has been paid for through the intensified exploitation of South African workers.

The ignominious path trod by the ANC was not unique. During the same period, virtually every one of the so-called national liberation movements, from the Palestine Liberation Organization to the Sandinistas, pursued similar policies, making their peace with imperialism and pursuing wealth and privilege for a narrow layer.

In this context, the death of Mandela underscores the fact that there exists no way forward for the working class in South Africa—and for that matter, worldwide—outside of the class struggle and socialist revolution.

A new party must be built, founded on the Theory of Permanent Revolution elaborated by Leon Trotsky, which established that in countries like South Africa, the national bourgeoisie, dependent upon imperialism and fearful of revolution from below, is incapable of resolving the fundamental democratic and social tasks facing the masses. This can be achieved only by the working class taking power into its own hands and overthrowing capitalism, as part of the international struggle to put an end to imperialism and establish world socialism.

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| Palpable hypocrisy: Vultures feed off Mandela’s memory!

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The vultures feeding off Mandela’s memory ~ Nureddin Sabir, Editor, Redress Information & Analysis. 

The death of Nelson Mandela, the world’s most revered fighter for freedom, justice and dignity, has been met with genuine, spontaneous sadness all over the world.

Whether it is because of Mandela’s selfless sacrifice for his people, his 27 years of perseverance in the face of adversity or his willingness to forgive his wicked incarcerators, millions of people in all corners of the world are genuinely grief stricken at the passing of this giant of giants. They mourn not only the huge gap he leaves behind, but also the fact that the standards of decency he had set are unlikely to be met by any living politician. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu says,

…he will go down in history as South Africa’s George Washington, a person who within a single five-year presidency became the principal icon of both liberation and reconciliation, loved by those of all political persuasions as the founder of modern, democratic South Africa…

[T]he crucible of excruciating suffering which he had endured purged the dross, the anger, the temptation to any desire for revenge, honing his spirit and transforming him into an icon of magnanimity. He used his enormous moral stature to good effect in persuading his party and many in the black community, especially young people, that accommodation and compromise were the way to achieve our goal of democracy and justice for all.

The hypocrites and vultures

But there are also the hypocrites and vultures seeking to feed off the outpouring of emotion unleashed by Mandela’s death. At the top of the list of these scoundrels are, as one would expect, Israeli, US and British politicians. As Ami Kaufman says in +972 Magazine, “Israeli politicians have begun updating their Facebook pages with eulogies for the late Nelson Mandela,” and, he asks: “What do statesmen of the Jewish state – one of the last Western countries to support the South African apartheid state and which today practises apartheid-like policies between the [Jordan] river and the [Mediterranean] sea – have to say about the man who brought racism to its knees? (You can read what these despicable bigots have to say in Kaufman’s article here.)

Indeed, as Juan Cole points out,

The attempt to make Nelson Mandela respectable is an ongoing effort of Western government spokesmen and the Western media.

He wasn’t respectable in the business circles of 20th-century New York or Atlanta, or inside the Beltway of Washington, DC. He wasn’t respectable for many of the allies of the United States in the Cold War, including Britain and Israel.

Cole reminds us of the facts which the forked-tongued hypocrites in the US and among its Israeli and European allies would rather we forget:

The US considered the African National Congress to be a form of communism, and sided with the racist prime ministers Hendrik Verwoerd and P.W. Botha against Mandela.

Decades later, in the 1980s, the United States was still supporting the white apartheid government of South Africa, where a tiny minority of Afrikaners dominated the economy and refused to allow black Africans to shop in their shops or fraternize with them, though they were happy to employ them in the mines. Ronald Reagan declared Nelson Mandela, then still in jail, a terrorist, and the US did not get around to removing him from the list until 2008! Reagan, while delivering pro forma denunciations of apartheid or enforced black separation and subjugation, nevertheless opposed sanctions with teeth on Pretoria. Reagan let the racist authoritarian P.W. Botha come to Washington and met with him.

Likewise British PM Margaret Thatcher befriended Botha and castigated Mandela’s ANC [African National Congress] as terrorists. As if the Afrikaners weren’t terrorizing the black majority!…

The Israeli government had extremely warm relations with apartheid South Africa, to the point where Tel Aviv offered the Afrikaners a nuclear weapon(presumably for brandishing at the leftist states of black Africa). That the Israelis accuse Iran of being a nuclear proliferator is actually hilarious if you know the history. Iran doesn’t appear ever to have attempted to construct a nuclear weapon, whereas Israel has hundreds and seems entirely willing to share.

