The 4th March 1986 letter to me from "The Southern Africa Action Coalition", which i provided the Canadian press contacted with copies of in the April, 1986 submissions, fundamentally underlines the beginning of Mr. Mandela's explanation for his refusal to renounce violence (as Mr. Praekelt notes in his letter to the Globe and Mail), so i won't repeat that here.
The continued slaughter of innocent South African blacks to date says all that needs to be said about the matter.
Let's purely consider the words of the long-time-imprisoned husband of Winnie Mandela, whom Mr. Praekelt chooses to quote in his letter.
Nelson Mandela said the following:
"...Another of the allegations made by the State (of South Africa) is that the aims and objectives of the ANC and the Communist party are the same. I wish to deal with this and my own political position, because I must assume that the State may try to argue that I tried to introduce Marxism into the ANC. The allegation is false. The ideological creed of the ANC is, and always has been, the creed of African Nationalism. It is not the concept expressed in the cry, 'Drive the white man into the sea.' The African Nationalism for which the ANC stands is the concept of freedom and fulfillment for all as enshrined in our Freedom Charter, which is by no means a blueprint for a socialist state. It calls for redistribution, but not nationalization, of land; it provides for nationalization of mines, banks and monopoly industry, because big monopolies are owned by one race only, and without such nationalization racial domination would be perpetuated despite the spread of political power. As far as the Communist party is concerned, and if I understand its policy correctly, it stands for the establishment of a state based on the principle of Marxism. Although it is prepared to work for the Freedom Charter, as a short-term solution to the problems created by white supremacy, it regards the Freedom Charter as the beginning, and not the end, of its program. The ANC's chief goal was for the African people to win unity and full political rights. The Communist party's main aim, on the other hand, was to remove the capitalists and to replace them with a working-class government. The Communist party sought to emphasize class distinctions while the ANC sought to harmonize them. This is a vital distinction.
It is true that there has often been close cooperation between the ANC and the Communist party. But cooperation is merely proof of a common goal--in this case the removal of white supremacy--and it is not proof of a complete community of interests. The history of the world is full of similar examples. Perhaps the most striking illustration is to be found in the cooperation between Great Britain, the United States of America and the Soviet Union in the fight against Hitler. Nobody but Hitler would have dared to suggest that such cooperation turned Churchill or Roosevelt into communists or communist tools, or that Britain and America were working to bring about a communist world.
I believe that communists have always played an active role in the fight by colonial countries for their freedom, because the short-term objects of communism would always correspond with the long-term objects of freedom movements.
...I joined the ANC in 1944, and in my younger days I held the view that the policy of admitting communists to the ANC, and the close cooperation which existed at times on specific issues between the ANC and the Communist party, would lead to a watering down of the concept of African Nationalism. At that stage I was a member of the African National Congress Youth League, and was one of a group which moved for the expulsion of communists from the ANC. This proposal was heavily defeated. Among those who voted against the proposal were some of the most conservative sections of African political opinion. They defended the policy on the ground that from its inception the ANC was formed and built up not as a political party with one school of political thought but as a parliament of the African people, accommodating people of various political convictions, all united by the common goal of national liberation. I was eventually won over to this point of view and I have upheld it ever since.