France and the West is under assault from terrorist groups around the world. Now one Tour de France team wants to honor a terrorist during the Tour.
On January 7, 2015, France and the rest of the civilized world, was rocked by a barbaric act of terrorism in the epicenter of civilization, Paris, France. Two Islamist terrorists entered the offices of a weekly newspaper and slaughtered 11 people, and wounded another 11.
The carnage did not end there. In the days that followed there were further hostage takings, murders and injuries.
Exactly one week later, on January 14, the Tour de France organizers announced the teams in the 2015 Tour de France. Included in the roster is the first African-registered team, MTN-Qhubeka.
What has this got to do with the terrorist atrocities a week earlier?
The MTN-Qhubeka team is planning on turning July 18 in to a day of celebration of a political icon. That’s bad enough, but the political icon they’d like to honor was not just any political icon, he was an advocate of terrorism.
The team, along with the Mandela Foundation, would like to celebrate Nelson Mandela.
What most people do not know is that Nelson Mandela’s ANC group was a terrorist organization. The ANC’s goal was to impose Soviet-style communism on South Africa.
In 1961 Mandela co-founded the so-called “military” wing of the ANC, Umkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”).
In 1964, Mandela was convicted on 193 counts of sabotage and smuggling of munitions, including 210,000 soviet hand grenades and other bomb-making materials.
A huge pall of smoke rose hundreds of feet into the air as debris and bodies were strewn around the scene of the explosion… It exploded at the height of the city’s rush-hour as hundreds of people were leaving work for the weekend. Glass and metal were catapulted into the air as shop-fronts and windows were blown out. Many passers-by had limbs amputated by the flying debris. Others bled to death. BBC, May 20, 1983
The ANC and Mandela’s “Spear of the Nation” went on to assassinate political enemies, bomb banks, shopping centers, restaurants, and indiscriminately slaughter blacks, whites, men, women and children.
All in all the Global Terrorism Database lists 606 acts of terrorism committed by the ANC.
This wasn’t limited to attacks against military, police and government targets, or even whites. The ANC used violence and terror extensively among the black population to command obedience and loyalty to the ANC, and to exterminate and instill fear in their political opponents.
As despicable as the apartheid regime was, Mandela was not in prison for his ideas or opposition to apartheid, it was because of his acts of violence and advocacy of terrorism. (Many people were opposed to apartheid and were not in prison.)
In fact, in 1985 then Prime Minister P.W. Botha offered Mandela his freedom in exchange for simply renouncing violence. He refused.
In 1986, as if to reaffirm the ANC’s commitment to terrorism, Nelson Mandela’s wife, Winnie Mandela, said, “With our boxes of matches and necklaces we’ll liberate this country.”
She was endorsing the horrific practice of “necklacing,” putting a tire doused in gasoline over someone’s neck, and setting them on fire.
The victim suffered a slow and agonizing death. Eyewitnesses report that it could take up to 20 minutes for the victim to die. Over a thousand people are estimated to have been tortured and killed by necklacing.
In order to defeat the bloody scourge of terrorism, we have to tackle it head on philosophically and militarily. We have to clearly identify it, condemn it, and deprive it of every shred of respectability.
There can be no ambiguity, no appeasement, and certainly no honoring of its advocates and perpetrators.
At a critical time when the West is under a bloody and barbaric assault from Islamic terrorists, at a time when the Parisian atrocity is fresh in our minds; how appropriate is it to turn the Tour de France into a vehicle for celebrating a man who had more in common with those who perpetrated the Paris massacre than with its victims?
References and Resources
- The African National Congress (ANC):
http://www.anc.org.za/ - Global Terrorist Database (University of Maryland) listing of ANC terrorist activities:
http://apps.start.umd.edu/gtd/search/Results.aspx?page=1&casualties_type=b&casualties_max=&dtp2=all&perpetrator=281&count=100&charttype=line&chart=overtime&ob=GTDID&od=desc&expanded=yes#results-table - Umkhonto we Sizwe Operations, Nelson Mandela Foundation :
https://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv02918/06lv02949.htm - BBC: Car Bomb in South Africa Kills 16:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/20/newsid_4326000/4326975.stm - Untangling South Africa, The Intellectual Activist, Volume IV, Number 4
- South Africa’s War on Capitalism, Walter E. Williams, 1989, Praeger Publishers
- Winning the Unwinnable War, Ed. Elan Journo, 2009, Ayn Rand Institute