In the US, the vehemently anti-Palestinian Anti-Defamation League in San Francisco spied on American anti-apartheid activists on behalf of the apartheid state. If the ADL ever calls you a racist, you can revel in the irony.

Ronald Reagan imagined that there were “moderates” in the Botha government. There weren’t. He wanted “constructive engagement” with them. It failed.

Principles vs unscrupulousness

Mandela subscribed to a value system a world apart from that of the Western and Israeli vultures now seeking to make political capital by heaping praise on him,postmortem. He, as Cole says, “was a socialist who believed in the ideal of economic equality or at least of a decent life for everyone in society. He was also a believer in parliamentary government. So, he was a democratic socialist.” They, on the other hard, are out and out capitalists, the spokesmen and slaves of global corporations and, in the case of the Israelis quoted by Kaufman, racists, bigots, land thieves and squatters.

Mandela, to quote Cole,

is a pioneer to be emulated. We honour him by standing up for justice even in the face of enormous opposition from the rich and powerful, by taking risks for high ideals. We won’t meet his standards. But if all of us tried, we’d make the world better. As he did.

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| Pro-Palestine Mandela’s mixed legacy for the Middle East!

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Mandela’s mixed legacy for the Middle East ~ Kevin Connolly, BBC Middle East correspondent, Jerusalem.

We may never see another life like Nelson Mandela’s; and so there may never be a death quite like his either.

The man who repaid persecution with patience and racism with reconciliation came to be seen as a kind of embodiment of our noblest instincts for making peace.

He chose the difficult path of forgiveness and togetherness when he could have been forgiven for choosing the way of bitterness and vengeance.

So its not surprising that in many places of division rival sides scramble to place their ties with Mandela in the best possible light and to claim the legitimacy that confers.

Nowhere more, of course, than in the Middle East.
Yasser Arafat and Nelson Mandela (Cairo, 1993)

There was a genuine personal warmth between Arafat and Mandela, according to a former Palestinian official

The truth is that Mr Mandela did not embroil himself much in the conflicts of others – perhaps naturally wary of diluting his enormous moral authority by spreading himself too thinly around the world’s areas of conflict.

The Middle East is one area though where we know quite a bit about Mr Mandela’s connections and his thoughts and feelings.

Mutual admiration

The Palestinians have the easiest case to make in claiming Mr Mandela’s blessing for their cause.

During his long years in jail as an ANC prisoner he was embraced by the PLO leadership as a fellow-fighter in a kind of global family of liberation movements.

Muammar Gaddafi of Libya and Cuba’s Fidel Castro also provided political and material support during the ANC’s long years in the wilderness.

Mandela and Ehud Barak (Oct 1999)Mandela visited Israel but was critical of its policies towards the Palestinians

Mr Mandela never forgot it either, even when the political winds changed and he was a global superstar while some of his old allies found themselves on the losing side of history.

When Yasser Arafat died he called him “an icon in the proper sense of the word”.

He also said simply: “Yasser Arafat was one of the outstanding freedom fighters of his generation… It is with great sadness that one notes that his and his people’s dream of a Palestinian State had not been realised.”

The former foreign minister of the Palestinian Authority Nabil Shaath, who came to know Nelson Mandela personally, said there was a genuine personal warmth between Arafat and Mandela that underlined the political link between them.

And he said Palestinians had much to learn from the ANC about maintaining the momentum of a global campaign through long years of struggle.

He told the BBC: “I think they waged the world’s best-ever campaign [to end apartheid] and there’s a lot to learn from that, as well as the lesson of reconciliation.”

Advice to Israel

At a moment when anyone with a claim to a share in the Mandela legacy is proud to make that connection, Israel has a painfully difficult case to make.

It was a close, if secretive, ally and arms supplier apartheid South Africa and there is a good case to be made that Israeli support helped the all-white regime in Pretoria to last longer than it otherwise might have.


“I owe a debt of honour to the Jews even if I have sometimes made restrained remarks about Israel” ~ Nelson Mandela

There have been stories – which are difficult to substantiate definitively – that the co-operation extended into Israel sharing nuclear weapons technology.

