O.C. Delegation Shuns Mandela in Congress : Politics: Only Rohrabacher listens to South African’s speech. Dornan, Cox and Packard miss it; Dannemeyer denounces ANC leader.

Nelson Mandela may have fired the imaginations of thousands during his stay in the nation’s capital, but he left members of Orange County’s congressional delegation cold.

Of the five conservative congressmen who represent the county, only Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Lomita) turned out Tuesday to hear Mandela, deputy president of the African National Congress, as he became the fourth private citizen ever to address a joint session of Congress.

Reps. C. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) and Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad) all said they were tending to business elsewhere.

Rep. William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton) was not so coy.

In a brief address on the House floor Monday, Dannemeyer denounced Mandela for his association with communists and his refusal to renounce violence in the ANC’s long struggle to end white rule and apartheid, South Africa’s official policy of strict racial separation. Mandela was recently released after spending 27 years in a South African prison.

“Mr. Speaker, Nelson Mandela’s appearance before this body is a national disgrace. The invitation alone heaps shame on this body. Nelson Mandela is no Martin Luther King. He is more like H. Rap Brown or Willie Horton,” Dannemeyer said.

Brown was a radical of the 1960s. Horton was the convicted murderer who raped a woman while on furlough from a Massachusetts prison and became a key issue in the last presidential campaign.

Dannemeyer amplified his critique during a longer address to the House on Tuesday night, hours after Mandela spoke.

Privately, one member of the delegation suggested that Dannemeyer had gone too far in comparing Mandela to Horton. But he said he would not criticize his colleague on the record.

In an interview, Dannemeyer said the comparison was justified.

“The violence that Horton exhibited to humans by killing them and similarly, the type of violence that H. Rap Brown exhibited . . . that’s the same type of violence that’s being exhibited today by the ANC in South Africa,” Dannemeyer said.

“(Mandela) is repulsed by apartheid, and I respect him for that. But I don’t believe it’s appropriate for this country to be giving him the honor of speaking to a joint session of Congress of the United States, given the things Mandela has said.”

Among other things, Mandela in recent days has expressed thanks for the continuing support of PLO Chairman Yassar Arafat, Cuban Premier Fidel Castro and Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi. He also has saluted as comrades the Puerto Rican nationalists who in 1954 shot and wounded five members of Congress on the House floor.

“I think the jury is out yet on Mandela for me,” said Packard. “I’m not sure Mandela is a proponent of democracy.”

Cox said: “Our chamber has been honored in the past 18 months with two of the world’s greatest anti-communists (Lech Walesa, the leader of Solidarity in Poland, and Vaclev Havel, the new president of Czechoslovakia). And while Nelson Mandela is right on the issue of ending apartheid, he is out of step with history in his support of communism.”

Dornan, a former Air Force fighter pilot, said: “I was pleased he did not give his Marxist fist salute. . . . That longstanding imprisonment buys immeasurable good will, even from me. But a terrorist is a terrorist, and a communist is (the moral equivalent of) a Nazi.”

Said Rohrabacher: “There is every reason for people to be cautious about this guy. I don’t think it’s so much a question of hearing him renounce violence. Let’s hear him renounce communism.”

However, Rohrabacher added: “There are some reasons to be optimistic about some of the things he said. He talked about multi-party democracy, which is not consistent with Leninism. And he talked about a mixed economy, which is not consistent with Marxism.

“Perhaps that’s his way of signaling a change. Perhaps it was all a show.”