You're No Good, Winnie, And You Never Were

I see where Winnie Mandela is back in the nooz, this time accusing Nelson of selling out:

Nelson Mandela has been accused by his former wife of betraying South Africa's black population.

In a savage attack, Winnie Mandela said he had done nothing for the poor and should not have accepted the Nobel peace prize with the man who jailed him, FW de Klerk.

The 73-year-old said her ex-husband had become a 'corporate foundation' who was 'wheeled out' only to raise money for the ANC party he once led.

She also said, "Boy, have I got a necklace for that guy."

Okay, I made that last part up.

I was in college at the People's Glorious Soviet of Middletown during the height of the Divest, Now! craze, when mock shanty-towns were going up around campus.

I had two basic worries about the movement. One was that in the context of the then-serious Cold War between us and the Soviets, the geopolitical danger of the Russian Bear picking up a new "client" state on the southern tip of Africa necessitated that America do nothing imprudent that would cause a collapse of the S.A. government and allow Ivan to waltz in.

The other, related, concern was that regardless of what anyone thought about Nelson Mandela himself, the group behind him contained a great many radicals, villains, megalomaniacs and loose cannons in its senior ranks, starting with Winnie her own self.

I aired both of these views at the time and caught a considerable amount of flak for them.

Well, the Soviets collapsed, of course, before my first worry could be proven legitimate or not. But my second worry has, I think, been more than justified since then.