Mr Mandela observed sharply that when he was finally released from prison he received invitations to visit “from almost every country in the world, except Israel”.

When Israel did begin issuing invitations (as many as four in the course of the 1990s) Mr Mandela was in no hurry to accept.

And its no coincidence that when he did come in 1999 it was at a moment when the then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak seemed close to a peace deal with the Palestinians – Mr Mandela must have hoped his presence might give some kind of final push.

It didn’t as it turned out but Mr Mandela did spell out his attitude to the core of the problem when he went to the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

He was quoted as saying: “Talk of peace will remain hollow if Israel continues to occupy Arab territories… I understand completely well why Israel occupies these lands. There was a war. But if there is going to be peace, there must be complete withdrawal from all of these areas.”

‘New page’

There was no doubt that Israel’s ties to the ugly apartheid regime left an impression on Mr Mandela but the Israeli ambassador to South Africa Alon Liel said a peace deal with the Palestinians could have changed things.

He told us: “[Nelson Mandela] was furious about the co-operation and said ‘we will never forget it’, but he said if you will change your attitude towards the Palestinians we will open a new page with Israel.”

And Mr Mandela knew how to balance the personal with the political.

There was no doubt his heart lay with the Palestinians as a people but he remembered fondly the many individual members of South Africa’s Jewish community who helped him in his hard early years.

There was the man who gave him his first job as a lawyer as well as Arthur Goldreich, the white Jewish ANC activist who went undercover as a farmer to hide Mr Mandela when he was on the run at huge personal risk.

As Mandela himself put it: “I owe a debt of honour to the Jews even if I have sometimes made restrained remarks about Israel.”

At the time of his passing everyone will do what they can to claim something of his legacy – the Palestinians much more plausibly than the Israelis.

But the outsider is left to reflect that the real tragedy is that this conflict is yet to create its own Mandela with a moral personality so powerful that it might become a catalyst for lasting change.

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| RIP: South Africa’s Nelson Mandela dies in Johannesburg!

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South Africa’s Nelson Mandela dies in Johannesburg ~ BBC News.

The announcement of Mandela’s death was made by President Jacob Zuma.

South Africa’s first black president and anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela has died, South Africa’s president says.

Mr Mandela, 95, led South Africa’s transition from white-minority rule in the 1990s, after 27 years in prison.

He had been receiving intense home-based medical care for a lung infection after three months in hospital.

In a statement on South African national TV, Jacob Zuma said Mr Mandela had “departed” and was at peace.


Nelson Mandela

1918 Born in the Eastern Cape

1943 Joined African National Congress

1956 Charged with high treason, but charges dropped after a four-year trial

1962 Arrested, convicted of incitement and leaving country without a passport, sentenced to five years in prison

1964 Charged with sabotage, sentenced to life

1990 Freed from prison

1993 Wins Nobel Peace Prize

1994 Elected first black president

1999 Steps down as leader

2001 Diagnosed with prostate cancer

2004 Retires from public life

2005 Announces his son has died of an HIV/Aids-related illness

“Our nation has lost its greatest son,” Mr Zuma said.

He said Mr Mandela would receive a full state funeral, and flags would be flown at half-mast.

BBC correspondents say Mr Mandela’s body will be moved to a mortuary in Pretoria, and the funeral is likely to take place next Saturday.

A crowd has gathered outside the house where Mr Mandela died. Some are flying South African flags and wearing the shirts of the governing African National Congress, which Mr Mandela once led.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate was one of the world’s most revered statesmen after preaching reconciliation despite being imprisoned for 27 years.

He had rarely been seen in public since officially retiring in 2004. He made his last public appearance in 2010, at the football World Cup in South Africa.

His fellow campaigner against apartheid, Archbishop Desmond Tutu said he was not only an amazing gift to humankind, he made South Africans and Africans feel good about being who we are. He made us walk tall. God be praised.”

‘Bid him farewell’


Analysis

image of Pumza Fihlani
Pumza Fihlani BBC News, Johannesburg

The greatest father there ever was: this is how South Africans will remember the man who brought an end to apartheid and delivered the nation from the brink of civil war.

