Nelson Mandela was not the saint that world leaders and the media depict him to be. He was merely a gifted, practical politician. After being released from prison and becoming president of South Africa, Mandela understood — what many perceived as being saintly rather than practical — that South Africa would sustain civility, stability, economic growth and security only if he embraced the White minority and retain the state’s institutions; this included the police, the army and the rest of what the apartheid regime had employed to reinforce the White minority rule over the Black majority. He treated the Whites with respect, did not avenge their crime of apartheid, and did not deprive them of their rights, wealth and security. He did so because it was in the best interest of his fellow Black citizens. It was a bright, genius move, devoid of emotional needs for revenge. It was the rational act that earned him the world’s admiration.
But then he stumbled badly.
He slipped into the trap of mischaracterizing many of the world’s bad guys as freedom fighters akin to himself. He befriended, embraced and allied with Fidel Castro, Muammar  Gaddafi, Yasser Arafat, Ayatollah Khomeini and his successor Ali Khamenei. He viewed these oppressors as liberators. Outside of his country, he approved of violence as a means for achieving independence from the “bigoted minority rule” over the “sizeable oppressed majority.” He failed to see that those “liberators” failed to free the “oppressed majority,” but rather subjected their own people to a different and even worse form of tyranny and suppression.
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