“Mandela’s name comes off US terror list”
August 10, 2003

The good news is that the United States government has removed Nelson Mandela, Tokyo Sexwale and Sidney Mufamadi from its list of global terrorists.

The bad news is that the removal is only for the next 10 years. George Bush, the US president, and consular officials privately informed the three men during Bush’s recent visit to South Africa, according to an official US source.

The US state department is reviewing the status of hundreds of listed South Africans. Some were listed for having convictions against them for terrorism, sabotage, treason or related offences against the apartheid state. Others were members of the guerrilla army, Umkhonto we Sizwe.

In all instances, if they apply as government ministers, they receive special dispensation to travel to the US, but if they apply as private citizens, their visas are rejected, particularly since the US has tightened visa applications in its “war against terror”.

One US embassy official, who preferred to remain anonymous, denied that Mandela, Sexwale and Mufamadi were listed as terrorists, but refused to clarify what they were listed as.

Virginia Farris, the public affairs spokesperson for the US embassy in Pretoria, said people were not “delisted as such, they receive 10-year waivers from the department of immigration and nationalisation and the department of homeland security”.

Farris said these regulations applied to everyone and that there would be “quite a number of leaders of countries around the world on the list”.

“To make an exception for those who struggled against apartheid would require congress to change the law, and that would be a very lengthy process,” Farris said.

She advised that those who had convictions against them for anti-apartheid activism apply “at least several weeks ahead of travelling to the US for a department of justice waiver. It could take months.”

Another US embassy source said the state department was reviewing its list of “undesirable” South Africans, “but this could take a long time. The 10-year-only limitation is embarrassing in these instances, but that is the way legislation is presently constructed”.

The removal of the three ANC stalwarts from the list appears to have been a pre-emptive move to avert a potentially damaging court case threatened by Sexwale, a Johannesburg businessman and former Umkhonto we Sizwe commander.

US sources said Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s national security adviser, personally intervened about six months ago, asking Sexwale to hold fire on legal action after his US lawyers served papers on the state department.

Sexwale brought the action after he was refused a visa to visit the US late last year. This was despite the fact that he had visited the US, without hindrance, as Gauteng premier several years ago.

Mandela has never been refused a visa.

Mufamadi, as a cabinet minister, would not be refused a visa, but were he to apply as a private citizen, he would be.

Sexwale and Mufamadi, also a senior member in Umkhonto we Sizwe, had convictions against them by the apartheid government. Sexwale killed a policeman and Mufamadi kidnapped a police officer. Mandela was convicted of sabotage.

Late last year Mandela, who has frequently visited the US at the invitation of its government and others, received the US’s highest civilian decoration.

Sexwale has extensive business connections with US companies and chairs the world’s second-biggest diamond company after De Beers, among other business interests ranging from oil to wine.

The former Gauteng premier was not prepared to comment and Mandela and Mufamadi were not available for comment.

However, a US source said the three had appeared pleased by the news.

A US embassy source said the state department was reviewing its list of “undesirable” South Africans, “but this could take a long time. The 10-year-only limitation is embarrassing in these instances, but that is the way legislation is presently constructed.”

“Nelson Mandela … corporate sellout?”

Nelson Mandela, the former President of South Africa, has a new job. He’s become a flak man for an evil corporation. Does this sound a bit like a wingnut Kos diary? Maybe, but in this case I assure you it’s 100% true.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Mandela as agreed to speak on behalf of De Beers, the Dutch diamond conglomerate that’s about to take a lot of bad publicity from the upcoming movie “The Blood Diamond.”

To those who buy into the Nelson Mandela for sainthood campaign, and who are unaware of his career as a terrorist leader in South Africa, or of the history of corruption and incompetence in his African National Congress Party (ANC), this may come as something of a shock. It is especially disturbing when you consider the distasteful history of his new friends in the De Beers Corporation.

I generally decline to attach the epithet “evil” to corporations, since I usually regard them as amoral entities rather than moral or immoral agents. But in the case of De Beers I make an exception. De Beers was founded by Cecil J. Rhodes in 1870 (or 1888 depending on who you talk to) and quickly became the dominant international diamond distributor in the world. According to the company’s own website, at one point it controlled roughly 90% of the world’s Diamond supply. It’s influence in Africa was so great that the nation of Rhodesia was named after the company’s founder.

De Beers’ current market share of the world’s diamonds is about 70%. You don’t get to that level of dominance by playing nice, and De Beers never has. To secure its hold on the world’s diamond market it has been known to destabilize governments, slash prices to bring rival mining companies or truculent governments in line, and generally to work third world workers to death, if necessary, in order to increase its profit margin. In the 1990s DeBeers funded the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a rebel group in Sierra Leon, by purchasing large stocks of conflict diamonds from them. The RUF, by the way, had a nasty habit of chopping off the hands, arms, and other appendages of people who disagreed with them. The company also bought about $500 million worth of conflict diamonds from Angola during the same period.

Today DeBeers repeatedly assures the public that conflict diamonds are a thing of the past. In 2000 the company told the U.S. Congress in a written statement: “[D]iamonds don’t kill people, people with guns kill people, and these guns are supplied from the West.” Now that is true, but it obscures the fact that those guns are often purchased with money from diamonds that DeBeers has marketed for the murderers and thugs with whom they do business. Indeed the whole notion of a “conflict diamond” is somewhat ludicrous. De Beers maintains vast stores of diamonds in reserve, literally billions of dollars of them, in order to combat potential competitors by temporarily sinking the market value of diamonds. There is no way of knowing how many of those diamonds in the De Beers vaults are “conflict diamonds”, or when the company will sell them.

Nor are “conflict diamonds” the only ethical concern raised by the company’s business practices. About half of the world’s diamonds are cut and polished in India where child workers, or “bond laborers,” live in conditions that approximate slavery.

The preceding paragraphs only list a small portion of the crimes for which De Beers, and the international diamond industry in general, are responsible. With such a history of bloodshed and oppression in mind, you have to ask yourself, why would Nelson Mandela speak out on behalf of a corporation that has done so many terrible things, not least to his own people in South Africa? Surely part of the answer is that diamonds remain an important part of the economy of his nation. Perhaps there is a cruder, financial motive at work here. But the larger answer is obvious: Mandela, hero to left-wing bloggers and pundits and patron saint of oppressed Africans, is simply not a good man.

Joining the club is the way to get people to stop calling you names.

Funny how this guy is celebrated as a huge hero all over the world now. Amongst his biggest ‘fans’ are those who said hes a terrorist and should remain in jail during the days of apartheid.