Social networking sites are abuzz with messages of condolences and messages of gratitude to the late statesman. He had been in and out of hospital in recent years and had become increasingly frail but many South Africans had continued to express their unreadiness to lose him.

As he did in life, his passing has brought unity amongst South Africans as black and white speak of their love for him. Many here will be drawing on that same spirit for strength, that “Madiba magic” over the next few days and weeks as the nation left with the great burden of honouring Mr Madela’s legacy, mourns his passing but also celebrates his life.

“What made Nelson Mandela great was precisely what made him human. We saw in him what we seek in ourselves,” Mr Zuma said.

“Fellow South Africans, Nelson Mandela brought us together and it is together that we will bid him farewell.”

Tributes have come in from around the world.

US President Barack Obama said Mr Mandela achieved more than could be expected of any man.

“He no longer belongs to us – he belongs to the ages,” Mr Obama said, saying Mr Mandela “took history in his hands and bent the arc of the moral universe towards justice”.

Mr Obama, the first black president of the United States, said he was one of the millions who drew inspiration from Mr Mandela’s life.

FW de Klerk, who as South Africa’s last white president ordered Mr Mandela’s release, called him a “unifier” and said he had “a remarkable lack of bitterness”.

He told the BBC: “I think his greatest legacy… is that we are basically at peace with each other notwithstanding our great diversity, that we will be taking hands once again now around his death and around our common sadness and mourning.”

UK Prime Minister David Cameron also paid tribute, saying “a great light has gone out in the world”.

Earlier this year, Mr Mandela spent nearly three months in hospital with a recurring lung infection.

He was moved to his home in the Houghton suburb of Johannesburg in September, where he continued to receive intensive care.

Robben Island

 FW de Klerk: Mandela “was a great unifier”

Born in 1918, Nelson Mandela joined the African National Congress (ANC) in 1943, as a law student.

He and other ANC leaders campaigned against apartheid. Initially he campaigned peacefully but in the 1960s the ANC began to advocate violence, and Mr Mandela was made the commander of its armed wing.

He was arrested for sabotage and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964, serving most of his sentence on Robben Island.

It was forbidden to quote him or publish his photo, but he and other ANC leaders were able to smuggle out messages of guidance to the anti-apartheid movement.

He was released in 1990 as South Africa began to move away from strict racial segregation – a process completed by the first multi-racial elections in 1994.

Mr Mandela, who had been awarded the Nobel Prize in 1993 jointly with Mr de Klerk, was elected South Africa’s first black president. He served a single term, stepping down in 1999.

After leaving office, he became South Africa’s highest-profile ambassador, campaigning against HIV/Aids and helping to secure his country’s right to host the 2010 football World Cup.

He was also involved in peace negotiations in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and other countries in Africa and elsewhere.

A look back at the life of Nelson Mandela

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TIME Honors Nelson Mandela with Commemorative Issue ~ , Dec. 05, 2013.

Cover features a never-before-published photograph of the South African leader.

TIME is releasing a special issue on Nelson Mandela commemorating his life in words and pictures, including tributes by Richard Stengel, Bono and Morgan Freeman. The cover features a never-before-seen 1990 photo of Mandela taken by Hans Gedda in Sweden during Mandela’s first trip abroad after his release from Robben Island one month before. This is the sixth time that Mandela has appeared on the cover of TIME. This issue will be on newsstands Monday alongside with this week’s regular issue featuring Carl Icahn and next week’s Person of the Year issue to be published on Wednesday, Dec. 11.
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| Palestine’s Mandela: Marwan Barghouti’s popularity can give new momentum to the Palestinian struggle!

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Palestine’s Mandela
 
 

On Sunday, October 27, the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation launched an international campaign from the infamous Robben Island – where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 18 years – for the release of Marwan Barghouti and all Palestinian political prisoners. 

The symbolism is powerful. Kathrada launched the “Release Mandela” campaign in 1963, just prior to his own arrest, which saw him also incarcerated on South Africa’s Robben Island for 18 years. Now half a century later, as an 84-year-old veteran, he is launching yet another campaign for an iconic freedom fighter. 

Marwan Barghouti was arrested by Israeli troops in 2002 [AP]

Barghouti’s wife, Fadwa, travelled to Robben Island with the Palestinian Minister for Detainees, along with hundreds of special guests, including South African struggle veterans and five Nobel Peace Prize laureates.  

