| > [Edit] I know I'm being downvoted, but I also doubt anyone commenting here lives in a communist country, or has ever spent much time in one. I didn't downvote you, but this edit seriously tempted me. Your background is irrelevant. It is your arguments we have taken issue with. The replies you have gotten point out how flawed this idea is/was. We know what politics Mandela would come to push, because he eventually got to run the South African government, and despite having prominent SACP members in it, it was a fairly moderate government which opposed a lot of SACP policies. This despite decades of Soviet influence on the ANC after Mandelas arrest. Even if the CIA could not have known that at the time, what they would have known if they did their job properly was that the ANC at the time was quite moderate, and that they had an opportunity to stem SACP influence in the ANC if they'd engaged constructively with them. Instead they treated them as a terrorist organization and chose to act to help their racist authoritarian enemy, and as a result they were part responsible for forcing the ANC to turn to the Soviets for weapons, training and exile for prominent members. If South Africa had become a Soviet satellite, it would have been in parts thanks to yet another case of CIA blowback, not because of Mandela. |