Vote for Karl Marx!

[Art McGee]

> We witnessed an historic sell-out here during the 1990s, as I think 
> you know. There was a personality, ok ok, "Individuals are dealt 
> with here only in so far as they are the personification of economic 
> categories, the bearers of particular class-relations and interest" 
> (KM). But I think that this personality could have represented the 
> interests of black and working/poor people more than he did, and 
> he could have represented less well the interests of international 
> financiers and rich white South Africans. 

I'm not disagreeing that Mandela and Mbeki have totally fucked up in
regards to the actual economic liberation of the masses of people in 
South Africa, however, in spite of that, he still remains an extremely 
powerful symbol of national/ethnic/racial liberation, and for that 
reason, I say we give him his due and let him go off and die in peace.

If you think about it, Mandela would have been better off dying in prison,
then he would have become a perfect and permanent martyr for the cause.
Instead, he was foolish enough to live, and now we know he's nowhere near 
perfect, but I'm OK with that.

Just think what would have happened if Steven Biko, Chris Hani, Malcolm 
X, or Martin Luther King, Jr. had stuck around. We might not be viewing 
them in such a perfect light today either.

Art