All the Terrible Things Republicans Used to Say About Nelson Mandela Reaganites called him a terrorist and a phony
BY JORDAN MICHAEL SMITH
Before Congressional Republicans in the U.S. lionized Nelson Mandela, they despised him. And they opposed not just the great freedom fighter himself but the entire anti-apartheid movement. Even worse, they took actions that damaged the cause of equality in South Africa. Not for nothing did Bishop Desmond Tutu call Ronald Reagan’s policy towards the country “immoral, evil and totally un-Christian.” Conservative Americans’ pro-apartheid actions are not just shameful history—they are similar, in some ways, to their actions to rid the world of political Islam.
The Kennedy administration had opposed the Afrikaner government, instituting an arms embargo on the country. Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon, conversely, muted criticism of the regime and opened channels of communications, in order to defeat the Soviets in the Third World. As part of his human rights-focused foreign policy, Jimmy Carter reversed course, imposed restrictions and sanctions on the apartheid government, which Mandela and his party, the African National Congress, requested.
Reagan not only removed the restrictions; he embraced the South African Apartheid regime. He instituted a policy euphemized as “constructive engagement.” Reagan said that the United States lacked the power to change the internal workings of the Afrikaner government. Not only was the claim false, it contradicted his position on the far more powerful Soviet Union, which was designed precisely to change the evil empire’s internal behavior. Reagan put Mandela on the U.S. terrorist list, a placement that wasn’t removed until 2008, incredibly. This was at a time when the South African civil war was at its peak of violence, with the conflict becoming a global cause.
In 1985, after the South African government committed some of its worst atrocities against blacks, Congress voted to impose sanctions against the country. This was a time when America accounted for about one-fifth of direct foreign investment in South Africa. Reagan vetoed the Anti-Apartheid Act, calling it “immoral” and “repugnant.”
When Reagan met with Tutu, it was among the tensest meetings in his entire presidency. Reagan had the gall to tell the bishop that there had been “sizable progress in South Africa because of U.S. policy.” Tutu responded that the victims of Apartheid didn’t quite see that progress. Reagan called the ANC “notorious terrorists,” and, as late as 1988, called apartheid "a tribal policy more than ... a racial policy."
It wasn’t just Reagan. Moral Majority leader Jerry Fallwell called Tutu a “phony” who didn’t speak for South Africans blacks. He even urged Americans to support the Pretoria government. North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms filibustered the sanctions bill. Strom Thurmond and Phil Gramm likewise opposed it. And future vice-president Dick Cheney called Mandela a terrorist, saying in 2000 that he didn’t regret his position. Pat Buchanan called Mandela a “train-bomber.” The Heritage Foundation said America should stop calling for Mandela’s release from prison. Pat Robertson, Grover Norquist, future Tea Party leaders, and current Republican Senators—all were on the books supporting the Apartheid government. When 35 House Republicans broke with the Reagan administration, the National Review called them “uppity,” and Human Events called them a “lynch mob.”
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Some conservatives now concede they were wrong about Mandela. Perhaps after the threat to America from terrorists recedes, they will admit they were similarly mistaken—and damaging—in their inflation of threats from political Islam across the globe.
