Zimbabwe Information Minister Raps Mandela Comparisons

Zanu-PF delegation to the ANC Policy Conference, Professor Jonathan Moyo, ANC National Executive Committee member Winnie Madikizela Mandela and Senator Monica Mutsvangwa pose for a photograph on the sidelines of the conference ending June 29, 2012., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Minister Moyo raps Mandela comparisons

December 10, 2013
Tendai Mugabe Senior Reporter
Zimbabwe Herald

INFORMATION, Media and Broadcasting Services Minister Professor Jonathan Moyo has dismissed frivolous attempts by the Western media to compare African leaders with the former South African president Nelson Mandela who died last Thursday.Following the death of president Mandela, Western newspapers are making unremitting averments to the effect that African leaders should seek to emulate his legacy.

Prof Moyo said while president Mandela was a revered African leader with a rich history, God created one Mandela who does not warrant to have a clone.

“It is kind of disappointing that Nelson Mandela’s passing on has attracted gratuitous comparisons between him and other African leaders including our own President Mugabe whose iconic standing as a liberator and empowerer is now an indelible imprint of history,” he said.

“While the subtext of the gratuitous comparisons has been that other African leaders such as President Mugabe should emulate Mandela, the more important and rather self-evident fact that cannot therefore be masked by the shrill comparisons is that God created only one Nelson Mandela with no clones in the same way he created only one Winston Churchill; one John F Kennedy, one Mao, one Lenin and one Mahatma Gandhi with no clones.

“The notion being peddled in some propaganda quarters that some African leaders should style themselves as Mandela clones has no precedence in the history of civilised nations.

“In the same way that Britain has not had another Churchill and America has not had another Kennedy, Africa will not have another Mandela and this means that the gratuitous comparisons of Mandela and other African leaders are ultimately a waste of time.”

Prof Moyo said such comparison was not only an insult to president Mandela’s rich legacy but ridiculed the entire African continent which endured untold exploitation at the hands of the Anglo Saxons.

“The comparisons whose import is predictable and whose purpose is self-serving are not only a disservice to Mandela’s monumental achievements and the legacy thereof but they are also an insult to the struggle for the political liberation and economic empowerment of Africans across the Continent against the background of the dehumanising brutality of slavery, imperialism, colonialism and neocolonialism perpetrated against Africans by successive Anglo-Saxon regimes,” he said.

Shockingly, Prof Moyo said, president Mandela whom the Anglo Saxons pretended to love so much today, was the same Mandela whom they branded a terrorist during the Apartheid era and jailed for 27 years.

Mandela was only removed from the US terrorist watch list in 2008, ahead of his 90th birthday, and only a few weeks back ANC national executive committee member Tokyo Sexwale was detained at JFK International Airport for being on the US sanctions list.

Prof Moyo said although Mandela’s death had plunged the whole African continent into mourning, his legacy would continue to be cherished.

“Even though Mandela is no more, and while his passing on has naturally enveloped our entire African continent with sadness, there’s also a clear and present spirit and disposition to celebrate his legendary life and achievements which were as tall as his stature as an icon of African liberation whose legacy of forgiveness and reconciliation will forever enlighten generations of Africans into posterity,” he said.

“The Mandela that Africans know and profoundly admire is the Mandela of the struggle who was seen and treated as a terrorist by the very same institutional peddlers of Anglo-Saxon propaganda who are championing the same Mandela they said was a terrorist yesterday as a beacon of human rights and decency today, as they make gratuitous comparisons of Mandela and other African leaders who are still holding on to the ideals that Mandela cherished and preached before his incarceration which saw him languish in jail for 27 years of brutality and inhumanity.”

Mandela, South Africa’s first black president will be buried next Saturday in his home village of Qunu in the Eastern Cape.