WASHINGTON: Nelson Mandela defended the use of violence to free South Africa from white minority rule but told President Bush on Monday that force would not be used as long as Pretoria’s government negotiates in good faith with the Black majority.
“If we are forced to resort to violence,” Mandela said, “It is because we had no other alternative whatsoever.” Bush assured the Black revolutionary leader he was not about to lift U.S. sanctions against the South African government but said all sides in the struggle should renounce violence, armed struggle and repression.
“In the words of the great Martin Luther King Jr. “let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred,” Bush said. The president welcomed Mandela at a sun splashed ceremony on the South Lawn amid applause and cheers from a crowd of several hundred. As Mandela waved, his wife Winnie gave a clenched fist salute.
Bush and Mandela met for three hours, Assistant Secretary of State Herman Cohen said afterward Mandela had pledged to suspend hostilities if the white government in Pretoria clears the way for negotiations. Mandela deputy president of the once banned African National Congress, did not make a commitment but said he would consider that step, the official said.
Earlier in the week, Mandela at various fora defended Yasser Arafat, Gaddafi and Fidel Castro as comrades in arms. He said he did not consider them enemies just because the west did. Their human rights records in their own countries did not concern him, he said. Whenever he had sought their help against apartheid he had received it,
Mandela said he would not speak like the Americans in America and Cubans in Cuba even if it meant that this did not appear to make him look a politician in the accepted sense of the word.
Article extracted from this publication >> June 29, 1990