Barghouti was the first member of the Palestinian Legislative Council to be arrested by Israel, and is one of the most prominent of the more than 5,000 Palestinian prisoners who remain incarcerated in Israeli jails. The European Union and the Inter-Parliamentary Union have called for his release.

Barghouti’s struggle

Huddled in the back of a fish restaurant in the Gaza Strip in 2001, a few African National Congress (ANC) members of parliament and I sat whispering with Marwan Barghouti. We knew he was number one on Israel’s hit list, but little did we know that within nine months he would be kidnapped by Israeli forces, interrogated and tortured for 100 days, put in solitary confinement for 1,000 days, and, more than 11 years later, become known as “the Palestinian Mandela”. 

In an interview Barghouti gave to Al-Monitor in May 2013, he described how the Israelis had kept him in solitary confinement for almost three years in a tiny cell infested with cockroaches and rats. His windowless cell had denied him aeration or direct sunlight, with dirt falling from the ceiling. He was only allowed one hour of exercise a day while handcuffed. He proved unbreakable after three years.

Barghouti’s defiance of the largest military power in the Middle East was inspiring, reminiscent of the fiery determination of the ANC leaders in South Africa twenty years earlier. At the time we met him he was the Secretary General of Fatah, the leader of Fatah’s armed branch Tanzim, and had been the brains behind the first and second intifada. His revolutionary spirit was electric.

He knew very well that sooner or later Mossad would catch up with him, despite his best efforts at being a black pimpernel. In one of a number of attempts to assassinate Barghouti in 2001, the Israeli military ended up killing his bodyguard in a targeted strike. In April 2002, Israeli forces hid in the back of an ambulance and ambushed the house he was staying in, grabbing him. He was later charged for his activities under Tanzim and given five life sentences.

But as with most exceptional freedom fighters elsewhere, his message and persona grew in prison. His popularity has surpassed that of all Palestinian leaders – both in Hamas and Fatah  –  and he is being hailed by Palestinians as a unifying figure who could lead his people to freedom.

His propensity to unite Fatah and Hamas into one powerful liberation movement insisting on a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders makes him a dangerous threat to Israel’s political establishment. Barghouti’s message is so powerful that Hamas has rallied behind him. When Hamas recently engaged in negotiations on a prisoner exchange with Israel in return for the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, they had put Marwan Barghouti at the top of their list. For Israel, Barghouti’s release was not negotiable. 

Apartheid and resistance

Palestinian unity threatens Israel’s strategy – which seems to be to delay peace talks, claiming to have no peace partner, while grabbing more land through settlements. That strategy has worked so far, in that settlement building has increased three or four times over the two decades of negotiations. What is left of historic Palestine is Swiss cheese – full of holes, with little contiguous territory. Its comparison to the old South African Bantustan maps is hard to avoid. Where Palestinian villages and towns remain, they are surrounded by the massive apartheid wall, in most instances cut off from their water resources and farm land, which have been annexed by Israeli settlers.

Where Mahmoud Abbas has given in to Israeli demands, opposing all forms of armed resistance, and establishing unprecedented economic and security cooperation with the occupying authorities, Marwan Barghouti has called for an end to all forms of cooperation with the Israeli occupation. Barghouti has been against the collaboration of US-trained Palestinian security forces with Israeli forces, which he believes has guaranteed the security of growing Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Barghouti has also been scathing about the Arab Ministerial delegation to Washington in April 2013, which proposed amending the 1967 borders in return for land swaps. He considers this the Arab rulers’ worst betrayal of the Palestinian cause. While the Gulf monarchies may have tried to gamble with the future of the Palestinian people, Barghouti’s principled stand has found resonance on the Arab street.  

The most famous Palestinian political prisoner is now calling for a third intifada – a non-violent mass uprising. Non-violent protest will deny Israel the ability to dismiss legitimate Palestinian demands as “terrorism”, a strategy that has discredited the Palestinian cause for many outside observers. It will be a Palestinian version of the Arab Spring that will dominate the headlines and galvanise international public opinion.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is only too well aware of the dangers of such calls. His focus at the United Nations and in private diplomacy on Iran as a nuclear threat has deflected the world’s attention from Palestinian independence, settlement building, and freeing legitimate peace partners.

