Opinion
Mandela and the manipulative nature of the Western media
The sum total is/was to help hide the embarrassment of the West for being at the forefront of supporting racism very late into the 20th Century. The West did not have the courage to say sorry. The West would not admit that they were wrong all the time for dismissing as ‘terrorists’ those who had insisted that it was only common sense not to advocate for apartheid.
The West did not give the world an opportunity to have a deep discourse on the workings and the impact of the evil of racial segregation in the history of mankind.
The end of apartheid was the time to do some soul-searching about the injustice of the West (and Arabia) to mankind from the time of the great slave trade, the invasion of the Americas and Australia. The colonization of Africa and the far East etc.
It was all buried under the shadow of Mandela the good man and the problems bedevelling the new nation of South Africa. This was the same trick that the very West used whenever an evil became outdated. Thus at the end of slavery as was known, it was the story of “the good men, the abolitionist” who advocated for the end of slavery.
The plantation owners and others who benefited from slavery quietly enjoyed the fruit of their ill gotten gains. The whole concept of slavery was never discussed in a broad and comprehensive way as would have been the case if it was zealously put high up on the agenda by the West as it has lately done with things like same sex relationships.
The wave of independence, especially on the African continent, was even a more classic case. From thanking the colonialists for pulling Africa from the dark ages, the Western media then quickly took up the mandate of condemning the ills that came out of self rule.
That is why in the West most of the media focuses mainly on the poor governance, corruption and human rights abuses that have prevailed and persisted for the last 50 years. Lately, they have turned to painting a rosy picture of ‘Africa rising’ because of “foreign investment, aid and policies sponsored by the West”.
