Reply #21: "Dick Cheney is relying on our cultural amnesia to wipe away his record on South Africa'

[Judi Lynn]

Conservative whitewash
Dick Cheney is relying on our cultural amnesia to wipe away his record on South Africa.

By Joe Conason

~snip~
Cheney bristled in response to questions about his voting record, revealing a mindset that never understood what was at stake in South Africa -- or perhaps understood all too well. Challenged last Sunday to defend his 1985 vote against a House resolution urging the release of Nelson Mandela from 23 years of imprisonment, he first denounced such inquiries as "trivia." Does he really think that the oppression inflicted on millions of black citizens during more than five decades was a trivial matter?

He quickly tried to correct that gaffe, praising Mandela as "a great man." (He also remarked, with baffling condescension, that the African leader has "mellowed," whatever that means.) He had opposed the resolution to free Mandela, according to Cheney, because it was attached to recognition of the African National Congress.

"The ANC was then viewed as a terrorist organization," he said. "Nobody was for keeping Nelson Mandela in prison. Nobody was for supporting apartheid." Let's parse that feeble answer, one of several attempts to justify his votes that Cheney has offered in recent days.

The ANC, led of course by Mandela himself, was indeed regarded as "terrorist" by the Pretoria regime and its allies in Washington. But the ANC, which fought militarily and diplomatically for the human rights of South African citizens, was considered a legitimate representative of the black majority by civilized governments almost everywhere else. The resolution Cheney voted against called upon the Pretoria rulers to enter into negotiations with the ANC. That position was endorsed by governments around the world, and has been entirely vindicated by the events that followed.

If the ANC indulged in actions that might be considered "terrorist," it is at least as true that the entire apparatus of apartheid relied upon terrorism against millions of men, women and children. The Sharpsville massacre and literally hundreds of other atrocities committed against South African blacks and their neighbors in other states deserve no other description. That kind of state terrorism didn't much trouble the Reaganite ideologues such as Cheney.

More:
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/col/cona/2000/08/01/south_africa/