UK royals pay tributes to ‘once terrorist’ Mandela

The British Queen and Prince Charles have paid tributes to former South African leader and anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela while the apartheid regime was strongly supported by Britain under Margaret Thatcher’s premiership.

The British Queen claimed she is “deeply saddened” by his death and Prince Charles called him an “inspired leader and a great man” while racial segregation in South Africa, what Mandela was fighting against all his life, had in fact begun under British and Dutch rule in colonial times.

Years later, after World War II and during the South African apartheid era (1948-1994), racial discrimination was institutionalized in the country with race laws touching every aspect of people’s social lives.

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in fact supported the apartheid when it was at its deadliest, killing many citizens with state terrorism at home and with illegal security force actions abroad.

Moreover, when much of the world enforced sanctions on the racist South African regime in the 1980s, the British leader refused to isolate apartheid although it had been described as a crime against humanity.

Thatcher, branded as an apartheid supporter, instead pursued the so-called policy of “constructive engagement” with South Africa’s white ruling minority, claiming that sanctions would harm the poorest in the country.

In 1987, Thatcher dismissed the African National Congress (ANC) under jailed leader Nelson Mandela as “a typical terrorist organization”.

The abolishment of apartheid occurred in the 1994 democratic general elections when the ANC won under Mandela. The anti-apartheid revolutionary became South Africa’s first black president and served the country from 1994-1999.

The 95-year-old South African leader passed away on Thursday, December 5, after years of respiratory struggles.