West praises Mandela for own interests

Press TV has conducted an interview with Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of the Pan-African News Wire, about the death of South Africa’s anti-apartheid hero and former president Nelson Mandela.

What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Mr. Azikiwe, when it comes to Mandela’s, we said there in our intro we hear a lot about apartheid, what it is, whether apartheid still remains in the world.

We were speaking with some analysts earlier on this and they were saying that those who are praising Mandela’s efforts, who are describing what apartheid is have double standards themselves on apartheid and on the struggle on apartheid. What do you think?

Azikiwe: There is no question about it. The United States thinks the Central Intelligence Agency was responsible back in 1962 for the actual capture of Nelson Mandela when he was living underground after the African National Congress (ANC) had been banned and when he was arrested in 1962 the initial charges against him was going abroad to train himself in order to train others in Guerrilla warfare. He had gone to Algeria which had been involved in an eight year armed revolutionary struggle in North Africa.

And what happened was that the ANC was labeled a terrorist organization early on in its existence in regard to the armed revolutionary struggle and the United States had virtually no doings with them up until the late 1980’s and of course after release of Nelson Mandela in 1990.

However by that time it was quite obvious that the apartheid system was on the wane and that they had no other choice except to normalize relations with the ANC.

But I just wanted to point out despite the fact that we have Britain and the United States and other Western governments praising Nelson Mandela in his death and also having praised him earlier after his release from prison and after the SANNC of the African National Congress, it is important to note that this praising is clearly related to the overall interest of the United States and these other Western powers in the economy of South Africa and indeed the entire region of Southern Africa as a whole.

And even today, many living members of the ANC are still on the United States terrorists list. In fact just a few weeks ago Tokyo Sexwale who was a leading member of the ANC, he is a former cabinet minister in the South African government under the ANC, was detained when he arrived in the United States in an airport because his name still remains on the terrorists list.

So when we hear these Western governments they were hand in glove with the National Party in South Africa which held power there until 1994, we have to understand why they are doing this and also understand the actual history of United States as well as British intervention in South Africa on the side of racism.