The nauseating hypocrisy from certain sections of the world community as they lined up to pay tribute to an ailing Mandela is something to behold. .You would swear that the British Tory leader David Cameron and Madiba was lifelong buddies in what is a remarkable bit of political amnesia. Maybe there is some truth in the old jingoistic boast that the British Empire was build in a moment of absent mindedness.

Lest us not forget that Cameron’s generation of Young Conservatives declared there anti apartheid solidarity by pronouncing Mandela a terrorist that should be executed. Did those esteemed members of the Carlton club not commit their undying allegiance to the pariah Botha regime during the campaign to isolate South Africa economically. Was “constructive engagement” little more than term meaning covert support for an evil racist state

It was all the rage as Tories contemplated the future of their investments in a haze of gin and tonic in drawing rooms of White’Mens Club.

All of this comes in the year of Thatcher’s death and the equally repulsive calls for the re-evaluation of her legacy and her reappraisal of her tenure as prime minister. She is now cast as a visionary and not the wide eyed right wing fanatic and class warrior that she really was.

What short memories we have or choose to have!

Igshaan

Athlone

Cape Town