Media : How Mandela’s Tour Is Playing in South Africa

Nelson Mandela’s trip to the United States, where he argued successfully for maintenance of sanctions against South Africa and collected more than $6 million for the African National Congress’ fight against apartheid, generated plenty of discussion--both favorable and critical--in an array of newspapers back home.

Two of the country’s largest-circulation daily newspapers are in Johannesburg--the Star, which strongly supports reform but opposes the ANC position on sanctions and the armed liberation struggle, and the Citizen, a conservative paper that supports the government.

The Star and the Citizen traded editorials on everything from Winnie Mandela’s warm reception by American civil rights leaders to Nelson Mandela’s support for Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat and Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi.

Here is a sampling:

In an editorial headlined “The View From The ANC’s Side” on June 25, the Star said:

“Perspective plays curious tricks. This newspaper has criticized Mr. Mandela for demanding sustained sanctions; it has argued that the move from apartheid is irreversible and has felt something of the irritation displayed by government at what seems to be foot dragging by the ANC. But it is important to note that ANC leaders are not simply being bloody minded. The view from their side of the fence is decidedly different--and nervous whites ought to be aware that black politicians feel nervous too. . . .

“Apartheid, we have argued, is mortally wounded. But it is not yet dead. Like Dracula, it still needs that final stake. People are still being hounded because they are living in an area reserved for whites. . . . Race classification and discrimination are still facts of life. . . .

“No wonder black liberationists nurse their fears. They know the pressures on President (Frederik W.) de Klerk not to give away ultimate white power will be enormous.

“But of course there is no going back. Which brings the country to a great irony. Sanctions are harmful, undoubtedly. But the ANC determination to have sanctions sustained provides daily reminder of economic disaster ahead. And that “ghastly” alternative may just help the president to persuade most whites that reform cannot be resisted, no matter how vicious the far right gets.”

In a June 26 editorial headlined “Winnie,” the Citizen said:

“Mr. Nelson Mandela, the ANC deputy president, never talks like a racist. He tries to reassure whites that they have a safe future if the ANC takes over. He never utters a word of recrimination about the past. He is, as we have said often enough, the bland face of the ANC, and to that extent he is persuasive overseas about the organization’s intentions, even if he is not always convincing at home.

“Not so smooth is his wife, Winnie. She of the highly controversial past has been a silent and dutiful wife since he was released. But now surprisingly, she has been allowed by her husband and ANC tacticians to address several rallies.

“And the Winnie of old has come out from behind the mask of Winnie, the demure wife.

“Last Thursday, at a Harlem rally, Mrs. Mandela told a crowd of . . . mostly black New Yorkers, ‘We want to count on you . . . that if things go wrong on that negotiating table . . . we know you will be there with us when we go back to the bush to fight the white man.’

” . . . What we find most deplorable is her reference to fighting the white man. Isn’t that blatant racialism?

“What would Mrs. Mandela think if the state president (de Klerk) said that if the negotiations went wrong he would fight the black man?

“Are all whites bad? Are all blacks bad? We certainly don’t think so . . .

“We believe Mrs. Mandela should go back to being the silent wife. Making threats like the kind she made in New York is unbecoming and a great disservice to the cause Mr. Mandela represents.”

The Star, in a June 28 editorial titled simply, “Winnie:”

“Astute politician that he is, Nelson Mandela is pussyfooting his way through the media minefields of America, largely without mishap and seemingly oblivious to the series of background explosions detonated by wife Winnie.

“In a renaissance of her old fiery ways, belying the demure image of recent months, Mrs. Mandela has taken to forceful, emotional oratory which evokes an enthusiastic response everywhere she goes. Trouble is, the louder the applause, the more she seemingly gets carried away by her own passion. As a result, her utterances become extravagant and putting it mildly, undiplomatic. . . .

“Mr. Mandela would do himself, the ANC and his country a service if he borrowed a phrase from his American hosts and advised his wife to cool it.”

In a June 29 editorial headlined “Amazing,” the Citizen considers Mandela’s hero’s embrace in the United States:

“. . . Even allowing for the fact that America’s mainly deprived blacks need to find a black man to hero worship, someone who reflects their own strivings, their own need for acknowledgement, their own frustrations, the adulation appears overdone.

“Even allowing for the fact that American legislators want black votes and Mr. Mandela’s visit to the U.S. gives them the opportunity to identify themselves with him, and through him with their own blacks, we cannot believe that Mr. Mandela deserves the heroic, almost godlike status with which he has been invested.

“It is assumed, wrongly, that he was a prisoner of conscience, that he was thrown into jail by a white racist regime because he dared stand up, like Martin Luther King, to demand civil rights for the blacks, that he was kept in jail 27 years for his views rather than his actions. The fact of the matter is that he went to jail because . . . he planned to overthrow the state.

“And the plan was not one of civil disobedience but of violence. Mr. Mandela therefore is not a Martin Luther King who preached nonviolence; he was a black revolutionary . . . .

“That the American legislators can give Mr. Mandela an ovation suggests that they either do not know his or the ANC’s background, or that it doesn’t matter. . . . They have turned him into a star, in the Hollywood tradition, and star he will remain. Mr. Mandela has won the battle of sanctions, in Europe and the U.S., and he will continue to wield a tremendous influence over the decisions of foreign governments in the months to come.

”. . . When the heady days of hero worship are over, Mr. Mandela will have to get down to the less exultant process of negotiating, with others, the future of South Africa. The time then will not be for heroics but for hard, tough negotiations--and Mr. Mandela, in that respect, will be a leader among other leaders.

“And there is nothing godlike about that.”