This is not an article about Nelson Mandela. It is a warning about the dangerous and dishonest attempts by many white South Africans to establish their democratic and human rights credentials in the eyes of the world. For them and many Western ‘liberals’ Mandela was not a man with many great qualities and a number of major flaws. For them he was a brand, to use as a smokescreen for their apathy towards the social ills that haunt this country and indeed many others across the world.
