ANC Leader Nelson Mandela’s Socialistic Views

Fein and Meese were highly critical of Mandela’s support for Yasser Arafat, Moammar Kadafi and Fidel Castro, and noted that the African National Congress “has compiled a brutal record of violence against both black and white civilians in South Africa.”

Since when has the U.S. refrained from supporting various Third World dictators whose records on human rights have been worse than the PLO, Libya and Cuba? There has been Diem, Park, Somoza, the Shah, Marcos, Botha, Pinochet, Noriega, Cristiani (to name only a few), and we now are toadying up to the regime in Beijing only a year after the massacre in Tian An Men Square.

As for ANC “terrorism,” I recall that we created and vigorously supported the Contras a few years ago. Should Mandela call on President Bush to condemn the American colonists for violently opposing the British? And the colonists had far less provocation from England than South African blacks have from the Afrikaners.

LORNE H. WARD

Garden Grove