If Barghouti’s attempt, from prison, to inspire a non-violent protest movement captures the imagination of Palestinians, it could start a significant new chapter in the heretofore tragic history of the Palestinians’ struggle for justice.

Shannon Ebrahim is a South African columnist on foreign affairs, a freelance writer, and political consultant. She has worked as the Director for International Relations for the South African Presidency, and coordinated Government policy on the Middle East and East Africa. 

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| End of an era beckons as Mandela critically ill in hospital!

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Nelson Mandela critically ill in hospital ~ BBC.

Nelson Mandela has become critically ill in hospital, the South African presidency has announced.

President Jacob Zuma said he had visited Mr Mandela and spoken to his wife and medical teams.

Doctors were “doing everything possible to get his condition to improve” said Mr Zuma in a statement.

South Africa’s first black president, 94, was taken to hospital in Pretoria earlier this month for the third time this year, with a lung infection.

Mr Zuma said he had been told by doctors on Sunday that the former president’s condition had worsened over the past 24 hours.

“The doctors are doing everything possible to get his condition to improve and are ensuring that Madiba is well-looked after and is comfortable. He is in good hands,” said President Zuma, using Mr Mandela’s clan name by which he is widely known in South Africa.

Mr Zuma – who was joined at the hospital by the deputy leader of his ruling African National Congress (ANC) Cyril Ramaphosa – appealed for prayers for Mr Mandela and his medical team.

Mac Maharaj, Mr Zuma’s spokesman, told the BBC’s Newshour that the doctors’ use of the word “critical” was “sufficient explanation that should raise concern amongst us”.

“Therefore we want to assure the public that the doctors are working away to try and get his condition to improve,” he said.

Mr Maharaj added that this was a stressful time for the Mandela family, and appealed for their privacy.

The ANC – the party of Mr Mandela and Mr Zuma – said it “noted with concern” the latest reports, and that it joined the president in calling “for us all to keep Madiba, his family and medical team in our thoughts and prayers during this trying time”.

The White House issued a statement on Sunday saying: “Our thoughts and prayers are with him [Mr Mandela], his family and the people of South Africa.”

‘Expert care’The BBC’s Andrew Harding in Johannesburg says the release of information relating to Mr Mandela is always carefully controlled by the government to avoid sparking alarm.

Wellwishers outside the hospital in Pretoria (17 June 2013)
Wellwishers have been visiting the hospital in Pretoria for the past two weeks

Describing his condition as critical will be very worrying for South Africans, many of whom see him as like a family member, our correspondent says.

There has been little information about his condition in recent days. On 13 June Mr Zuma said Mr Mandela’s health continued to improve but that his condition remained serious.

More recently, one of Mr Mandela’s grandsons, Ndaba Mandela, said his grandfather was getting better and he hoped he would be home soon.

Last week, Mr Mandela’s wife Graca Machel thanked all those who had sent messages of support, saying they had brought “love, comfort and hope”.

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Nelson Mandela: Key dates

  • 1918 Born in the Eastern Cape
  • 1944 Joins African National Congress
  • 1956 Charged with high treason, but charges dropped
  • 1962 Arrested, convicted of sabotage, sentenced to five years in prison
  • 1964 Charged again, sentenced to life
  • 1990 Freed from prison
  • 1993 Wins Nobel Peace Prize
  • 1994 Elected first black president
  • 1999 Steps down as leader

Mr Mandela is revered for leading the fight against white minority rule in South Africa and then preaching reconciliation despite being imprisoned for 27 years. He left power after five years as president.

The former president and Nobel Peace Prize winner is believed to have suffered damage to his lungs while working in a prison quarry.

He contracted tuberculosis in the 1980s while being held in jail on the windswept Robben Island.

Mr Mandela retired from public life in 2004 and has rarely been seen at official events since.

On Saturday, it emerged that the ambulance in which Mr Mandela was taken to hospital on 8 June broke down, meaning he had to be moved to another vehicle.

But Mr Zuma said he had been assured that “all care was taken to ensure his medical condition was not compromised”.

“There were seven doctors in the convoy who were in full control of the situation throughout the period. He had expert medical care,” he said.

Mr Zuma also denied reports that the former leader had suffered a cardiac arrest.

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