Op-Ed: South African poet calls Mandela 'Moneydeala'

One of the best-known Afrikaner anti-apartheid activists in the world -- the poet Breyten Breytenbach -- has launched a toughly-worded, often cynical broadside at Nelson Mandela’s habit of surrounding himself with ‘greedy, always needy sycophants’.

Breytenbach has always idolised Mandela and is deeply disappointed, he writes in the December issue of Harper’s Magazine. see Mandela reply: The publicly-funded Nelson Mandela Foundation's chief executive officer Achmat Dangor immediately took issue with Breytenbach’s depiction of Mandela. Dangor issued a statement noting that while he ‘shared Breytenbach's sense of horror at the brutality of the crimes he describes, though not necessarily the overall implication that our situation is irredeemable." Dangor took particular issue with Breytenbach's depiction of Mandela "as descending into frivolity while the country burns. In fact the opposite is true." see However Bangor may not have read the entire ten-page article when he made this comment – because that’s not what Breytenbach had written. Instead, he described the ‘idolatry Mandela allows himself to be surrounded by -- heavily paid for he notes – as “obscene, like he’s an exotic teddy bear to slobber over…’ Breytenbach spent seven years in South African prisons for his anti-apartheid activities before 1994 and had particularly incited the late apartheid-era president John Vorster into an angry rage with his scathing criticisms and sexual innuendos describing Vorster’s perceived personal life. He is a prolific author and artist, his most recent book being All One Horse, about his life in prison. Breytenbach also is one of the most awarded Afrikaner poets in the world, the latest being the recipient of the top literary prize for poetry on Saturday 25 October at the Maastricht Poetry Night in The Netherlands. The multi-lingual Breytenbach, who is married to a Vietnamese woman, Yolande, received this award not only for his poetry, but also for his fostering international understanding of culture on the African continent. He is the CEO of the Gorée Institute in Senegal – sponsored - among many other influential international business leaders - by international financier George Soros. see This month, Breytenbach pours out his heart about his overwhelming disillusionment with South Africa's first black president, Nelson Mandela 's 'greedy, always needy sycophantic' entourage -- in a whopping, ten-page essay in Harper's Magazine's December 2008 issue entitled "Mandela's Smile, Notes on South Africa's Failed Revolution". Celebrating Mandela’s 90th birthday – to excess… With his own unique brand of personal sarcasm often very evident, he kicks off his article by noting that 'the whole earth is celebrating - to excess - Mandela's 90th birthday.' "Why? Because we cling to you as a living icon, as a liberation hero who did not renege on his commitments to freedom from oppression and justice for all...' Breytenbach continues by noting that he had also wanted to celebrate Mandela's achievements; 'the frail dignity of your old age'. ‘Obscene’… ‘some exotic teddy bear to slobber over...’ However, he continues, he turned down a South African newspaper 's request to address Mandela publicly at his 90th public birthday celebration. "Why (did I balk?) Because ... I find it obscene the way everybody and his or her partner -- the ex-presidents and other vacuous and egomaniacal politicians ... treat you like some exotic teddy bear to slobber over. You have become both a vade mecum and a touchstone: those who touch you - but it must be in public and caught on camera - believe ... that they have now been edified to a given moral rectitude.' 'Mandela 's nickname is Moneydeala'... the aura is for sale… Breytenbach notes that "Of course they pay for it - exorbitant sums, I'm told. Not for nothing is your nickname "moneydeala'. After all, your aura is for sale, and your entourage is very needy and greedy. I expect your many years of apprenticeship must mean that you see people for what they are, be they friend or foe, and that you are immune to sycophancy. He then asks Mandela why he 'tolerates the scroungers, the charlatans, and the chancers feeding off you?" Breytenbach described the shock he felt at life in present-day South Africa when he and Yolande returned for a month-long visit, during which he held several poetry readings and also took advantage the occasion to clean out his old home in the Karoo desert-region north of Cape Town, and about which beautiful, arid region he has written so longingly over the years. ‘The surface is so often slick with blood..’ He writes: that he'd lost touch with his beloved country, maybe because the surface is so often slick with blood... and that he'd become conditioned by expectations of the worst. The seemingly never-ending parade of corrupt clowns in power at all levels, their incompetence and indifference... the sense of impending horror in the air because of the violence and the cruelty with which crimes are committed... to be tortured and killed for a cellphone or a few coins, one becomes paranoid." His nephew stabbed in a parking lot, the police not turning up... As time passed, he was becoming increasingly scared the longer they were in South Africa, he was even beginning to calculate the statistical chances of 'being the next to be robbed, raped, or blown away'. Breytenbach also describes the list of recent horrors visited upon his friends and family members, citing them in a long, steady stream from horrible events: the grandmother of a close friend, pleads with her robbers not be sexually violated; the nephew of a fellow writer, shot in the face, killed in his own house; the son of my eldest brother stabbed in a parking lot, the blade piercing a lung, the police never turn up, he is saved because his companion calls her boyfriend all the way in Australia by cell phone and he could summon a nurse he happens to know in Johannesburg... SOUTH AFRICA’S CHILDREN MURDERED, RAPED, SLAUGHTERED FOR TRIBAL MEDICINE… He cites from a report by the SA Human Rights Commission that South African children are playing games at schools such as 'hit me, hit me,' and 'rape me, rape me'. He cites from a report from the Centre for Justice and Crime Prevention, showing that young people were twice as likely to become crime victims than adults. HOW DO WE TURN THE CULTURE OF CHILD ABUSE AROUND, MADIBA? Breytenbach cites from a recent SA Human Rights Commission and Helen Suzman Foundation reports, noting that school toilets were the most feared places in South Africa among its pupils; that more than one-fifth of all the tens of thousands of sexual assaults against young people occurred while they were at school. He asks Mandela in his article: "Madiba, you love for the little ones is heralded with your big smile on many billboards. How do we turn the culture of child abuse around?" YOUNG MIDDLECLASS MEN’S BIGGEST FEAR; TO BE GANG-RAPED IN PRISON: Breytenbach points out that the greatest nightmare fear of young, middle-class men in South Africa now is to 'be arrested for speeding or being under the influence and thrown into a cell with hardened criminals, as often as not infected with HIV - before being released a few days later...' All night long he (the young man) will be sodomized repeatedly. His screams of anguish and pain elicit no reaction from the police. The next morning, at first light, one of the perpetrators sidles up to him, strokes his forearm, and whispers, "After last night, you are truly one of us...' He writes that he suddenly came to realize - while cleaning out his old home in the Little Karoo during his latest visit to South Africa – and came across all his notes, letters, essays collected over the years containing all these 'recurring references to barbaric criminality, the plague of raping, theft and fraud, the indecent enrichment of the few... the breakdown of essential services, the pollution, the entrenched and continuing racism, the lack of public morals or even common sense...' that he should have seen the entire deteriorating pattern much more clearly but had been overcome by his desire for freedom, for democracy. Breytenbach wrote in his article to his 'old and revered leader', that if a young South African were to ask him whether he or she should stay or leave (the country), my bitter advice would be to go...

if you want to live your life to the full and with some satisfaction and usefulness, and if you can stand the loss, if you can amputate yourself - then go...'